Today’s Nasdaq Illustrates the Phenomenon of Creative Destruction

Those of you who are old enough to remember the dot com bubble bursting some 15 years ago might also remember the handwringing about how Microsoft was becoming a monopoly. Microsoft was the juggernaut that could only be taken down with antitrust suits by the federal government. Other companies simply could not compete with such a well-established corporation; the free market was inadequate.

Fast forward to where Microsoft stands today. The once seemingly invincible company has succumbed to the realities of competition and now finds itself in third place on the Nasdaq index.

James B. Stewart writing for The New York Times explains:

The Nasdaq composite that peaked at 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000, in what turned out to be the height of the technology bubble, bears little resemblance to today’s Nasdaq index. Of the top 20 Nasdaq companies by market capitalization in 2000, only four — Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Intel and Qualcomm — remain in the top 20 today. Eight no longer exist as independent companies, most as a result of bankruptcy or acquisition, and several are shadows of their former selves. The current Nasdaq composite index has only about half as many companies as it did in 2000.

“Joseph Schumpeter was spot on when he said capitalism is all about creative destruction,” said Richard Sylla, an economics professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a specialist in the history of markets, referring to the Austrian-American economist who described the phenomenon in 1942 in “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.”

In the intervening 15 years, a new generation of entrepreneurs, newly public companies and entire industries have emerged and seized the dominant positions in the Nasdaq index even as their predecessors faltered. Apple, now the world’s largest company by market capitalization, barely registered in 2000, and the first iPhone was not announced until 2007. Over a billion smartphones were shipped in 2014.

The chart below which accompanies the article illustrates this creative destruction of the past decade and a half quite clearly.
Capture

What this tells me is that no matter how large these corporations get, they cannot rest on their laurels. They cannot assume that just because consumers like their product(s) more than the competition today that the same will be true tomorrow. How many people use Myspace today as opposed to Facebook?

It’s the creative destruction of the free market – not additional regulations which ultimately allow consumers to have more choices.