Why Does Oracle Need an Enemy?

David Senra reads Larry Ellison's case that Oracle needs an enemy: the company is always at its best when it has an enemy to go after. Oracle picks its enemies very carefully because an enemy helps the company focus. Oracle cannot explain what it does unless it compares the work to someone who does it differently, and it cannot tell whether it is gaining or losing without constantly comparing itself to the competition.

Ellison repositioned Oracle so people compared it with two of the most successful companies in the technology industry instead of with other database companies. Steve Jobs said the thing that really bothers him about Microsoft is the tasteless mediocrity of the software, not how successful Microsoft is or how much money Microsoft has. Ellison agrees completely. Microsoft software is rarely first rate. Microsoft never innovates, but Microsoft copies well. Bright people at Microsoft remind Ellison of people sitting in museums making beautiful copies of great art. The pictures are beautiful, but they are copies. Even Bill Gates's business strategy is a copy of Standard Oil's strategy from the 1870s. When Rockefeller used a monopoly to crush competitors, it was legal because antitrust laws did not exist yet.