The Asymco Trilogy with Horace Dediu Part 1

Horace Dediu, current fellow of the Clayton Christensen Institute and founder of Asymco.com joined us for an epic and insightful discussion focusing on few key interesting topics: (a) new market disruption theories, (b) Apple in China and the luxury market and (c) the Japanese automotive industry and how it shapes up against disruption from Tesla, Uber and Apple. In the first of the trilogy, Horace discussed the origins of Asymco.com and also why he has used Apple as the lens to understand innovation and technology disruption. We also traced back to other Apple-like companies in the past such as Sony in Asia, and look at how Apple and Pixar has displayed a different kind of “DNA” against innovative companies in the past. Last but not least, we discussed the evolution and future of Google and where it might lead them to.

Here are the interesting notes and links to the discussion:

The story of Horace Dediu (@asymco) from Asymco.com
- What inspired you to start Asymco.com? We discuss the origins of Asymco.com.
- Why have you covered Apple for such a long time and what is it that fascinated you about the company?
- His two podcasts (a must-listen and highly recommended) which also inspired the Analyse Asia podcast: The Critical Path and Asymcar. Here are the iTunes link to The Critical Path & Asymcar
- His current role as a research fellow in the Clayton Christensen institute.
New Market Disruption discussion
- The Apple algorithm – what makes Apple interesting to cover?
- The other companies which share similarities with Apple in the past: Sony in Japan, Microsoft, General Electric.
- Apple and Pixar, both companies derived from the same founder, shared different paths.
- Pixar’s acquisition by Disney, and yet it’s Pixar’s culture that now helped Disney Animation studios to succeed. The analogy of a reverse acquisition from Pixar but from a cultural DNA perspective.
- Analysing Google as a company. Please refer to this article: On Google’s Future Part 1 and 2 and the discussion from the Critical Path podcast where Horace dissected the company of Google into two parts: the Google A world – focus on the most interesting innovations and B world – focus on making revenues from search and advertising. In fact, Google in Asia Pacific is focused on the Google B’s objectives.

Producer’s Note: This is probably one of the most epic and insightful discussions that I have ever had with Horace Dediu who has inspired the work behind Analyse Asia podcast. The whole recording is 2.5 hours and we have to split this into 3 parts for easy listening. I am grateful to Horace Dediu for the discussion and has the opportunity to ask him the questions which I always have when listening to the Critical Path. I am glad that he has covered some of those queries here.

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bleongcw) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) and Linkcious (and check out their other product, Chiibi).