Oversized, Declared Ambitions
A company having outsized ambitions is something you laugh at… until it comes true. Think of Steve Jobs’ intention to make a “dent in the universe”: laughable until he invented the iPhone and the smartphone market. Or take Google’s mission statement to “organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”. But at least one could argue that was declared by its founders when they were still college kids, an age when it’s the norm to be hyper-ambitious and unrealistic! Or look at Amazon. Back in 1997 when the Internet was just getting started, Amazon started off as a book retailer. And yet, even back then, their declared mission made clear their outsized ambitions: “Amazon.com’s objective is to be the leading online retailer of information-based products and services, with an initial focus on books .” Within a few years after 1997, this was their updated mission statement: “Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a...