Thinking Big - Final Chapter

This is the final article in the series of Thinking Big. In order to understand a concept, it is not just important to know what it is but also to know what it is NOT. While the first two articles explored the facets and examples of Thinking Big, today, we will explore what is NOT Thinking Big. That’s the tricky part. How could we explain what is not thinking Big? While I raked my brain on how to do that, I thought I’d look at missed opportunities as they could have turned things around for the company or would have made it BIG. There is a difference between missed opportunity and failure. Failure is where you have taken risk but it has not paid off. In my mind, that’s good - there is intent of risk that has been exhibited and even if the result is not in line with the expectation, there are enough lessons from that experience that could be leveraged to move forward. However, missed opportunity is where a company has let go of an opportunity without betting on it. I’d like to acknowledge here that we are all smart hindsight but making that decision would have been difficult for the constituents. Having said that, there is always ‘What if’ associated here. Examples of missed opportunities:

Yahoo: Yahoo is currently struggling as a company with multiple changes of CEOs and of strategic directions. However, it had multiple opportunities it missed as a company to make it big. I’d like to highlight two of them. First one is about the opportunity for Yahoo to buy Google.  Having passed over the opportunity of taking over Google search engine when it was initially offered by Larry Page and Sergey Bin, Yahoo tried another bid in summer of 2002. Google was not listed at that time and its revenue was $240 million. Terry Semel, Yahoo CEO at that time approached Larry Page and Sergey Bin to take over Google. Larry and Serge stated their price as $3 billion but mentioned they were not interested to sell. Terry’s team indicated that Google was worth $5 billion and they should push hard. However, Terry Semel disagreed and moved over to Plan B to acquire their own search engine and search-advertising technology to compete for search based ads. Well, we all know the result. Google subsequently went public and is currently operating with a market cap in excess of $180 billion. Similarly, Yahoo made efforts to buy Youtube but could not push forward on it. Eventually, Google bought Youtube and successfully integrated it into its fold.

Second big opportunity it missed was in 2006 when Yahoo sought to buy Facebook. Yahoo CEO Terry Semel almost shook hands with Mark Zuckerberg to buy Facebook for $1 Billion (this was when Facebook was smaller than Myspace – another social portal that went into oblivion). However, Yahoo underperformed on earnings in 2006 and Semel reduced the price offering to Facebook to $800 million. Zuckerberg turned it down. In a subsequent interview, Terry Semel lamented the missed opportunity and felt that Yahoo should have pushed forward with the deal.

We will never know what would have been the present if only Yahoo leveraged these two opportunities. In both the cases, Yahoo was convinced they were good buys but failed to take the necessary risk to pursue the deal. WHAT IF??

India Story: While talking about missed opportunities, I could not resist myself writing about huge number of missed opportunities by India to really make it big. India shining story has always been that of a great future but of a weak present. Even during early years of this century, we talked about India will be a great destination ten years from now, and after ten years, we still say India will be a great destination ten years from now. Inorder to have a strong growth, it was required for the government to make bold decisions and push for strong reforms, but the government backtracked multiple times to appease political interests. That has stalled India story and today, it is being seen as a potential fallen angel of BRIC countries. WHAT IF we have taken risk and pushed for strong reforms and provided good governance? WHAT IF??

Contrast the above examples with that of James Cameroon. He always thought big and made movies in a large scale. He went to Fox studios and pitched to make Romeo and Juliet story on a sinking ship for $150 million. Fox was skeptical but yet gave in to the demands of James Cameroon since they wanted to build a relationship with him. Result was Titanic that earned more than $2 billion. He came back to Fox in 1996 to pitch for the idea of Avatar with a potential release date in 1999. However, he was not happy with the technology that was available and worked on pre-production and production of this film for a decade, with the film eventually hitting the screens in 2009. It instantly turned into a blockbuster and brought in another $2 billion. Imagine spending more than 10 years of your life in pursuit of a goal. You need to be able to dream big, take risks and have great passion. That’s THINKING BIG.

What does all this mean to you? Are you willing to THINK BIG about your life? Are you willing to bet on yourself and take the required risks? THINKING BIG cannot happen if you are not willing to dream big, take risks and have strong self-belief. This world provides a huge number of opportunities to think and make big however, the number of people who capitalize on such opportunities are very few. Are you one of them?