Winners take most of it

This is a departure from the classic ‘Winner takes it all’, when applied to emerging markets that are dominated by an information-intensive age.

The most visible impact of the information age (PDF), according to me, is the levelling of playing field in a trice. And, if you look at history of successful businesses in this age, the ones that make winners out of its customers are the most successful – Microsoft (created a large number of successful companies building Windows apps, a large number of individuals and groups that learnt how to use a PC and evolve in life), eBay (created a new group of people who started businesses and made money from that) etc…

In essence, the company either explicitly or implicitly focused on creating winners out of everyone who was their customer. If they’d focused on taking it all, they may have been quite short-sighted. Imagine if Microsoft did not expose Windows APIs for people to build apps and decided to do it all by itself.

That led me to think that where efficient markets are at work, any player has to get its customers to rally around itself, since it’s net perceived value (NPV?) is the sum total of the value each customer places on it. And, unless the customer feels like a “Winner”, having sided with the ‘perceived winner’, s/he will not place high value on the company, which means, the company’s net perceived value will be low.

So, in the information age, the ‘Winners take most of it’!

Update:

Ravindra, my colleague passed on an interesting comment:

“To Win in a Market, create the Market”