IT-facilitated industries and competitive spaces: the dance of the elephants

Sa？etak Something very interesting is happening in the information-technology (IT) facilitated global economy: companies in industries that were previously quite separate are now rapidly converging on the same competitive spaces. This is resulting in a ‘dance of the elephants – firms such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, eBay, Apple and Microsoft, that did not even exist 30 years ago or were a small start-ups and quite agile, have become large and increasingly hobbled in their agility by the sheer size and scope of their products and/or services. The intent of this paper is two- fold: (1) to try to identify the forces behind the convergence of these once largely noncompeting firms (with some obvious exceptions in some segments of their businesses such as Apple and Microsoft in operating systems), and (2) to show how developments in the field of interaction design, and in particular, design thinking are facilitating or hindering this convergence process