Syllabus for Wharton MGMT 782 Course Spring 2012

Note May 16, 2012. I will update this syllabus for the fall semester.

Syllabus is available for download here: MGMT-782 Syllabus

After crashing on a demonstration flight, will the new Russian jet ever find sufficient customers

Getting 85% percent right in strategy implementation is not sufficient when it comes to airplane product. The previous example of the A320 which crashed on early test flights shows that it is crucial that plane crash is due to human error. NY Times reports:

Until a crash inquiry is done, analysts said, Sukhoi will have difficulty marketing the Superjet. “It would be entirely understandable for any potential customer to hold off until it’s determined whether the cause was human error or mechanical failure,” said Sash Tusa of Echelon Research and Advisory in London.
While it is rare for such a young aircraft to crash, it is not unprecedented — an Airbus 320 crashed during a demonstration flight in 1988, killing three people and injuring 50. Investigators determined that the cause had been pilot error and found no evidence of a malfunction. The A320 went on to be one of the world’s best-selling aircraft models.
If analysts identify human error as the cause of the plane’s crash, most of the existing 240 Superjet orders will stay on the books, Mr. Tusa said, but “if it turns out there is some kind of major design flaw with the aircraft, those orders aren’t worth the paper they are written on.”

  Full Story on NY.Times

With 8.8% market share, Apple has 73% of cell phone profits

Full Story by Philip Elmer-Dewit

Honeywell’s spectacular turnaround

The Economist reports an amazing on an amazing turnaround of Honeywell. It appears to be a great example of strategy implementation.

Honeywell likes its meetings short but plentiful. Every production cell, as the smallest shop-floor unit is called, starts the day with one. The aim is to try to identify problems and ideas for improvements, which are then pushed up to senior managers. Even the lowliest worker is expected each month to come up with two implementable ideas for doing things better. As an illustration of the firm’s devotion to “continuous improvement”, this is one of the pillars of what has become known as the “Honeywell operating system” (HOS).

This new production system, introduced over the past eight years, has helped transform Honeywell from a troubled giant to one of America’s most successful companies. Honeywell’s sales in 2011 were 72% higher than in 2002, and its profits doubled to $4 billion. A new emphasis on generating cash also means the firm has more money in the bank for every dollar declared in profit.

Full Story at Economist.com

Department of Justice Files Suit Against Apple and Major Publishers of ebooks

Apple did not join the settlement of the lawsuit. This is a major win for Amazon. It will be fascinating to watch how the suit will unfold.

Details:
Apple should settle suit
Associated Press on Suit April 11

Reversal of Fortunes: In smartphones Microsoft is in the position that Apple was in the PC era

The New York Times reports on this amazing reversal of fortunes.

Microsoft’s weak position in mobile apps is in stark contrast to the clout it had with developers in the heyday of the PC era. Its success with Windows was partly built on an all-out effort it made in the 1980s and ’90s to get independent software companies to make Windows the primary operating system for which they wrote applications.That influence began to weaken somewhat when the Web era took off and more companies began to design services and products that ran through browsers. But it has accelerated further as much of the creative talent in the developer world has shifted toward smartphone and iPad applications. Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research, said Microsoft’s relative weakness was a function of not having a big enough audience of users. “Developers go where the money is, and the money is where people are,” she said.

Full Article at NY Times

Jack Welch and Jeffrey Immelt on the GE’s Talent Machine

Jack Welsh on the Core Competency of GE

Vertical Integration Works for Apple—But It Won’t for Everyone

Wharton professors explain why Apple integrated model of designing both hardware and software may not work for other companies. Knowledge@Wharton reports:

Google recently acquired mobile device maker Motorola Mobility and will soon manufacture smartphones and television set-top boxes. Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet represents its bridge between hardware and e-commerce. Oracle bought Sun Microsystems and now champions engineered systems (integrated hardware and software devices). And even long-standing software giant Microsoft now makes hardware for its Xbox gaming system. Technology titans are increasingly looking like vertically integrated conglomerates largely in an attempt to emulate the success of Apple.Vertical integration dictates that one company controls the end product as well as its component parts. In technology, Apple for 35 years has championed a vertical model, which features an integrated hardware and software approach. For instance, the iPhone and iPad have hardware and software designed by Apple, which also designed its own processors for the devices. This integration has allowed Apple to set the pace for mobile computing. “Despite the benefits of specialization, it can make sense to have everything under one roof,” says Wharton management professor David Hsu.

