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One-hit wonders
May 13, 2005
A couple of months ago, I tweaked Dell CEO Kevin Rollins for dismissing the iPod as a one-hit wonder. Yesterday, in a speech at Stanford, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer echoed Rollins, but this time the target was Google rather than Apple. The rapidly growing search company, said Ballmer, "may just be a one-hit wonder." Such talk from dominant industry players reveals a dangerous kind of complacency, an assumption of invulnerability that can get in the way of truly creative thinking about how traditional markets may be reshaped. I would guess that 25 years back IBM probably thought Microsoft was a one-hit wonder, too.
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