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Shooting the duck blindfolded

I’m reading Founders at Work, a rather chatty collection of interviews that Jessica Livingston made with 25 software startup founders. It will be an even more interesting read 5 years from now, given that not all companies covered are, uh, current heavyweights (Apple – sure, Excite – wwwwhoat?)

There’s an interesting thought in the chapter about Adobe. Charles Geschke (co-founder) explains Adobe’s continued success and market leadership by “shoot[ing] at where the duck is going to be, not where the duck is.” (p. 290).

Now, the story of Adobe’s success was that of 80′s and 90′s. Look at the market now: release cycles are no longer counted in years and perhaps not even in months anymore. Can you still bet real money on where the software market is going to be in, say, 5 years from now? My hunch is – not that much. Which could explain the amount of copycats in the Web 2.0 arena and not much real innovation in terms of truly new products, experiences, etc. Everyone’s waiting to see where the platforms will be, what business models will emerge, what kind of real value is there waiting to be created and distributed.

Which doesn’t invalidate Geschke’s notion, not by any measure; it just makes the shooting the duck even more difficult, as if the duck was going in several directions at once and you were blindfolded. Good luck with that.

March 23, 2008 | Filed Under Enterpreneurship 

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