There is another E in use of demand data to dominate your market, but it will not make your company as popular as the previous three. This E is a process exemplified by none better than software giant Microsoft. The fourth E is exterminate.
Throughout the early 1980’s, Microsoft was all for performing the first three E’s, embracing, empowering and extending the software market left and right in a number of ways. First, they made if very easy for any programmer, whether a professional or just a hobbyist, to write software for the Microsoft operating system. While companies like Apple wanted to control the entire technology stack so as to gain the most profit from hardware and software production, Microsoft empowered programmers with cheap tools such as software development kits to encourage the creation of new options for Microsoft users. Microsoft would offer coupons for different kinds of handy software with their own operating systems. And they were smart about which kinds of software to push, harvesting data from their OS users as to which programs were popular and which ones were less so. This process allowed Microsoft to create a virtuous cycle. Empowering the developers meant more programs for their operating system. More software options meant more people wanted to use Microsoft. And more users meant even more developers desired to write software for the Microsoft platform.
Once Microsoft reached this cycle, they were in a position to execute the fourth E: extermination. Upon gaining demand data from its operating system user base as to which software was becoming popular, Microsoft would buy a small competitor to whomever was making that software, and offer it to the Microsoft OS customer base at a fraction of the price, if not free. In no time the creator or main supplier of said software would be run out of the market due to the extensiveness of Microsoft’s customer base. It was brilliant and ruthless, and the fourth E is exactly what has made Microsoft into the dominant and often hated market player that it is today.
If a company can use the first three E’s to gain a substantial share of the market, it can perform the fourth E to gain the dominant place in that market. And again, those companies that start the process of gathering real-time demand data and executing the three E’s sooner than later will be the one’s that find themselves in a place of being able to exterminate competitors.
