The Uber’s mobility operating system has redesigned the architecture of urban transportation. The implication is that car companies of the future can be abstracted within that operating system as citizens may not necessarily care which brand of car is moving them. Yes, all you care for is to be taken safely from one location to another. BMW and Mercedes Benz see that future and the associated risks, and are investing $1.13 billion to go to battle with Uber.

“Our mobility services have developed a strong customer base and we are now taking the next strategic step. We are pooling the strength and expertise of 14 successful brands and investing more than 1 billion Euros to establish a new player in the fast-growing market for urban mobility,” said Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars. “Further cooperations with other providers, including stakes in startups and established players, are also a possible option.”

“We are creating a leading global game changer. The 60 million customers we already have today will benefit from a seamlessly integrated, sustainable ecosystem of car-sharing, ride-hailing, parking, charging and multimodal transport services. We have a clear vision: these five services will merge ever more closely to form a single mobility service portfolio with an all-electric, self-driving fleet of vehicles that charge and park autonomously and interconnect with the other modes of transport,” Harald Kruger, Management Board Chairman of BMW added.

I have long maintained using the Smiling Curve that Uber is a better car company than Ford and most car brands just as Intel or Accenture is a better computing company than Dell or Lenovo. Yes, while Dell and Lenovo remain at the center of the curve, on computing, Intel and Accenture have operated at the edges where more values reside. Similarly, Intel, Nvidia and Samsung are better car companies than GM and Ford as they are supplying modern microprocessors to power the increasingly commoditized boxes called cars.

In this video, I explain how value is shifting from the traditional car manufacturers to the companies which are “retrofitting” cars to become driver-less vehicles. When Uber and Waymo receive cars from companies like Nissan and Ford, they take them through engineering processes, turning them into driver-less cars. Systematically, the value now moves from Nissan and Ford to the final products made by Uber and Waymo (this applies even as Uber and Waymo are not selling the cars to the mass market).

Today, BMW and Mercedes Benz want to move to the edges, away from the middle of the curve to find great value. Most car companies will do just that in coming years. In short, the redesign has started as Ford and General Motors are closing or plan to close plants around the world.

Smiling Curve Shift: Value Redesign in Global Automotive Sector

To be a successful businessperson, you do not need to be as mathematical as Chike Obi or grammatical as Wole Soyinka. All you need is awareness and observation on market frictions, finding solutions to them, and rapping up in a matching story. If you can get those three in sync, you will experience glory.

Three things, as I explained here, and in a Harvard Business Review piece:

• In the age of slow dot matrix printing, HP named its printer LaserJet. It became a category-king.
• When AMD was challenging Intel on microprocessors because all processors were hidden inside computer casings, Intel unveiled Intel Inside, stimulating the interests of the public to specifically ask for computers powered by Intel. Intel took over to the cleaners.
• Microsoft is legendary for Windows. But the biggest innovation was not the necessarily the technology but the pricing model.

Simply, besides technology, there are many other things (“latent forces”) which are required in other to win in markets.

So, today, we have the largest retail chain in the world, Walmart, selling what most have discarded in villages across Africa, as a premium product in America. Yes, chewing stick is organic with no chemicals, and a box goes for $15 in America. I can tell you that organic products in U.S. are typically expensive. Next time, ask that auntie to send you organic toothbrush from U.S.: you will get your logo’d chewing stick!

Beyond Technology In African Startups, “Latent Factors” For Success

It is a strategy for federal contractors and jobbers of oh-yes-men: double play.

Question: Who do you support as INEC collates results to declare winners?

Contractor: The currently active winning candidate.

Question: Who exactly? Can you name?

Contractor: The guy that is winning at the moment.

People, are you the watching the TVs? These political catch-me-if-you-can are playing Double Play, making sure no matter what happens, they will remain relevant at the corridors of power. Yes, you can be a spokesman for a candidate while technically a member of the candidate’s main opposition party! Yes, besides Amazon and Alibaba, I have seen another example of Double Play strategy: Nigeria politics.

I explained in the duality element that digital products which thrive are typically both products and platforms. It would be hopeless to build modern digital products without having a moat through platforms. Interestingly, the greatest digital ICT utilities have double plays in their business models: if Amazon decimates many brick-and-mortar stores, it would welcome many online to sell them cloud services. Alibaba welcomes you to its marketplace platforms, and you certainly have signed up for its (partly affiliated) payment processing solutions (Alipay) which command commissions.

Double Play Business Models of Amazon and Alibaba