Talking with a friend we realized that there is an additional disadvantage (for the small( in the "many small" vs a few large debate.
Today the world faces a significant information/innovation discovery problem.
There is already a solution to many of the problems and pains we are facing - we just don't know about it - the pain/path to find it is too costly - bigger often than the pain/problem itself.
When the large company, be it apple, costco, amazon aws, adds that innovation in its "shelves" we find it.
We already know that I can find decent cheap web services at aws, good electronic stuff at apple etc etc so I will use them as the place to buy innovation from. (think of innovation for anything that involves change in my normal habits/way of working living: buyig an inexpensive packaged of vine-ripped organic tomatoes from costco is "innovation" in that sense.
Anyway, back to the many small vs large..
If many-small are to win the war against a few large - the problem of discovery will need to be addressed. Appstore did that, to some extent google search and google ads did that, even ebay and amazon did that for their marketplace partners - they created "marketplaces" that facilitated discovery putting big brands/publishers as equals with thousands of small ones.
I think google (both as a search platform as well as an ad platform) is becoming an non-ideal platform for "innovation" discovery. Q&A sites like stackoverflow and quora are addressing some of this problem - but they are Q&A as opposed to marketplaces of new sites/services.
There is still something missing - but it can't be too general.. I am not sure what is its correct definition.
Today the world faces a significant information/innovation discovery problem.
There is already a solution to many of the problems and pains we are facing - we just don't know about it - the pain/path to find it is too costly - bigger often than the pain/problem itself.
When the large company, be it apple, costco, amazon aws, adds that innovation in its "shelves" we find it.
We already know that I can find decent cheap web services at aws, good electronic stuff at apple etc etc so I will use them as the place to buy innovation from. (think of innovation for anything that involves change in my normal habits/way of working living: buyig an inexpensive packaged of vine-ripped organic tomatoes from costco is "innovation" in that sense.
Anyway, back to the many small vs large..
If many-small are to win the war against a few large - the problem of discovery will need to be addressed. Appstore did that, to some extent google search and google ads did that, even ebay and amazon did that for their marketplace partners - they created "marketplaces" that facilitated discovery putting big brands/publishers as equals with thousands of small ones.
I think google (both as a search platform as well as an ad platform) is becoming an non-ideal platform for "innovation" discovery. Q&A sites like stackoverflow and quora are addressing some of this problem - but they are Q&A as opposed to marketplaces of new sites/services.
There is still something missing - but it can't be too general.. I am not sure what is its correct definition.
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