This past Friday, Apple was in the news again, but it wasn’t the release of a new, shiney product or speculation about fluctuating stocks. It was something much more historic. On March 19, Apple will replace telecommunications giant AT&T Inc. in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). I haven’t had a chance to check the actual numbers, (not that it would have helped me anyway) Based on the initial review, this is something that does not affect any nominal value other than its historical nomination. Depending on how you want to see it, it marks the end or beginning of an era.
While I’m not old enough to remember it, AT&T’s marketing (link) campaign from the early 1990s, (the “you will” campaign), is well-documented. Growing up dreaming of what the future would hold, I was always fascinated by people’s creative technological solutions and how close these came to coming to fruition. Yet not a single gadget they predicted was actually developed by AT&T—and some were introduced by none other than Apple. So I was left wondering: Where did AT&T go wrong? Was their entire campaign just a marketing stunt with no concrete plans? I guess it could be, but it also doesn’t seem right to even imply that nothing new and exciting came of AT&T —not even any visible attempts to produce something that would change the future.
They definitely had the necessary vision. They predicted technologies as seemingly far-fetched as the Star Wars defense system and I believe they had the money and talent to make it happen. AT&T has been doing business all these years, but they seem to have put all their focus on growing big rather than adding newer and better inventions as they had in the early 1900’s before joining the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA).
The real question, however, is: What is our company doing to stay relevant and really grow over the next decade? What technologies can we introduce to make human communication easier and how can we make the world a more entrepreneur-friendly place? Yes, we are also a Telecom company, but if we were to try and establish what types of gadgets people will be using 5–10 years down the line, we would first look at what is still missing from the current voice and video communication picture and how much our technology and service can improve. Only then, we might have a slim chance of increasing our relevance and from there, start building a better and bigger customer base while continuing to add value to the existing one. It’s imperative not to forget the necessity of constantly adding real value to our products and periodically coming up with amazing, new breakthroughs that will take people’s breath away.
This is an internal memo I wrote to our team #mongotel this morning. Once I realized it could be of interest to anyone in business, I decided to share it publicly.
