As CEO of Starbucks, Howard Shultz’s vision was to make the cafes a warm and welcoming place for coffee and conversation. I’ve noticed for the past three years or so how the new CEO remodeled the cafes to make the furniture more difficult for sitting, turned the air conditioner to a lower temperature, and cranked up the music volume. All things to make them less inviting for customers to stay encouraging rather to “grab and go.”
Sales have not gone well, and suddenly the board replaced the CEO. New Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol outlined his strategic vision for the coffee giant, which includes making cafes more welcoming.
Corporate strategies change frequently.
I think Boeing is searching for some sort of new strategy. Do you think that’s going to happen?
Google and Apple face woes at the hands of the EU. But Google also has a fight with the US Department of Justice on it monopoly in search. I read someone’s analysis that it’s still the best search engine. Maybe. But I don’t think so. There is so much sponsored links and then the primacy of other commercial links (try searching for a particular hotel to check out amenities and then going to page 2 to find it).
I pay for a newsletter from MG Siegler. He writes:
Andy Kessler makes the case that the government shouldn’t break up Google as such break-ups are often pointless. And really, given enough time, the market tends to do the work itself; my point in a related column about Microsoft a few weeks back. Instead, he thinks more companies should break themselves up. By clinging on to the concept of bigness, they hold themselves back in many ways. And while Wall Street likes revenue growth, they also like spin-outs – and perhaps eventual spin-back-ins. It’s a compelling thought in our age of AI – as it was in the Cloud era which is now maturing.
I second the idea of companies intentionally breaking up. Getting bigger doesn’t work in a mature market. The added bureaucracy of size impedes innovation and agility.
This applies to the main market I covered for many years—automation. It’s a mature market. The main innovation comes from acquisitions—and those are becoming more rare. Maybe there is not much room for innovation? I could think of a few things that would shake them up if customers would buy in.
Something to consider.
