Chasing secrets

Successful companies need to chase secrets others cannot copy.

In today’s high-tech world, it’s tempting to think that there’s no more room for vertical progress or that there aren’t any new ideas to be had. But this is a dangerous misconception that can keep you from being successful.

In fact, the world still has plenty of secrets – that is, things that are important but which most people don’t know about or agree with. This makes them hard – but not impossible – to discover. Often, the secrets are so deeply embedded in society that it might take generations to discover them.

Just consider slavery, which, a few centuries ago, was a common, socially acceptable phenomenon. To put it differently: back then, the fact that slavery is wrong was, by and large, a secret.

For tech companies, the best secret is to have better technology than their competitors, because it can make their position as market leaders unassailable.

You need to find and chase these kinds of secrets. Otherwise, you’ll just be another provider of horizontal progress, offering conventional products in a competitive market.

The case of Hewlett-Packard demonstrates the importance of having better technology. In the 1990s, the company had the best technology and used it to bring out one innovative product after the other, such as an affordable color printer and an all-in-one printer, copier and fax machine – a truly wild idea at the time.

But when the company stopped chasing secrets and inventing new products in the 2000s, it lost half its market value.