Acquire or Transform? The technology trend is coming at you…

You are witnessing the increasing availability of VC money for startup investments ^(*): Technology revolutionizes the incumbents’ business models (how to fulfill customer needs) and their operating models (how to resolve efficiency requirements).

Put bluntly: technology is the means that enables startups to disrupt decades-old businesses.

Shareholders of these threatened incumbent companies have to decide on the classic “Make or Buy” options. They finance organic transformation to preempt disruptions, or they gear up for inorganic growth. In this second case, intentions could be:

• Acquire a technology-driven competitor to absorb their know-how
• Acquire a weakened incumbent competitor to increase the barrier to entry
• Strike an alliance to respond to any of the two situations mentioned above avoiding an M&A process

Our conviction is: status-quo is your riskiest (and unjustified) bet in most cases. You did not expect to be spared from this major startup driven innovation trend, did you?

(*) Source: Crunchbase Analysis – 2019