There are cycles of convergence and divergence in the computer, consumer electronics, media and other industries that are confusing the general understanding of “convergence”. Convergence is seen as the act of adding more and more features to a particular class of product to the point where another class of product is created and the existing class is rendered obsolete. Service industries also go through cycles of innovation that get convergent cycles of consolidated business offering to the point where “breakups” are caused due to disruptive innovation models. Prosper is a divergent banking (from traditional banking) model, but convergent in the social media world (converging banking into social media phenomena).
Al Ries wrote the book “The Origin of Brands” a few years ago. It is a great book that uses the metaphor of evolution to describe how brands are developed.
Looking at Apple/Microsoft or the other technology companies that are now global businesses, they all started with their particular focus and over the years “feature load” and “competence extrapolations” allowed these innovative teams to create a range of exciting products with a cult like followings – even if their products do not fit the initial business idea. Their products have little to do with the computer business and more-and-more with media and lifestyle; look at Apple’s iPod etc, Microsoft’s Zune, xBox etc.
We can look at Aristotle’s Concept of the Prime Mover; The concept of movement or change is eternal – there cannot be a first or last change. “If nothing acted on A, then it would stay the same and not move. So if A is moving it must be being moved by B, which in turn is being moved by C, and so on.” But for us it means that as we go through cycles of convergence, competitive forces increase to the point where the converged concept implodes.
For business strategy it means this:
1. Understand the landscape
2. Reason about the cycles of divergence and convergence that created disruptions
3. Map your existing and future strategies onto this cycle
4. …execute…
Sounds simple? This is one of the most complex things to grasp in a modern business.