The reason why big companies tend to join the fray of the surprising new business venture launched by their competitors is that they want to make sense the strategic moves of the competitors. By emulating the position of the competitors in the same business front, they will be able to explore the perspectives of their competitors as well as accumulate learning of the brand new business opportunities, operation models and technology ecosystem along the way. Besides, they also maintain the prospect to hire the talents from their competitors' new business venture in order to obtain more "insider news".
The same imitation strategy also applies to sports and gaming industry. It was reported that the former world number 1 Go players Lee Sedol from Korea and Ke Jie from China have both achieved long winning streaks since their respective defeats to the Google's AlphaGo AI system. Alphabet's artificial intelligence company DeepMind CEO and co-founder Demis Hassabis attributed their post-AlphaGo success to their AlphaGo-like game strategies.
In the recent developments, Toyota has announced that it will be investing USD$1 billion in ASEAN Ride-Hailing Company Grab; while BMW and Daimler have decided to put their differences aside to merge their car-sharing operations in order to take on ride-hailing providers such as Ubers and Lyft in the space of mobility as a service that may become disruptive to their core business model.
It seems, role play the competitor has become the common strategy adopted by big corporate players to detect early disruption and be well prepared to join forces in the next wave of disruptive innovations.
Reference:
[1] https://twitter.com/demishassabis/status/728020177992945664
[2] https://twitter.com/demishassabis/status/884913628360708097
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/6m0fqy/ke_jie_has_gone_on_a_20_game_winning_streak_since/
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/baduk/comments/6o7wvg/ke_jie_had_22_winning_streak_after_future_of_go/
[5] https://www.inc.com/yazin-akkawi/why-are-silicon-valley-companies-copying-each-other.html
[6] https://www.geekwire.com/2018/webmail-wars-google-microsoft-doubling-free-services/
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire_space_race
[8] https://www.inc.com/kevin-j-ryan/2018-year-tourists-get-to-space-spacex-virgin-galactic-blue-origin.html
[9] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/02/07/new-space-race-elon-musk-jeff-bezos-richard-branson-brought/
[10] https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/2/17188374/bmw-daimler-merger-car2go-reachnow-mobility
[11] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-28/daimler-bmw-are-said-to-reach-deal-to-merge-car-sharing-units
[12] https://hbr.org/2018/04/what-40-years-of-research-reveals-about-the-difference-between-disruptive-and-radical-innovation
[13] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-13/toyota-to-buy-1-billion-grab-stake-to-expand-in-ride-hailing
[14] http://inc-asean.com/editor-picks/whos-the-mentor-jwhat-grab-and-toyota-can-learn-from-each-other/
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