Today's largest companies are tiny compared to those that will come in a few years

Published: December 27, 2024

By telling people that Amazon, Google and the like will soon face competition by way bigger companies which we have not even heard of as of today, one surely risks to be considered an idiot. And yet this has happened again and again in human history, specifically every time a Next Big Thing made its appearance. But are we really on the verge of a new Next Big Thing? And what is it?

Next Big Things are rare beasts

Let's immediately make clearance here: for me a Next Big Thing is something truly BIG. It's not just a new tech or a new trend. Not even something very innovative or dramatically disruptive. A genuine Next Big Thing for me is something that truly changes in a substantial way how we humans live, in a substantial number of fields of our lives, for a substantial portion of our race. To make a practical example, I am 55 years old, and in my life I have only witnessed two Next Big Things so far and I consider myself very lucky both because I am about to see a third one, and because in the past centuries of these Next Big Things you were lucky if you saw even just one in your entire life, let alone two or three. For me the two seen so far are: a) the arrival of computers on every desk, at office as well as at home, b) internet.

Just to be even more clear: I don't even remotely consider Next Big Thing smartphones and mobile apps. Why? Well, read on, I have my own very special and exact definition of what a real Next Big Thing is. For this paragraph I just wanted to emphasize that Next Big Things are rare, very rare, very very rare. And if you're lucky enough to live one of them you'd better pay great attention, because treating it the right way could result in you founding a startup that could soon become the next Google or Amazon, just probably bigger than those.

Anatomy of a Next Big Thing

I could greatly simplify by saying that a truly genuine Next Big Thing is something after whose arrival new companies are born that are so big and powerful that none of the previous largest companies can compete with the new ones or has a valuation bigger than those.

The pattern is clear throughout history. When Google emerged riding the wave of the internet revolution, it effectively ended Microsoft's monopolistic dominance of the tech world. Microsoft, which had seemed invincible in the 1990s, suddenly found itself playing catch-up in the new internet-centric landscape. The same Microsoft had, decades earlier, dismantled IBM's iron grip on the computing industry by democratizing personal computing.

This pattern of disruption and replacement extends far beyond recent tech history. In the early 20th century, Standard Oil dominated the industrial landscape until the rise of automobile manufacturers like Ford Motor Company transformed the economy. Even further back, the Dutch East India Company, once the most valuable company in history when adjusted for inflation, saw its power wane with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of new industrial powerhouses.

Why giants can't adapt

The reason why even the most powerful companies often fail to maintain their dominance when a Next Big Thing arrives is fascinating and counterintuitive. One might think that with their vast resources and talent pools, these companies would be perfectly positioned to capitalize on new opportunities. However, their very size and success become their biggest limitations.

Large, established companies are optimized for executing their existing business model at maximum efficiency. Their organizational structures, decision-making processes, and incentive systems are all designed to maintain and incrementally improve their current operations. When a Next Big Thing arrives, it often requires not just new technologies or products, but entirely new ways of thinking and operating that are fundamentally incompatible with the existing company's DNA.

Take Microsoft's initial struggle with the internet. Despite its enormous resources, the company's DNA was built around selling packaged software through traditional channels. The concept of free, web-based services and advertising-supported business models was so foreign to its core identity that it initially dismissed the internet's importance. By the time Microsoft recognized its mistake, newcomers like Google had already established dominant positions in the new paradigm.

The Next Next Big Thing

As we enter 2025, we're witnessing early signs of what could be the next Next Big Thing: the convergence of artificial intelligence with virtually every aspect of human activity. Just as previous NBTs fundamentally reorganized how society operates, AI has the potential to remake everything from how we work and learn to how we create and interact.

The companies that will dominate this new era won't be today's tech giants. They'll be organizations we haven't heard of yet, built from the ground up to harness AI in ways that today's leaders can't imagine or execute. These future giants will likely make today's trillion-dollar companies look small in comparison, just as today's tech giants dwarf the industrial powers of the past.

The key to identifying these future leaders lies not in looking at who's winning today's battles, but in understanding who's best positioned to remake entire industries around the new paradigm. Just as Google didn't win by being a better Microsoft, and Microsoft didn't win by being a better IBM, tomorrow's leaders won't win by being better versions of Google or Amazon – they'll win by being something entirely new.