Acquisitions and strategy
Acquisitions and strategy
Web acquisitions are not strategy. Acquisitions are usually financial gymnastics showing value. Personally, I think when a big company buys a smaller innovative company there’s a good chance that innovation in the acquired company dies. Google was guilty of this with its acquisitions of Blogger (nothing new there, Wordpress, six apart innovative), Yahoo’s been guilty as well. And AOL, AOL is probably the guiltiest of the lot.
When I read that AOL had bought Bebo my immediate thought was, well they’ve just handed the social networking industry to Facebook. Facebook’s kept its independence and as a result has been cutting edge. Bebo was showing some fight, but my guess is that this purchase is going to kill any incentive Bebo has to fight and innovate.
Strategy is seeing where there are gaps, filling those gaps with a superior product or service. Strategy means seeing where you can add value and create value and then executing like crazy, it’s not acquiring a company that does a decent job filling it with cash and then watching as its motivation to innovate disappears.
