Learning Machine
People who adapt to change will ultimately survive. But people who reinvent themselves will lead the survival race.
“Be a Learning Machine”
- This phrase from Charlie Munger is highly relevant to today’s environment in the Indian it industry and their employees. And I hope it will be relevant in the centuries to come.
People who adapt to change will ultimately survive. But people who reinvent themselves will lead the survival race.
Take example - Walmart and IBM. Both were most valuable companies at some point in their life. One survived and the other reinvented.
Many thought e-commerce wouldn’t take off the way many were predicting. TAM wasn’t enough. Amazon proved them wrong. On the other side, many thought brick and mortar would go out of business. E-commerce would eat away Walmart or Costco’s market share. They were wrong. Now, it’s SaaSpocalyse. Software is dead. IT is dead. Time will tell. The same playbook will play out. Existing ones will reinvent or survive or shut down. New ones will emerge. More jobs will be created. Some jobs will be lost. It has been happening for centuries.
Clayton Christensen’s The innovators Dilemma and Peter Thiel’s Zero to One show this in detail how a niche idea can give birth to a whole new industry and disrupt the existing ones.
Most valuable companies in the 1970 were General motors and Exxon most of the time.Most valuable company in the 80s was IBM.
Most valuable companies in the 90s Exxon, IBM, and General Electric. Most valuable companies in the 2000 Microsoft, General Electric and Cisco Systems. All are considered by market cap.
Are they still holding the same position? Some of them are still big. Today Microsoft is a $3 trillion company whereas IBM is just $250 bn. But growth rate shrunk. Market share shrunk. A new industry was born. In the next 10 or 20 years, there might be a completely different most valuable company.
When e-commerce was just taking off there was pessimism around brick and mortar business. When IBM was the most valuable company there was eternal optimism about the company. Unfortunately it doesn’t last long. The richest people on earth in the early 1900s was John D Rockefeller. Now it is Elon Musk.
There’s no certainty. Be it in our life or job. Only change is constant. It is better to learn, learn and learn. Everyday. Learn something new. Read new books. Read newspaper. Watch news. Study different things. Upgrade continuously.
Innovation is in our DNA. We will continuously innovate. But that doesn’t mean existing ones will completely die. Software is dead. IT is dead. They will evolve. Some will reinvent in a new way.
The boom in AI reminds me of the late 90s where dot com, internet, online all those words attracted a lot of attention around the whole world. Everyone came up with dot com, internet powered, online businesses. The same thing is happening now. Everyone wants to become AI powered or AI driven. The real concern what we are buying or selling as a direct stock picker. In fact all may survive well, even touching new highs.
As long as there’s steam the balloon floats, then 2000 type crash will be awaiting. I think there’s steam in the AI industry. Also we must keep ourselves prepared for a crash.
To conclude with my first sentence, learning regularly or upgrading ourselves time to time would open up more opportunities. Why wouldn’t we learn AI? If it is doing something constructive, why wouldn’t we accept it? Didn’t we welcome cars instead of horse carriage? Didn’t we welcome e-mail or social media? Didn’t we welcome telephone?
Thanks for reading
Take care
Rabi
Disclaimer: I'm not SEBI registered. This content is for educational purposes only. Do your own diligence.