Big tech, we need the innovation back!
The Early Days: A Time of Pure Innovation
I started my career as an industrial designer in 1995, the tech landscape was quite different. Software hadn't yet eaten the world, hardware design was still hot for investment. A tech companies like Apple, HP, Microsoft existed, but they weren't the giants we know today. The absence of dominant "FAANG" companies meant that talented technologists gravitated toward startups and smaller companies—drawn by the promise of innovation rather than just compensation.
What stood out most was the motivation: people in tech were primarily driven by a passion for innovation, exploration, and creating real value. The financial rewards were important, but secondary to the excitement of building something new.
The Four Waves of Tech Evolution
Looking back, we can roughly divide tech evolution into four major phases:
Personal Computers
Internet
Mobile
AI ( just getting started )
Each wave created tremendous value and potential. This success also attracted more profit-focused players to the industry. As technologies matured, companies shifted from innovation to optimization, from creation to control.
The Rise of Big Tech
Today's tech landscape is dominated by what we know as "FAANG":
Facebook (Meta) - social media
Apple - phones/laptops
Amazon - ecommerce
Netflix - video streaming
Google - search and ads
Take Google as an example: In its early days, the company's success was intrinsically linked to an open and thriving internet ecosystem. Their business model elegantly aligned with making the web more open and accessible—when the internet prospered, Google prospered. This philosophy drove innovations like Chrome and Android, which helped democratize internet access initially. As Google and these other tech companies grew and matured, they turned into more standard businesses and attracted more people focused on optimization and profit rather than creating new products and user value. These companies focus on creating protected platforms and ideally monopolies for their products and services, to lock in users and markets so they can raise prices and have little incentive to maintain let alone improve their offerings.
Innovation Paradox
Our current oligopolistic big tech structure creates three significant challenges:
The Talent Vacuum: Big tech companies attract and retain top talent with unprecedented compensation packages. However, these brilliant minds often find themselves working on incremental improvements rather than breakthrough innovations.
Trapping Users: Locking users into their platforms without creating more value and degrading quality over time for cost reduction.
Innovation Barriers: Market dominance and user lock-in create high barriers for new entrants, making it harder for innovative solutions to emerge and gain traction.
Rekindling Innovation
I believe the key to long-term value creation over short-term profit extraction is about fundamentally realigning incentives. Not a simple ask I know, but really obvious as you consider it. When we create economic systems that reward short term results, we will get short term optimization.
New Funding Models: Traditional venture capital often pushes for rapid growth and quick exits, prioritizing profit over sustainable innovation. Alternative funding structures like long-term capital vehicles, public benefit corporations, and community-owned platforms can help companies stay focused on innovation and value creation.
Decentralization Opportunities: Emerging technologies are enabling new organizational structures that distribute power and ownership. DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) and other novel governance models can align incentives between creators, users, and investors in ways traditional corporations cannot.
Public / Government Owned Platforms: We need platforms and systems designed to generate and distribute economic value across entire communities, not just shareholders: Digital public infrastructure that everyone can build upon Platforms where value generated flows back to all participants Systems that turn users into economic stakeholders Technologies that create shared prosperity rather than concentrated wealth Open protocols that enable broad-based innovation and value capture
