Why do I write so often about the nation’s biggest companies for Inc.com, which is a leading voice for small business owners and entrepreneurs? There’s an easy answer:
In short, I think we can often learn a lot from them.
Airlines, quick-service restaurants, big retail—they have every advantage in trying to identify trends and get out ahead of them.
Sometimes they’re not as nimble as smaller companies, but they have resources, brainpower and data.
Sometimes they’re not as nimble as smaller companies, but they have resources, brainpower and data.
In some ways, they have advantages that the rest of us can only dream about.
So I often think: Watch what they are doing, and think seriously about following their lead.
All about AI
The big trends right now are all about artificial intelligence. And the biggest companies are making some very specific moves.
Amazon and Walmart—the nation’s two largest private employers—spent years adding workers by the hundreds of thousands.
Amazon boasted in 2021 that its workforce had grown to more than 1.6 million people, calling itself “the largest job-creator in the U.S.” Walmart said last year that plans for 150 new stores would create jobs across the country.
That was then.
Amazon, Walmart, Google …
Amazon announced this week it would cut 14,000 corporate jobs. Meanwhile, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon warned at a company event in September that AI is set “to change literally every job,” and that all workers will have to adapt.
Walmart expects to keep its 2.1 million-strong workforce steady for the next three years as it uses AI to evolve employees’ roles, according to The Washington Post.
Other examples:
- Google’s YouTube offered U.S. workers voluntary buyouts this week, saying it was restructuring around AI.
- JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have said they planned to slow hiring as they integrate the technology.
- I’d missed this one, but the Post says Nestlé plans to slash jobs over the next two years as it increases automation.
David Smith, a professor of economics at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, told the Post:
“Sometimes companies look for leaders, and when they see something happen with them, they use it as a cue. As more companies move into the AI space, it will put more pressure on others to do it.”
But, he added: “I see it more as economic conditions creating pressures to cut costs,” calling the AI explanation “a blended narrative.”
AI tools have proved popular with businesses and consumers for tasks like summarizing documents or drafting emails, but as the Post notes, “definitive evidence of widespread increases in efficiency or productivity is yet to emerge.”
Keep watching
Of course, I’m not advocating for following big companies blindly.
Amazon, Walmart, Google—they operate in a different universe than most small businesses. They have different pressures, different shareholders, different timelines.
And they can make big strategic mistakes.
If you’d like to take a fun walk down corporate memory lane, go back and look at how badly some of the biggest companies of their day mismanaged the advent of the Internet, thus opening the door for Amazon to become what it is today.
Still, I think of this as the latest reminder to pay attention to what AI is doing across industries—and more importantly, how your biggest competitors think they’re preparing for it and leveraging it.
That doesn’t mean you need to lay people off or freeze hiring. It does mean you should be thinking seriously about what AI could do in your business, where it makes sense to experiment, and how it might change the skills your team needs.
Watch what they’re doing. Then decide if you should follow their lead.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Bill Murphy Jr.
Source link