W. Brian Arthur popularized an economic theory that changed Silicon Valley
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
Isn't this just describing the nature of monopoly power? The worship of this ideal seems to go hand in hand with the weakening of antitrust enforcement over recent decades.
For early stage startups I agree, but the prevalence of acquire-hires and straight-up acquisitions in recent years is indicative of thriving corporate M&A departments.
Given the recent wave of early-stage AI investments, another wave of not only consolidation but acquisitions is probably on the horizon.
That said the power of owning the standard is hard to overestimate. I highly recommend a close read of http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post to see how important it is, and how much of a disadvantage it is to have to play catch-up.
Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy - http://amzn.to/2hKFpwW
One of the authors, Varian, is now Google's Chief Economist, so they must think highly of him too.
The book is a bit older, but like the book says, “Technology changes, economic laws do not.”
>"People in Silicon Valley," says Arthur, "knew a lot about this phenomenon intuitively. But nobody had really written about it clearly."
My interpretation: Mr. Arthur popularized an idea and in doing so shared it with the technologists in Silicon Valley, who applied it to their work.
Truth: Mr. Arthur put to words a phenomenon that was incidentally also observed in Silicon Valley.
The misleading part being the assumed causation, i.e. if it weren't for Mr. Arthur popularizing the idea, the Valley wouldn't look like it does today.
For example, this is why Design Patterns are so powerful. When I say MVC or Active Record, most developers have a good handle on what I mean so now we can skip the "what" and get to the "how" in a fraction of the time.
I think another interpretation could be: By popularizing this idea outside of SV it changed SV. As the general population, as well as future entrepreneurs entering SV, do change SV too. For example the dot.com bubble and its subsequent bursting changed SV via popularizing outside of SV something that was clearly misunderstood.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Product-Development-Design-Analys...