It takes 12 days, 14 hours, 47 minutes and 40 seconds to count to a million. That’s if you can keep going at one number a second.
Reaching a billion would take 31 years, 251 days, seven hours, 46 minutes and 40 seconds – and would definitely ruin your holiday plans.
A trillion is a thousand times bigger. If you started counting at the end of the last Ice Age, you wouldn’t even be halfway there.
When you consider that this year will probably see one of the tech giants become the first US company valued at $1 trillion, it puts that achievement into perspective.
Apple, Amazon and Alphabet – the company who own Google – are in the hunt for that landmark status. Their stocks are worth between $700 and $850 billion.
Apple’s hopes are pinned on the success of the iPhone X. The company announced last week that it was exceeding expectations as their quarterly profits hit a record $20 billion.
Even if revenue grows by a modest – at least, for Apple – 10 per cent this year, the company would hit the trillion by Hogmanay 2018.
It’s hard not to talk about Apple in superlatives. Its marketing of cutting-edge technology, even when the innovations are not necessarily its own, sets it apart from competitors.
Yes, Samsung’s kit is excellent. But is it as hip as Apple? The firm has been tech’s Samuel L Jackson since the iMac made desktop computers look funky in the late 90s. It’s just remained evergreen cool over the past 20 years, consistently shifting and adapting with the times, while keeping one step ahead of the competition.
Apple’s marketing almost single-handedly made the MP3 player, the smartphone and the tablet computer ubiquitous. Importantly, they also did it in their own image.
Apple made everyone want one in a way some global giants – Coca-Cola and Nike spring to mind – have been doing for decades.
But in the race to $1 trillion, Amazon, which has revolutionised the way we shop, could get there first.
Jeff Bezos’s books-by-post start-up was one of the first big successes of the internet age, quickly evolving to deliver CDs – remember them? – DVDs and just about anything else to your door.
The firm’s Kindle tablet has driven the growth of e-books, while Amazon Prime TV battles Netflix in the box-set binge war.
However, it was the growth of its cloud business, Amazon Web Services, which drove their share price up 50 per cent last year.
It’s hard to get your head around the idea that data is worth money in the same way as, say, bricks and mortar.
But realising that it is a resource that will only continue to burgeon, that people need to have and need to have kept safe, and then monetising it as well, is a true entrepreneurial act.
As the western world sees service industries continuing to rise, this information economy will only continue to boom.
Chuck in Amazon’s commitment to the Alexa digital assistant – which is further changing shopping habits – along with their two-hour delivery programme and the billions they are putting into new Prime content and there’s a confidence about the firm that could see them pip Apple.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, could be looking at a 20 per cent jump in revenues. The search engine’s domination of the web and advertising is only challenged by Facebook.
It has changed the media landscape as advertising revenues in traditional publishing and broadcasting dip.
Again, Google’s cloud computing service has growing value and almost limitless good prospects.
But its foray into physical products could prove decisive. Its Pixel 2 mobile phone has impressed critics. If sales hold up, Google might nip past Apple and Amazon.
No matter who wins, they won’t sit back and count their worth.
Collectively, they understand that ideas, innovation, opportunity and hard work are what makes a business truly grow.
The big news in Aberdeen last week was all about the Dons finally getting permission for their new stadium at Kingsford.
Pittodrie, the club’s harbour-side home since their inception in 1903, now looks set to be replaced by a £50 million, 20,000-seater venue to the west of the city.
But the ball also got rolling in the transformation of another sporting facility with real grass-roots support.
Bonnymuir Bowling Green, close to the city centre, is set to be turned into a market garden and café by a trust set up by local people.
The plot was gifted to the community in 1924 but the bowling club has been disused since 2015.
Rather than see it sold off and concreted over, locals want to keep their slice of green space close to the city centre.
Their novel approach of treating it as a business opportunity, albeit a social enterprise, shows the value of thinking outside the box.
You have got to admire their initiative in wanting to make what is potentially a gap site work for the whole community.
Ministers have accepted the volunteers’ application under recently introduced community right-to-buy laws. Now they need to get down to the hard work of proving their business case to the powers-that-be.
It’s the first successful use of the law in the north east of Scotland – and only the second in the country in an urban area.
An independent assessor will value the land and there will be a ballot of locals in March to make sure the move has the neighbourhood’s backing.
I wish Bonnymuir Green Community Trust the best of luck. Such proactive entrepreneurial thinking is to be applauded.
It Made Me Laugh
In my experience, Hip-Hop tends to be a bit more ‘yo, yo, yo’ than ‘ewe, ewe, ewe’.
But US star Lil Uzi Vert got a surprisingly barnstorming reaction when he performed wearing a woolly jumper emblazoned with the word ‘Shetland’.
That seriously boosted a company that’s already a Scottish success story – Shetland-based wool business, Jamieson & Smith.
Apparently, its unlikely climb to the top of the Hip-Hop world came after fashion designer Dries Van Noten bought some of its yarn.
Jamieson & Smith expected its label to be up tucked inside Van Noten’s creations. But instead it was splashed across the chests of models on the catwalk in Paris – then all over chart-topper Lil Uzi’s Instagram account.
What next? Will Pharrell Williams change his name to Fair Isle Williams?
It Made Me Weep
He was never a household name, but Ingvar Kamprad’s genius claimed a place in millions of households.
The founder of IKEA built a £54 billion fortune out of pre-cut pine and ever-present Allen keys.
His life is a lesson in entrepreneurship. He saw a gap in the market – the need for stylish, reliable, cost-effective furniture – and came up with the affordable, innovative solution of self-assembly.
Though his flat-pack furniture has ruined many a Sunday afternoon, his Billy bookcases and Hemnes coffee tables became a staple for couples starting out in their first home.
His death at 91 last week came at a time when IKEA had more than 400 stores worldwide. That in itself shows the power of his do-it-yourself attitude.
