Teach Me, Google

Folks with an MBA might be familiar with PEST (Political, Economic, Social, Technological) analysis. The futurist crowd typically uses STEEP (Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political) analysis. Google shows once again that they are ahead of the crowd with PESTEL (Political, Economical, Sociocultural, Technological, Environmental, Legal) analysis. See slide 13 of this Strategic Analysis: Google presentation to see where I got this from. The addition of the legal frame makes a lot of sense given the litigious nature today’s copyright and intellectual property (IP) landscape. I’ve written before about increasing court battles over IP. It is my concern that court battles will stifle rather than stimulate innovation in America. In the past IP protection encouraged innovation because people knew that they would benefit from their hard work and that a competitor with larger resources could not take their idea and profit from it. Digitization and the Internet have changed the rules of the game. While Americans argue in court the rest of the world, not under the jurisdiction of American courts, will move right ahead inventing and making things. The United States only accounts for approximately 300 million of the 6 billion people with purchasing power on this earth. While the U.S. has been the wealthiest population in the world this too is changing. If you don’t believe me check out the numbers in Shift Happens.

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