GLOBAL MARKETS A SURVIVOR’S GUIDE INSTITUTE July 2019 TO DISRUPTION Steve Strongin Amanda Hindlian Sandra Lawson Sonya Banerjee Dan Duggan, Ph.D.
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Table of Contents Chapter 1: Survivor’s guide - the short form 3 Chapter 2: Disruption’s evolutionary roots 9 Chapter 3: Perfecting Platforms 19 Chapter 4: Niche after niche - Organizers 32 Chapter 5: The competitive value of data 44 Chapter 6: Concluding thoughts 56 Appendix A: Considering communities 59 Bibliography 61 Disclosure Appendix 62 The Global Markets Institute is the research think tank within Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research. For other important disclosures, see the Disclosure Appendix. 2 Survivor’s guide - the short form Chapter 1: Survivor’s guide - the short form We examine how companies can reshape themselves to better compete in today’s Everything-as-a-Service (EaaS) economy1. In this new economy, firms can use services provided by other businesses to grow faster, while using less capital and fewer people than would otherwise be possible. Industries are reorganizing in response to these dynamics, and companies must adapt or risk falling behind. EaaS can be thought of as an extreme form of outsourcing. In the past, firms would selectively outsource business functions to reduce costs, for example by outsourcing ancillary functions like operating a cafeteria within an office or by outsourcing labor-intensive but simple manufacturing processes. Over time, however, the high degree of standardization that has emerged across manufacturing, communications, data systems and user interfaces, among other areas, has made it possible to outsource virtually any business function.