Sublime

Marc Andreessen, perhaps the world’s bellwether venture capitalist,

above, most analytical exercises on “where the market is going” tend to result in firms reaching the same (obvious) conclusions as their competitors.

Now, did we dominate the mid-range microcomputer business? That’s for us to argue in the years to come, but over the next quarter we’ll know whether we’ve won ten new designs or not.

Can we become better than our competition at accumulating, disseminating, and building on our firmwide expertise and experience, so that each professional becomes more valuable in the marketplace by being empowered with a greater breadth and depth of experience?

Clayton Christensen’s influential book on business strategy describes how new players in a market start with seemingly undesirable niche segments, which are ignored by incumbents while they are focusing on the most profitable segments and use cases.