Real Value

I recently read a book (which was long overdue in my reading list) about Google's Story..What a great company.... this made me wonder about companies which have really added value to people's lives ...Lots of companies could be added to this list of "Value Adding Companies" ....but there are three major ground breaking companies that stand out

These companies actually didn't add value ...rather they changed people's lives...they saved millions of hours for the people and brought major revolutions along with their growth...Those three companies are Ford( As a large scale car manufacturer), Microsoft and google....The next question that enters my mind is...what made them so successfull....

Three things came to my mind when I searched for a common thread binding these three companies....... "simplicity, Scaleability and ofcourse ground breaking innovation " ...the likes of windows and google could reach hundreds of millions of people with their friendly user interface...and could be easily understood by a common man( One of my friends during my computer illeterate days ...used to tell me that .."No matter what happens with the windows you always have Ctrl Alt Del to save you"...That gave me much more confidence to play with my PC....ans i also used Ctrl Alt Del frequently)Also each company had a key competitve advantage on account of their technology...The technology that was simple at the front end...was pretty robust at the back end (what with loads of data centers and algorithms for delivering search results in case of google and the new method of manufacturing introduced by Ford that mainly depended on economies of scale)...

Another important aspect of their business was that their products were scaleable....This made it easier for them to reach millions of people with their robust technology....Also, if you look at the way they scaled their operations..... it is worth noting that all the three businesses were started by a 1- 2 member team ( 2 in case of google)..and used very low adertising dollars for promoting their services to consumers(at least to make people use their products)...Actually I hardly saw a google advertisement...asking people to use google....On account of the scaleability factor they actually became generics in their product class....online search has become equivalent to googling and operating systems have become equivalent to Windows XP ( Please note I am not using Vista here)....

So at the end of the day ...key takeaways from these success stories are ...1) generate a product or service that is scaleable 2) try to do some ground breaking innovations ...also on the way to your success try to enhance the quality of lives of people and of course earn handsome profits ( .....As simple as that...but easier said than done...)

Also another important that needs to be answered is ...who is gonna be the next google...A future company that could really add value at a global level....facebook or Apple?....Apple could definitely be a likely contender with their IPOD ..

However, I doubt facebook could be a likely a candidate.... despite its recent whopping valuation..I dont see them actually improving lifes of people...And I also doubt their strategy of monetizing....by using user activity to place advertisements on their profile page....Social networking could be another VOIP or ethanol fad in the making....So Apple is the most likely candidate...

but as of now I would like to say my thanks to Google and Microsoft for deeply impacting and improving my life....Thanks google and Microsoft