>An "appealing design, an expedited set-up process and better customer service" are easy to replicate.
For any bigco the size of paypal to replicate it, they would first need to realise they are doing it wrong. Which requires a relatively large critical mass of people in the management chain to accept that they've been doing it wrong. That will never happen. And then there's the technical issues of going from wrong way to right way without interrupting service. That likely requires a lot of very skilled people, many of whom probably left for greener pastures when they first saw the "wrong way" sign.
It's amazing how bureaucracy can make it difficult for large companies to make simple changes. I think we should create a better model for running large organizations. The "flat" model seems to be promising but is still not sufficient to fight the inertia that is built during a company's growth stage. Maybe decentralization if done correctly will work.
For any bigco the size of paypal to replicate it, they would first need to realise they are doing it wrong. Which requires a relatively large critical mass of people in the management chain to accept that they've been doing it wrong. That will never happen. And then there's the technical issues of going from wrong way to right way without interrupting service. That likely requires a lot of very skilled people, many of whom probably left for greener pastures when they first saw the "wrong way" sign.
Those juggernauts just cannot turn on a dime.