David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Right, even if that platform is not the one you own. That's the interesting thing about when they're evaluating Multiplan and they say, how do we not get Lotus 1-2-3 again, basically, the applications team gets the freedom to look around and say, okay, no matter what our overall company strategy is right now, or no matter what the systems division is doing, what is the most cutting-edge platform that is going to be so interesting to people that we can develop the most envelope-pushing technology for it? That becomes the mandate for applications. This is the dawn of horizontal software. You can have a whole company or a whole division of a company, in Microsoft's case, that makes this tool. That tool will be so much better than anything that even the largest companies can have their own software developers write. General Electric isn't going to write a better spreadsheet than 1-2-3. I think that the technology complement to this law is the killer app. You have to counter position. If 1-2-3 is the best spreadsheet out there for the current technology generation, you just can't compete with them. You need to wait for the next big leap forward in order to find a new competitive vector.…

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