I’m sure you know the seminal Andy Gove book , “Only the Paranoid Survive” it’s a cautionary tale for all successful companies, you never know when a Strategic Inflection Point is going to arrive, or when an upstart competitor is going to eat your lunch!

A recent tweet reminded me of this, which included an August 1963 memo from IBM’s TJ Watson, expressing dismay and disappointment that an upstart (only 34 people!) had stolen IBM’s claim to having the world’s most powerful computer.

ibm-memo-disruption

So this is not a new phenomenon!

Sometimes you need to “go fast” (and not “go far”), and a small agile team can out smart a lumbering giant. But you need to keep dodging and weaving or you’re going to get squashed!