Definition of competition has changed. And Elon Musk realized this long back. If you analyze any competitive business now you will somehow find one or few of the big tech 4 – (Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google) involved in some way or the other. And what Elon knew was, his strongest competition will come from Google and Ubers of the world with their self-driving technology, rather than from GM or Ford.
And we know big tech 4 – (Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google) strengths.
· Deep funds available to do experimental innovation. Significantly less pressure to go profitable.
· Army of engineers and scientists.
· Vast computer infra. So vast that a company can rent their unused infra and it can become one of world’s biggest business (read AWS)
So the big question is how do their competitors stay relevant and significant. They should be using what they have gathered over years of being in business i.e. tricks of trade or domain business knowledge. It can be years of building cars, manufacturing things or making software products.
So the strategy can be –
· Avoid direct competition with the tech giants. If the product is too generic in nature they will build it faster and better with their deep resources.
· Integrate data science closely with business products. Analytics should be out of the box and intuitive. If required collaborate with the tech giants’ offerings but never give away domain expertise.
· Enable data science teams with domain knowledge. Celebrate people who are domain experts and make them part of the data science team.