Yesterday's DNA

With all the discussion regarding Microsoft and Yahoo lately, does it really matter who Microsoft buys?

An interesting article from Harvard Business Publishing, argues that Microsoft is competing on yesterday's terms and plugging into old DNA with its attempt to purchase Yahoo.

The article suggests Microsoft is following the same ill-fated footsteps of Yahoo when it bought out other smaller innovative firms, like flickr.

Not one of these acquisitions managed to alter Yahoo's long, slow slide into profound strategy decay - if anything, they only accelerated Yahoo's decline. What went wrong here? Why did orthodox strategy - acquiring tomorrow's growth platforms - not just fail, but lead to a spectacular value implosion?

For Yahoo, these acquisitions weren't ways to experiment with new DNA, but simply roads to shore up orthodox sources of advantage. For example, Yahoo invested heavily to build a brand - Google, as we know, didn't. And Yahoo focused on scale: until recently, it had greater traffic than Google - and its investments and acquisitions were premised on eyeballs.

Our upcoming newsletter for July will be discussing the importance of being a Game Changer in your industry. The key is to move away from chasing orthodox areas of competitive advantages. Microsoft is still chasing scale and relationships between searches and advertising - an area Google pioneered some time ago.

It's time to move on, find a new DNA to plug into and chase new opportunities.