No, Tech Start-ups Aren’t Taking Over the World

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Looking at business news and stock market coverage over the past decade (including a few HBR articles), you'd think that just about every traditional, old-economy company has fallen prey -- or will soon -- to tech-focused competitors. But London Business School's Julian Birkinshaw says that story of disruption and destruction is overblown. His research into Fortune 500 and Global 500 organizations shows that, despite the rise of a few tech giants like Amazon and Google, many industries haven't been radically remade and that many older incumbents are still standing strong. He outlines the strategies they've used to do so, from fighting back to reinvention. Birkinshaw is the author of the HBR article “How Incumbents Survive and Thrive.”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So you got the job. Now what? Join me, Eleni Mata, on HBR's new original podcast, New
0:08.1	Here, the Young Professionals Guide to Work, and how to make it work for you. Listen for
0:13.8	free wherever you get your podcasts. Just search New Here. See you there!
0:30.0	Welcome to the HBR idea cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Alison Beard.
0:41.7	There's been a big fuss made about disruption in recent years. Tech-enabled startups are
0:53.8	taking over the world, and old economy companies just can't compete. Look at what Netflix did
0:59.0	Blockbuster, what Amazon did to department stores. Our guest today says that narrative ignores
1:04.5	one thing. Over the past three decades, many industries haven't been disrupted at all. In
1:09.8	fact, his research into the Fortune 500 and Global 500 shows that lots of large and long
1:15.4	standing businesses are not just surviving but thriving in today's digital world. How are
1:20.8	they managing it?
1:22.4	Julian Birkenshaw is a professor at London Business School. He's the author of the HBR article
1:27.3	How Incomments Survive and Thrive. Julian, welcome to the show.
1:31.9	Thank you very much, Alison. Nice to be here.
1:37.5	First could you just explain why this narrative around disruption is so wrong? What did you
1:43.2	find in your analysis to show that incumbents are actually going really strong?
1:48.7	So I'd always have this nagging worry that the narrative of disruption where the big
1:55.1	established companies were dinosaurs was overplayed. So I went back to the data. I simply
2:02.2	took the Fortune 500 list, which as you all know is the top 500 companies in the US by
2:09.2	sales. And I asked myself, how many of the companies on that list today did not exist
2:17.4	25 years ago? So 25 years ago is 1995. And that date is chosen not just because it's a
2:24.6	convenient quarter century, but because 95 was the year when the internet really became
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Harvard Business Review, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Harvard Business Review and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.