In a “zero-sum game“, there is always one loser and one winner. Just like in a game of poker, what one party wins, the other party loses. I’ve been reading a lot about the economic downturn lately and it reminded me of a conversation I had with one of the chaps at the office –> The Chinese character for “Risk” is written as = Crisis + Opportunity.
So – in these times of economic downturn and crisis, who stands to gain? Sun Microsystem’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz blogs:
In the midst of this economic downturn, discussions related to free and open source software have substantially heated up - this is no longer a peripheral discussion with CIO's - cost reduction related to open source adoption has become a focal point for decision makers across the world.
I also found this gem of an article about a hedge fund manager who bet big on the eventual credit crunch and failure of large financial services institutions.
This really shows two completely opposite ways to squeeze an opportunity out of these current crisis. Either (1) through leveraging on cost efficiencies and delivering a lower TCO product than the competition and competing on price, or (2) winning through zero-sum games on the way the market is going to go. John Paulson made a filthy amount of return on (2), although at a staggering amount of risk. The jury is still out – whether Sun can pull the fat from the fire and turn around that great company and really make a comeback.
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