A friend of mine emailed a photo that was rather shocking. It was a 1978 staff photo of Microsoft Corporation there are only seven people pictured. In the lower left-hand corner Bill Gates looks about twelve-years-old while in the lower right-hand corner, scraggly bearded fellow multi-billionaire Paul Allen looks like a techie nerd. The email was entitled, Would You Invest?

When that photo was taken, almost no one, other than those in the largest of businesses and universities had a computer on their desk. Today almost everyone in business uses a computer and we cant imagine the world without the technology that those seven people in the photo helped bring to us. They were at the very sharpest point of the technology spear.

Yes, I know that they were not the very best at creating software, but they were the best at building a software business. There is a huge difference between being the best at the technology and being the best at building a business that delivers the technology. Its a distinction every business has to grapple with, no matter whether it is in the highest or lowest levels of technology.

Back when that photo was taken, there were many small software companies. Some of them became very successful. They developed programs that changed the way we all work and think yet today, very few of those companies still exist. They have either been merged into other companies or have fallen on the trash heap of businesses that had one great idea and couldnt repeat their success. Microsoft and a few others prevailed and dominated an extremely competitive marketplace.

Your business is in the same situation as Microsoft was in 1978. It has the entire future ahead of it. It can either become better at building widgets or better at building a business that builds widgets (naturally, in order to build that company, it has to build a very good widget). The difference is where the primary focus and effort of the thought process is placed. So I now ask you the question, Which business would you invest in?