Compared to the vertical table format that people are used to, the circular thinking mode is likely to bring unexpected discoveries.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public number “outside the stack” (ID: zhanwai) author: Alex Danco.
This article looks at:
The author introduces the concept of a color wheel to analyze technology companies and finds that these companies have some neglected qualities.
▪ Facebook is essentially a productivity platform that helps you maximize your attention and the benefits of social capital.
▪ Uber’s fundamental goal is to integrate things in the real world and solve the problem of excess resources.
There is almost the opposite of Android and Google, but Google has successfully used Android and gained mobile Internet hegemony. It is amazing.
The circular thinking mode is likely to bring unexpected discoveries compared to the vertical table format that people are accustomed to.
Original from Alex Danco’s Blog by Alex Danco
Speaking of jumping out of mind. I want people to get rid of the dependencies on n*n tables, matrices, and meshes, at least with a little less.
People seem to like to use right angles to classify things. For example, if we put one factor on the X axis, the other on the Y axis, and the third on the Z axis, the vertical arrangement will make the relationship between the three clear. .
This method is sometimes effective, but at regular intervals we will see something completely different, they are simpler, more elegant, and more illustrative than n*n tables. When we stop thinking in a rectangle and start thinking in a circle, we can see these things.
Gentle readers, think about the 3*3 character value grid used in the universe of Dungeons (Dungeons, a table-playing game).
Players (or characters, monsters) can be included in the grid, one dimension is from Good to Neutral to Evil, and the other dimension is from Lawful to Neutral goes to Chaotic, which leads to nine possible combinations (and more if the number of intermediate conditions is combined).
However, this classification is not particularly interesting and does not clearly express what we want to say. By contrast, the framework of Magic (a game of exchange cards) is more creative and beautiful than it is.
Magic’s five-color wheel can be considered one of the greatest frameworks in the game world. The color wheel is simple, elegant and perfect. The color wheel has five colors (white, blue, black, red, green), which are surrounded by a circle, each color has two adjacent colors (allies with the same value) and two opposite colors ( The opposite of morality).
Green is the color of life and nature, with white (symbolizing life and kindness) and red (symbolizing initiative and enthusiasm) as ally, with black (symbolizing death and evil) and blue (symbolizing artificial and unnatural) as enemy . Every point on the color wheel has its own unique perspective. It includes possible perspectives, allies, and enemies, forming a framework that is more telling than any square.
How does Magic’s color wheel perfectly capture these values and differences?
There is no matrix framework that explains why Google, Twitter, and Amazon agree, but they are so antagonistic and hostile to Apple and Microsoft.
There is no single form that really shows the deficiencies in the Kindle Fire tablet, iCloud, Bing and other products. And why is Google supposed to buy Twitter, and why Uber and Amazon are working together.
I want to explain these questions, so I put together what I think is the “Color Wheel of Tech”, with the artwork below.
I chose seven companies: Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, and Uber. I think they are the core agenda makers in the tech world, and when they announce something new, people are really listening.
Obviously, this list is not complete. I am willing to add some Asian technology giants, such as Alibaba and Tencent. Uber is the only one on the list.A young unicorn company (although I think it appears here is well deserved). Having said that, I think it is enough to analyze these seven companies.
As shown:
In this illustration, we can see some of the regular features of these companies, as well as some interesting new features: Google is completely opposed to Apple (which we know before) and Twitter (which is also very It makes sense; more interestingly, Facebook and Microsoft are actually adjacent (as we will discuss later).
It’s interesting to think about the many out-of-left-field products that these companies offer from a color wheel perspective: the Kindle Fire tablet – it clearly shows how Amazon’s core competencies are When it comes to building a productivity platform, it’s all right, and iCloud is the same for Apple.
To study these comprehensive differences in more depth, let’s look at the three groups and the three pairs of opposites:
“Information about X” (Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon)VSHigh-end enablers (Microsoft, Apple, Uber)
A company that belongs to the “Information about X” group sees the world as a set of information that needs to be organized and understood, while companies that perform high-end empowerment functions see the world as a group that needs to be completed. Goals and tasks.
