I have found Michael Porter's Five Forces a useful tool when reasoning about supplier power. I think supplier power and how we respond to it is the interesting topic here.
In general, ya gotta be real careful. Somehow, you have to counteract the entity's supplier power with your very own buyer power. If you can't do that, you won't likely last. Or more specifically: whether or not you last will depend entirely on the other guy. It will have nothing to do with your own efforts (however vigorous), skill (however impressive), or cleverness (however clevererer).
One thing I know is irrelevant: whether or not you think the company will act as a 'good citizen'. Thinking about a company as if it were a person has little predictive value. Thinking about a company as if its 'Hal' from 2001 -- now we're talkin'. More like a clever psycho no conscience AI on a secret mission that it views as way more important than whatever you happen to be doing with your Saturday's -- that's more like it. This applies twice to public companies (like, remarkably, twitter) as by that point everyone takes the fiduciary thing really very quite most seriously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_five_forces_analysis#Ba...
In general, ya gotta be real careful. Somehow, you have to counteract the entity's supplier power with your very own buyer power. If you can't do that, you won't likely last. Or more specifically: whether or not you last will depend entirely on the other guy. It will have nothing to do with your own efforts (however vigorous), skill (however impressive), or cleverness (however clevererer).
One thing I know is irrelevant: whether or not you think the company will act as a 'good citizen'. Thinking about a company as if it were a person has little predictive value. Thinking about a company as if its 'Hal' from 2001 -- now we're talkin'. More like a clever psycho no conscience AI on a secret mission that it views as way more important than whatever you happen to be doing with your Saturday's -- that's more like it. This applies twice to public companies (like, remarkably, twitter) as by that point everyone takes the fiduciary thing really very quite most seriously.