When looking at America’s 8 largest companies, a LOT has changed in 15 years. Back in 2005 the most valuable company was GE. The list was dominated by oil & gas companies; ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell. The biggest bank (Citi) and biggest retailer (Walmart) and 1 pharma company (J&J.) There was only 1 tech company on the list (Microsoft.)

But the world has changed, and that has impacted these companies dramatically. Most had GREAT pasts, but they did not adapt to a changing world. GE’s market cap has fallen 75% as it failed to keep up with trends. Oil companies failed to move into renewables and other industries (like electric car production) and they’ve lost over HALF their value. Walmart is most noted for missing the e-commerce trend, the big banks were clobbered by the Great Recession and “big pharma” hasn’t produced a blockbuster for many years. All down significantly.

But, the value of the top 8 companies is MUCH higher than 15 years ago – 5X more. These losers were replaced by some very serious winners. From $2.1T in combined value, the top 8 are now worth $10.5T. But notably, only 1 company is still on that list – Microsoft – which is up 620%!

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The list is now dominated by 7 technology companies.

And for good reason – they all followed trends. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google,) Facebook, Alibaba and Tencent all built their strategies around developing solutions for people to follow the major trends of being mobile, operating asynchronously, supporting gig work and adding artificial intelligence (AI) to their customers. By refusing to rest on past laurels they have become the mega-giants of today. (Hartung, “Thrive to the Future – The 4 Top Trends for 2021 and Beyond)

That these companies would overtake old leaders was not a foregone conclusion – nor an obvious one to most people. Not only were the previous giants big, they had incredible reputations and extremely strong management teams. And these tech companies were not without problems.

• Apple almost went bankrupt just a few years prior to 2005, trying to be the “Mac” company. But Apple built one innovation after another helping people meet the emerging big trends – until it became the most valuable company on the planet (10 yr value increase 540%)
• Microsoft was locked in to its Windows/Office domination and seemed unable (or unwilling) to acknowledge the big trends and its value languished under a terribly myopic CEO (Ballmer.) Yet, new leadership was able to see the trends and moved radically to build out cloud services and support for alternative customer solutions that changed the company and its fortunes (10 year value increase 330%)
• Amazon was a former book seller turned general merchandiser. But Amazon started applying technology to understand its customers and help them be better shoppers, using AI to make them the leader in all things e-commerce. Simultaneously Amazon built the worlds largest and most secure cloud services business (AWS) helping support all major trends (10 year value increase 1,350%)
• Google was a search engine, with an unclear business model. But Google went to unexpected lengths to make ALL forms of information digital, and accessible, and searchable. And it monetized that digitization in ways far beyond anyone expected leading to the end of newspapers and many other publishers (10 year value increase 370%)
• Facebook was considered a fad for young people. Most business leaders thought Facebook’s users would disappear, and its young leaders would learn there was no revenue in attracting eyeballs (just as News Corps learned and shut down MySpace.) But Facebook built out the trend for social contact in a mobile, asynchronous smart way creating an entirely new business market called “social media.” Facebook looked at trends in how people connected, making brilliant acquisitions early of Instagram and WhatsApp that allowed Facebook family of products to become the #1 use of the internet (10 year value increase 450%)

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Key lessons?

First, the world is growing and leading businesses will grow. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Just like GE and Exxon. Second, never plan from past success, but instead plan for the future. You don’t grow value by being operationally excellent, because the world is forever changing and it will make your past business less valuable even if you do run it well. Third, make sure your plans are all built on trends. Let trends be the wind in your sales, or the current under your boat, or whatever analogy you like – just be sure you’re using TRENDS to drive you business planning, product development and solutions generation. Customers buy trends and help for them to achieve the future.

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