Who Is the New How

4On the Shoulders of Giants

There was a great first‐mover movement in the early 2000s. The idea was that the initial (“first‐moving”) significant occupant in a given market gained an advantageous and perhaps insurmountable market position just by being first. The theory has legs. Sony was the first mover in personal stereos, Coca‐Cola in soft drinks, Hoover in vacuum cleaners, Amazon in online books sales. These well‐known examples have enjoyed considerable success, but it didn't work that way for a lot of other ventures.

Dumont led the way in selling TV sets when they were new devices, but the company lost out to latecomers like RCA and Motorola. Ampex had a commanding position in video recorders for two decades until Sony took over. Sidecar was the pioneer of ride‐sharing yet Uber was the one to dominate the market. Netscape was the first to market an internet browser until their stock price plummeted following the rise of Microsoft's Explorer.

If being “the first” doesn't give you the upper hand, what does? If the preceding examples are any indication, innovation isn't enough. Nor is displacing incumbents, creating new markets, or pushing an entire industry forward. No, companies who find long‐lasting success do so through identifying gaps and ramping up execution in those areas, finding opportunities that are disguised as voids and then throwing ingenuity and resources into solving those problems.

That's what Google did.

In 1998, there were numerous search engines: Excite, ...