>>Chris Dixon: The next big thing will start
out looking like a toy. If you look at the
list of the top Internet companies a decade
ago, more than -- I think, majority of them
are now effectively defunct. How can this
happen? These were companies run by very talented
executives who were constantly on the lookout
for new threatening technologies.
The answer is we found in Clay Christensen's
disruptive technology theory, which is something
that is widely studied, I think, but not applied
enough because it runs so counter to conventional
management thought. So the most -- the most
famous example is when -- when the telephone
was invented, the incumbent at the time was
Western Union. And they literally called the
telephone a toy because it could only travel
-- voice could only travel a mile. And they
were primarily concerned with their best customers
who were railroads and large businesses who
needed service for much longer distances.
And, of course, what western union didn't
recognize was that how quickly telephone technology
and infrastructure would develop. The same
pattern happened with mainframe computer makers
and PCs. The same pattern happened with telecom
companies and Skype. I was actually an early
stage investor in Skype, and literally people
were referring to it as a toy. Of course,
our bet was that over time it would -- it
was a toy at first. People didn't have mics
and people -- the sound quality was bad. But,
of course, over time it got much better. And,
eventually, it has begun to replace a lot
of the current telecom infrastructure.
So I think the list of the top Internet companies
in a decade will be very different than the
list today. I think Google will hopefully
be on that list. But one thing I know is that
the new ones that appear on that list will
be ones that snuck by because people dismissed
them as toys.