This is probably the most straightforward division: The difference between them is that the company is more concerned with “information lists” or “tasks.”
Are you wondering why Google is so smart?A form tool that can compete with Excel? Why is iCloud still a mess under the blessing of Apple perfectionism and design-oriented thinking?
The reason is branded in the company’s DNA: As a powerful data processing and machine learning engine, Google will naturally excel in knowledge and understanding, and attract world-class talent to solve this type of problem. problem. However, just because it considers everything from a data point of view, it is not good at building tools, and vice versa (six years later, Microsoft’s search engine Bing is still bad).
Let’s compare the mission statement of Microsoft and Google. Microsoft’s declaration is “to make every achievement and every organization on the planet a bigger achievement”. Google’s is: “Organize the world’s information so that everyone can access and benefit from it.”
The two mission statements are great : They each perfectly capture the deep concern of Google and Microsoft, and their intrinsic value is completely different. This is why Google’s search engine and Microsoft’s Excel are great, and Google Sheets and Bing are bad.
In addition, Bing’s original slogan is “Bing is for Doing”, which sounds a bit silly, but it perfectly captures Microsoft’s core concern – doing stuff.
Of course, this core concern is good for the consistency between Microsoft itself and its internal tasks, but it also explains why no one wants to use their bad search engine.
Personalization (Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Google)VSInteracting with the World (Apple, Uber, Amazon)< /strong>
For companies that value personalization, they are interested in what users think of the world; and companies that value interaction with the world are interested in what the world can do for users.
Consider this question: in order toThe areas that are outstanding and constantly improving, will these companies constantly ask their users what the problem is?
Companies that value users’ perceptions of the world:
Google: How can we help you organize and understand the world around you?
Twitter: How can we get you involved and keep up to date on your interests?
Facebook: How can we better connect you with your friends and form a unique social graph?
Microsoft: How can we make you and your business more efficient? *
Comparing companies that value what the world can do for users:
Apple: How can we create a perfect device that will allow you to make the most of the world and make the world more responsive to your needs and use for you?
Uber: How can we provide a universal service to organize the world and its content for the benefit of our users?
Amazon: How do we provide a common logistics system to meet buying needs or to provide convenience to our customers?
——*Note: Someone may come up with the idea that Microsoft cannot be completely classified as a “personalized” company because it certainly cares about the world’s utility to users. For organizations that really care about both, Microsoft is the best choice for them.
This makes sense, because Microsoft is at the junction, so it makes sense to put it in which category. But I think the foundation of the new Microsoft under the leadership of Satya Nadella is the user’s personalized needs, network and cloud computing.
I think the best description of this category is to think of it as the opposite of the services offered by Facebook/Twitter and Apple.
Companies like Facebook or Twitter give every user a completely different experience when using their products.
Apple or Uber is completely different. To some extent, everyone gets the same iPhone and is perfect; the specific experience of traveling on Uber may be different, but the travel service is actually the same.
People use the iPhone, Uber, and Amazon Prime services to achieve different goals, but as a tool to interact with the world, they are almost the same for everyone.
Productivity Platform (Facebook, Microsoft, Apple)VSIntegrationTaiwan (Twitter, Google, Amazon, Uber)
Although this category is similar to the first category (about X information and professional enablers), the two are still different – because the two companies at the edge (Facebook and Uber) have moved their positions.
For the productivity platform group, , the primary problem is limited resources; for the integration platform, first The problem to be solved is the excess resources.
This is my favorite part.
The goal of productivity platform companies is to maximize the use of limited resources.
Microsoft’s performance is the most direct: the time and money of you and your organization is limited, and we can help you achieve optimal use of your resources to achieve your goals.
Apple: Your time and attention are limited, we will create the best equipment for you to help you achieve your goals and control the world around you.
Facebook: Your time and social capital are limited, and we’ll develop a social tool to help you manage your social input and output.
On the other hand, the top problem that the integration platform group needs to solve is to simplify and simplify the confusing information or resources into a manageable state.
Twitter: Build an open system that organizes the different remarks of the world community.
Google: Receive global information so everyone can access it.
Amazon: Manage products and services around the world so that everyone can trade online.
