Thread by @PaperBagInvest

Thread on: Foot In Mouth: Selected Quotes From Big Corporate Execs Who Laughed Off Disruption When It Hit
Source: cbinsights.com/research/big-c…

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$AAPL #iPhone
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” -Palm CEO Ed Colligan in 2006

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#iPhone
“The dev. of mobile phones will follow a similar path to that followed by PCs. Even with the Mac, Apple attracted a lot of attention at first, but they have remained a niche manufacturer. That will be their role in mobile phones as well.” - $NOK Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki

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#iPhone
“500 dollars? Fully subsidized? With a plan? I said that is the most expensive phone in the world. And it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard. Which makes it not a very good email machine.”
- $MSFT Steve Balmer

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#iphone

“It’s kind of one more entrant into an already very busy space with lots of choice for consumers … But in terms of a sort of a sea-change for BlackBerry, I would think that’s overstating it.” - $BB Blackberry’s Jim Balsillie

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#iPhone
“I can’t believe the hype being given to iPhone. Even some of my blindly-loyal pro-Microsoft friends and colleagues talk like it’s a real innovation and will ‘redefine the market’ or ‘usher in a new age.’ ” - $msft Senior Marketing Director, Richard Sprague

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#iPod

“Screw the Nano. What the hell does the Nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?” - Motorola CEO Ed Zander

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$AMZN

“Amazon is a very interesting retail concept, but wait till you see what Wal-Mart is gearing up to do.”
- $IBM Chairman Mr. Gerstner

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$AMZN
“We don’t believe our vendors selling product directly on Amazon is an imminent threat. There’s no indication that any of our vendors intend to sell premium athletic product, directly via that sort of distribution channel.”
-Footlocker’s CEO Richard Johnson

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$NFLX
“Neither RedBox nor #Netflix are even on the radar screen in terms of competition. It’s more Wal-Mart and Apple.”
- Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes

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$NFLX
“VOD is further off than we thought. We’re monitoring all this stuff and when it looks like a profitable model, we can get into these things while offering the immediate satisfaction of in-store rentals compared to mail order services.”
- Blockbuster Karen Raskopf
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$NFLX
“The notion that Netflix is replacing broadcast TV may not be quite accurate. I think we need a little bit of perspective when we talk about the impact of Netflix.”
-Alan Wurtzel, NBCU president of research and media development

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$AAPL
“The Apple watch is an interesting toy, but not a revolutionz “
-Swatch executive Nick Hayek Jr.

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$TSLA $AAPL
“If there were a rumour that Mercedes or Daimler planned to start building smartphones then they (Apple) would not be sleepless at night, and the same applies to me.”
-Daimler head Dieter Zetsche

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$TSLA

It gives you the impression that it’s doing more than it is. Tesla’s Autopilot is more of an unsupervised wannabe. In other words,Tesla is creating a semi-autonomous car that appears to be autonomous.”
-Trent Victor, senior technical leader of crash avoidance at Volvo

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$AAPL

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home,”
-Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977.

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$AAPL

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers,”
-Thomas Watson, president of IBM, in 1943.

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$GOOG $GOOGL

“Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.”
-Steve Ballmer, early days of Google

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$GOOG $GOOGL

“Google is in their honeymoon period and anything they announce gets hype. They will obviously branch out beyond internet search, but I think the expectations won’t live up to reality.”

-@BillGates, 2006

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$AAPL

“AAPL is like a mutant virus, escaping from the traditional structure of the PC industry, but the industry will still eventually build up immunity,thus further blocking this trend, and we believe the size of the non-Apple camp will exceed Apple’s.”
-Stan Shih of Acer

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$FB

“I wouldn’t single out Facebook as a concern, because we’ve got different local competitors around the world.”
-Tom Anderson (MySpace founder)

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Daryl Zanuck, co-founder of 20th Century Fox thought that the TV itself wouldn’t catch on:

“Television won’t be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”

/22

My takeaways on incumbent legacy companies:

-are wrongly dismissive of new technology,
-wrongly think they can easily pivot to new technology later if necessary,
-lack the actual skills in new area to properly pivot,
-have internal conflicts preventing change.

/23

WHY LEGACY COMPANIES FAIL - Tesla & Lemonade vs Ford, GM, VW, BMW, State Farm, Allstate... etc.

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