Comment by vonklaus

This article seems to have many correct pieces, but I don't think they coslesce to prove the point, or at least, not entirely.

I don't think that manufacturing semiconductors are comparable to building maps. Apple should have done a better job with maps, and even though they do complex manufacturing, likely should have done worse at chip manufacturing.

Iirc they brought in 3rd parties to help with the chip fab, and certainly spent more money building that core competency than maps.

I believe the author is correct that the issues is companies not fully understanding, and consequently underestimate, what it takes to be successful in a different arena putside their cc.

Google sees people as articles in a db. They dont understand people at all, they dont understand design as it relates to people, and they didn't understand that nobody needed another social network.

They probably underinvested (initially) in G+ and it was not a great product. It didnt achieve critical mass quickly, and thus had no chance of growing as a docial platform ever.

However, google is a lot more capable of creating something like this because they have all the core conpetencies down.

I guess my takeaway is that the companies can in fact take these arenas, but they underestimate the challenge. So to use a drug dealing analogy, they try to start moving bricks amd kilos, instead of working their way up learning the market pushing dimes and quarters.

They start too big, and when you fail big, you dont get the recovery of a smaller failure which affords small relaunches and features.

Tldr big companies try to enter at the top, cant recover from huge public failures, and either exit or buy in