Uber (probably the hardest part to understand): Manage the entire real-life content and make it available to everyone, and to some extent it can be seen as Google in reality.
This category reveals features that Facebook has not been noticed before. Although most people think that Facebook is similar to Google and Twitter (because they are all processing online information),It is different in some respects.
Facebook’s social reach spans a wide range of products and platforms, with a wide range of users and more than 1 billion users. But for any Facebook user, the problem that Facebook solves for them is not to integrate a large amount of user data (and then simplify it to a search box, as Google and Amazon do), but to maximize them. The effectiveness of your own attention and social capital.
In short, Facebook is a productivity platform for social life, just as Microsoft is the productivity platform for your work.
I can even say that Facebook is actually the next Microsoft: It is the true successor of Microsoft’s ubiquitous productivity platform in social and life.
After all, in addition to developing a social agenda (involving new features, acquisitions, and product strategies), Facebook is now doing a series of moves against the smartphone ecosystem, as Microsoft did in 2000 for PC makers. They all sit at the top of the value chain and take away most of the profits.
This category also points out Uber’s great ambition: it wants to be the actual integrator of the entire real world and its content. In our first group of categories, Uber was properly categorized as a tool-oriented, information-oriented company.
The classification we are discussing now highlights the real challenges Uber faces. In other words, to run these tasks on a large scale, Uber must essentially establish a sequence of things for the real world, indexing, classifying, and delivering the entire real world and its content, just like Google is the Internet. Do that.
Thus, Although Uber eventually operates under the “Tools” category as a “professional enabler” company, they want to solve the problem of excess resources rather than scarcity. So I classify it as an integration platform, not a productivity platform.
This is why I think that although Apple created Apple Car (Apple is a quality company)/ Productivity Platform, and doing a good job), but still can’t be the reason for Uber.
After all, Uber hired the talents of the Carnegie Mellon University mathematics department and the original Google Maps team, not just to make people take a taxi more efficiently.
Finally, we still need to look at the text in the outermost circle, how do these companies make money? How to coordinate its income generation mechanism? How to create high-end empowerment tools to help people interact with the world?
Apple should make money by selling equipment, but has it attracted people’s attention through a social network of people’s interests and conversations to increase people’s sense of participation?
Twitter should be an advertising campaign to make money, but does it organize all the purchases, deals, goods and services in the world?
Amazon should be a trade facilitator and profitable from every transaction.
Great things happen when different things are combined. As Ben Thompson said in his blog: “When culture, ability and opportunity are combined, powerful things happen.”
Despite this, there is still a major product that can’t find its place in this interpretation framework.
How do you understand Android?
Android (in some ways, it’s by far the most successful product in the world – with 1 billion users in just 5 years) has no place on this chart.
Android is a key part of the Google system, and everyone thinks it has been a huge success, but it is almost on the opposite side of Google.
It’s a productivity platform (like iOS), a horizontal software empowerment platform that covers applications, web interfaces (to some extent, Windows Phone is designed to be the same) An interactive page that helps you interact with the world around you.
What the hell is going on? In my opinion, although Android has undoubtedly achieved great success, it is still somewhat out of place with Google after six years of acquisition. The layout of the above ring provides some explanation for this strangeness.
Let’s think about the performance of Android and Google at the 2015 Google I/O Developer Conference. Android feels unnatural and very stiff, but Google shows great ambition and vitality.
But this kind of incompatibility between Google and Android didn’t hurt Android. On the contrary, Android is essentially far from Google’s core capabilities, which shows how amazing Google’s achievements are.
When Google acquired and released Android in 2005, the goal was not to fight against Apple, but to compete with Microsoft, because Google must ensure that the upcoming mobile Internet hegemony does not fall into the hands of another operating system, Google succeeded. .
Even if there is still a sense of alienation between Android and Google, Google has successfully crossed the color wheel to the other end and mastered the mobile Internet hegemony, which is impressive.
In short: Please think carefully about this color wheel! As this icon expands further, I will continue to follow up. For example, I will use this color wheel to think about the future products and trends of each company, and give an abstract color wheel theory (not simply to arrange seven specific companies, but to give specific characteristics of each color) .
The cover image is from pexels