God only knows

by John Boyd

The difference we're interested in here is that, if Matsushita or Toshiba should come out with a revolutionary new, low-priced oven that uses a different frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum to get faster results than a microwave, one that could brown dishes to perfection and automatically clean itself, consumers would stand in line to buy it. But if Toshiba or Matsushita were to invent a revolutionary new computer that promises to be every bit as helpful to PC users, chances are it would end up as a niche item at best.

The power of the standard
In most markets, superior technology, low prices, or the most attractive or convenient design usually grabs market share. This is why Sony can invent a new recordable media like the MiniDisc and parlay it into a successful consumer product, despite the ubiquitous CD and audio cassette tape. And it's why BMW and Mercedes-Benz were able to establish successful businesses in Japan selling cars with the steering wheel on the "wrong" side.

Not so in the IT (information technology) market. If superior technology were the key to success, then Digital Equipment's Alpha workstations would laud it over the wimpy products from Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and NEC, while Microsoft's DOS/Windows operating system would long ago have been smashed by Apple's Macintosh.

It didn't matter to most businesses that the Mac was easier to use and made employees more productive than MS-DOS. By 1989, big business in the US had standardized on DOS, so going through the upheaval of replacing DOS with the Mac, in order to gain an incremental productivity boost, was not on the agenda.

Similarly, the Alpha chip is easily the front runner in microprocessor speed. This makes it a godsend if you happen to run an unusually complex Oracle database dealing with countless thousands of transactions every moment of the day. But otherwise, most corporate IT managers are standardized on a particular flavor of Unix, and they aren't going to risk spoiling the taste by introducing some hot spice from Digital just to gain extra zip.

IT success, then, is predicated on establishing de facto standards rather than the intrinsic value of a technology's features. This was well illustrated in the early 1980s when IBM introduced its PC. Businesses didn't buy it for the outstanding technology, software, or low price, because it offered none of these. They bought it because IBM was God, the creator of standards. And managers weren't about to risk going to hell by challenging that era's incantation: "You'll never get fired for buying IBM." While faith in IBM waned in the late '80s, IBM's PC legacy lived on due to the sheer number of supporting companies and users that had turned it into a de facto standard. Besides, Big Bill was there to step into Big Blue's role as God, which is why the IT world faces Redmond daily to pray.

Mind share equals market share
Nevertheless, user numbers and standards only partly explain how a particular technology becomes successful. If it were these two factors alone, then best sellers like Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3 would never have been ousted from their market top spots. Nor would Japan's Justsystem, creator of the popular Ichitaro word processor, be struggling to stay ahead of Microsoft in its own backyard.

The third element needed for IT success is mind share. In fact, you need to create mind share in order to build up the numbers that establish the standards. Mind share is belief in the future. Mind share is the faith and trust that IBM engendered during the '70s and '80s. It's the utter belief during the Nervous Nineties that Microsoft will be around in the next millennium to kick the butt of any would-be contender for the PC deity spot.

And kick butt Microsoft must, in order to maintain its grip on something as ephemeral as mind share. Bill Gates knows better than anyone how to become God. If Microsoft was able to use its inferior Windows to undermine a fumbling IBM and its superior OS/2, why couldn't Netscape or Sun use the Internet to tie up Microsoft? Why couldn't Intuit, a revitalized IBM, or even Company X dispose of Microsoft through, say, electronic commerce in 2001?

No reason at all, God knows.

While John doesn't have a direct line to God, he does believe undelivered e-mail wandering through the ether may occasionally be read by higher beings. To help test his theory, try sending fail mail to boyd@gol.com.

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