Miller's Monday Morning Message
presented by ACM Consulting Inc.

Andrew Miller on strategy, operations, life balance and everything in between

Toronto - June 27, 2011 – There has been a lot of talk recently about how RIM may become the next Nortel. A Canadian giant who is losing ground to global competitors. But all is not lost for RIM. They are still known to have the best data security in the smart phone and tablet market, and they need to exploit that advantage. But the bigger question people want answered is "Why does this keep happening?" Let's eliminate the argument that this is happening because RIM is Canadian. This has nothing to do with RIM being Canadian. This has to do with a very successful company enjoying their success a little too much while the competition innovated and created products that the mainstream consumer wanted. While RIM was riding high on the preference that corporations had for their products, Apple and Google and others, were building smart phones and tablets that everybody wanted to use. RIM is not the first company to get complacent once they became successful (see General Motors, Toyota, etc.). We want to play the Canada card and blame our size or lack of competitiveness, but the reality was that RIM has fallen into a trap that many successful companies find themselves in, the motivation to continue to innovate and improve while being on top of the world. There are only two ways this can play out, RIM works it's way out of the trap and continues to be successful, or one of their competitors makes an aggressive play to acquire their assets. Either way, it will be an interesting story to follow.
 
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It seems that everything Google touches these days turns to gold. They epitomize what a successful company looks like. They wanted to dominate the search engine space, even though they were the third player in the market, and they did. They wanted to dominate the cell phone operating system market, again, even though they were late to the party, and their Android system is making huge inroads with consumers. They are the perfect example of a company that sets its' sights on something and goes after it relentlessly.

Now Google wants to take on price indicators and wind power. Take about a company looking towards global domination, they even have a chief economist! Google argues that the data that it can provide through trolling internet buying sites can provide up-to-the-minute data about what people are buying. The "Google Price Index" would not replace other common economic indicators, but would provide real-time data on online buying habits. That would be pretty valuable information considering the increase in online buying.

As for the wind power, Google is investing in technology that will use wind power to power residential homes. Why wind power you might ask? Why not? If we assume that Google wants to make the world a better place and make money at the same time (or at least make money), then wind power seems to be the right place to be. It is just amazing to me how many different influential businesses Google has become a part of, which leads me to the question "Will Google Take Over the World?"

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Google has also recently announced that they are developing a self-driving car. Chew on that for a while.