Own what your business really does

I originally started talking about this year ago, but it seems to be just a relevant today as then: Can we all please just agree that company CEOs and start up founders alike who say things like “I’m not sure we’re in the {blank} business, I think we’re in the technology business” need to join us in the real world?

This is 2020 and all businesses use computers heavily. All companies invest in systems and all have a stake in advancing their own technologies. Under an old definition of what you invest in determining what industry you are in, the level of technology development investment at most companies would probably qualify all businesses as being in the technology business.

This old thinking doesn’t work anymore and we need to reset our expectations as to what defines a “technology business”. This same standard can be true for airlines, travel agencies, manufacturing businesses, banks and so on. We all do something different and are aided heavily by technology. Therefore, if you build something, you are still fundamentally a manufacturing business. If you let people hire a car and driver on demand, you are a limo company. If you collect data to sell to advertisers while encouraging people or other companies to create their own content to publish, you are a media company. If you fly people from place to place, you are still an airline.

You are not special. No matter how much “technology” you use.

What even defines “technology” anymore? So much of what a business does is somehow related to a computer program these days. Take a high frequency stock trading business using computer algorithms to execute trades thousands of times faster than any human could execute the same activity. Securities trading firm or technology business?

There are true technology companies, absolutely. There are companies that devote their resources to nothing more than doing development or maintenance work on computer systems that belong to other businesses or that they themselves licence out at a profit.

If your business makes money by producing a product or providing a service to a customer that isn’t computer system design or maintenance, you are not a “technology” business.

What would happen if we just made the assumption that for most businesses, technology is so ubiquitous in what we do that it is impossible to separate the computer from the end product we sell, whatever that is? We cannot all be in the technology business, that would be crazy.

If we did this, maybe instead of filling our websites and investor presentations with roadshow jargon or slogan filled mindlessness we could focus on what our businesses do… for real. We could focus on the product we produce, the customer experience we provide or the human interactions we facilitate and just let that define us.