iRobot facing "death" because it only has 46% of the market is bonkers to me; capitalism has forgotten what to do with a mature company.
"We sell vacuums to half the population" is no longer a valid business model, evidently.
iRobot facing "death" because it only has 46% of the market is bonkers to me; capitalism has forgotten what to do with a mature company.
"We sell vacuums to half the population" is no longer a valid business model, evidently.
@tess @CatherineFlick I’m so, so, tired of the entire economy being built on the assumption of infinite growth. Facebook having a fit when they stopped growing quite so fast because *most of the developed world already had an account* also springs to mind.
@CatherineFlick @jon @tess it’s unfortunately spread far beyond venture capital funded startups (though they are almost by definition designed for hyper growth or going bust) most companies especially most public companies are now run for short term apparent growth - at least by the measure of earnings per share (ideally just above what the market “consensus” is expecting)
Largely achieved by stock buybacks down to only $787B in 2023 vs $981B in 2022 (to reduce the number of shares)
@CatherineFlick @jon @tess
And in my corner of the professional world, I argue the same kind of thing is why so many news organizations (especially local newspapers) have closed in recent decades.
@CatherineFlick @jon @tess This is definitely not my area, but it’s been clear “common sense” to me that growth *cannot* be infinite. That would be plain nonsense. At some point a switch to sustained, excellent service of a loyal customer base is achieved and this should be treated as a goal, a significant milestone in a healthy company, and *not* seen as failure. Nothing grows infinitely. Can a company have continuous improvement? Definitely. Can a company infinitely grow? Preposterous, really.