The Slow Collapse of the Tech Industry’s Old Growth Model
The tech industry’s golden era is ending—not with a bang but with desperate monetisation schemes. Windows isn’t just Microsoft’s bad habit; it’s the nicotine delivery system for an entire industry refusing to evolve beyond outdated business models that no longer fit our increasingly complex technological landscape.
My latest Substack post, Unravel, Rebalance, or Reinvent, looks into how the tech industry has evolved through phases of increasing complexity: from pre-digital operations to functional digitisation, to closed ecosystems, and now toward open ecosystems. Each transition created winners and losers, with many once-dominant companies failing to adapt to new paradigms.
Today’s industry shows classic signs of maturity and decline: forced monetization, artificial “innovation,” exploitation of existing users, and hyped trends (like AI) papering over fundamental stagnation. Microsoft’s approach to Windows exemplifies this struggle.
IT departments are facing a parallel disruption as they become obsolete the technology shift from CAPEX to OPEX accelerates, processes deconstruct across multiple platforms, and data becomes distributed across ecosystems. IT departments must either transform into platform orchestrators, dissolve into business units, or risk irrelevance.
The organisations that survive won’t be those fighting change or investing in “false attractors” that temporarily mask decline, but those with the courage to fundamentally transform before transformation becomes inevitable.
You can read the full essay over on Substack: Unravel, Rebalance, or Reinvent.