17 Feb 10 Do the Biggie’s have a war cabinet?

I always wonder do the big global multinationals have a war cabinet. And if so how do they operate? Who is the enemy? Who is the friend? Here I mean the big multinationals who are in the new economy and not the old economy of military hardware, manufacturing, energy etc. I mean more like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, IBM, Amazon, Dell, HP etc … Observe most of them are American.

Looking at the announcements from the likes of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google recently they seem to be at war with each other. Facebook trying to bring down Gmail, Google trying to beat Twitter and Facebook with Buzz, Apple trying to beat Microsoft and Google and so on … It really looks like a Mexican stand-off.

But in this war against each other how do they react to each others moves. With budgets as big as a small country they need to have strategies and thinking which is not too far from managing and defending a country.

I am an admirer of  Admiral John (Jackie) Fisher – generally regarded as one of the greatest admirals in the British Navy. Fisher is primarily celebrated as an innovator, strategist and developer of the navy rather than a seagoing admiral. One of his quotes springs to mind here – “Hit first, hit hard and keep hitting“. Now I truly believe in doing that to your competition. It is not survival it’s winning I care about when running a company. So does any of these biggie’s have such strategies and do they have admirals like Jackie who think like this?

Tags: Amazon, Apple, competition, Dell, Facebook, Google, HP, IBM, innovation, Microsoft, MySpace, Strategy, Twitter, War Cabinet