Hi Antoine, your post reminded me of something I read in Wired a couple of years ago, miraculously it was on a shelf, not in a box, and I found it right away, an interview with Peter Drucker, August, 1996. The part that is relevant to your post is at the bottom:
DRUCKER: Will you people at Wired please accept the fact that the computer industry, as an industry, hasn't made a dime?
WIRED: Hasn't made a dime?
DRUCKER: There was a time when IBM had wonderful profits. IBM earned enough money, but no more money than the rest of the industry lost. Every year since then the industry as a whole did not make a dime. Intel and Microsoft make money, but look at all the people who are losing money all the world over. It is doubtful that the industry has yet broken even.
WIRED: I wonder if anybody has done the arithmetic on the industry.
DRUCKER: No, I used to, but I gave up after 1970. I doubt that anybody has.
WIRED: Still, the computer industry has not made a penny?
DRUCKER: That's not what I said. I said the whole industry hasn't made one. Individuals make money for a limited time. IBM made money for 30 years.
WIRED: There are enough losers to balance the profits of the winners. Do you expect that to change?
DRUCKER: Not yet.
WIRED: What will make it change?
DRUCKER: Maybe nothing. This is not unprecedented. The first international industry in the history of the world was banking, beginning in the 15th century. The Medici first, then the Fuggers in Germany. Then the Genoese, then the Dutch, and for 300 years you had the world's first multinational companies. The Medici had some 16 branches at their peak. The Fugger had god knows how many, including some in Venezuela. The Genoese were in Lisbon and Amsterdam and Antwerp and Barcelona. And yet, while you have these enormous individual fortunes, the industry itself, the banking industry, the first multinational industry in the world, never made a penny. Most of those great international bankers who were in the brand-new industry, the first information-based industry in the world, did all right. Some lasted one generation, two generations. Then they miscalculated, misspeculated, and ended bankrupt. The Medici went bankrupt in the 1490s. The Genoese in general went bankrupt. Barcelona went bankrupt. The Fuggers were much brighter. The second generation liquidated the banks and bought enough real estate in Germany to become princes. Individuals made enormous fortunes. But the industry never made a penny.
WIRED: That's a very interesting definition of making a penny. I mean, you're measuring it over hundreds of years.
DRUCKER: Only over decades.
WIRED: Some fortunes are being made on the internet right now. A lot of start-up companies are trying to find the best way to index the World Wide Web.
DRUCKER: I don't think we know yet which of these approaches is going to establish itself as the universal system. You have to gamble on it. The first one certainly has the pioneer's advantage. But may I respectfully point out that there has been no case in history where the pioneer became the dominant producer, whether you are talking about a business or a science. The most successful innovators are the creative imitators, the Number Two. |