Read full story.

JetBlue to Review Procedures After Pilot Meltdown: CEO

A pilot on a JetBlue flight had a complete mental meltdown. The co-pilot had to lock him out the cockpit and passengers had wrestle him down and constraint him with their belts. If you are the CEO, what you want to know know is whether this was an isolated incident (which can always happen) or whether your HR systems are not properly design. For this reason it makes sense that the CEO ordered a review.  Read full story here.

1997 Apple Ad “The Crazy Ones” Recut to include Steve Jobs

Founder and CEO of IdeaLab explains how he get his employees to work with risky startups

Jonathan Ives explains the design process at Apple

Fundamental Objective of Cambridge University Press is not profits

1985 Steve Jobs is fired, Bill Gates sends letter to John Sculley urging him to license Mac OS

Neal Pancholi drew my attention to this interesting letter by Bill Gates. It shows that Gates in 1985 was sill open to making his fortune my selling Mac software rather than dominating the next generation OS.

Steve Jobs last public appearance pitching to the Cupertino City Council (June 7, 2011)

WSJ Journalist does not find flying experience on Boeing Dreamliner “all that different”.

Tim Cook in a wide-ranging interview talks Apple today (Feb 2011)  and future directions

On Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, where he was interviewed on stage by Bill Shope, Goldman Sachs’s IT hardware analyst. Here’s an edited transcript of what Cook had to say on a variety of topics, ranging from working conditions at Apple’s Chinese suppliers to Apple’s culture and ethos. Transcript

Steve Ballmer being questions about the impact of iPhone announcement in 2007

What it takes to do a corporate turnaround

John John Baldoni writes on CBS.com.

Enter Sergio Marchionne. With Fiat was on the brink of solvency in 2004, Marchionne was named CEO and completely revamped the enterprise. He would later do the same at Chrysler. As Clark writes: “Marchionne’s unusual ability is that he can see what actually needs to be done, and then cajoles and goads his flat management structure of dozens of direct reports in weekend meetings to achieve the goal.” “Marchionne doesn’t let go,” A UBS analyst adds. “That’s what his strength is. He is good at strategy and at execution.” Under Marchionne, both Fiat and Chrysler have turned the corner (at least for now).

The balance between vision and execution is akin to right- and left-brain thinking. A visionary thinks about what can happen. He or she has a highly specific vision of the future—and not simply as a set of desired outcomes, but rather in terms of what must occur to produce those outcomes. By contrast, executing the vision requires putting the right people in place and providing them with the necessary resources to succeed. It also means holding people’s feet to the fire. Marchionne is known for firing people who aren’t up to the task. It’s never pleasant, but it is imperative.

Read Full Article on CBSnews.com

Evidence that markets are becoming more dynamic courtesy of Frank Rothaermel

How Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) helps women to network

When Facebook goes public Sheryl Sanberg will be a very wealth women. She wants to serve as a role model for other women in business and is actively trying to help them. Here is how she facilitates networking.

If Silicon Valley men bond in venture capital conference rooms or on weekend bike trips, Ms. Sandberg has been building an alternate networking group of Silicon Valley women. For about seven years, since she was a Google executive, she has held catered monthly dinner parties at her home for a group of several dozen women. Guest speakers have included the feminist and author Gloria Steinem; Steve Ballmer, the C.E.O. of Microsoft; and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, according to three people who have attended the dinners but spoke on condition that they not be identified out of respect for Ms. Sandberg’s privacy. Ms. Sandberg recently invited Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri to attend as a speaker. “I expected to see a lot of women in St. John suits and expensive purses and was pleasantly surprised when it was anything but that,” Senator McCaskill said. “Women had been included that were in the infancy of their careers, her kids were running around, it was very low key. It was clear that she’s the kind of role model that young women are looking for, especially in the tech sector.”

Source: NY Times

There is also an excellent long profile of Sandberg in the New Yorker (2011). A Woman’s Place-Can Sheryl Sandberg upend Silicon Valley’s male-dominated culture?

Steve Job trying to build NeXT

This film, following Steve Jobs in the early days of next, show him both as a visionary and motivator but from minutes 15 to 20 as poor manager who did not ensure that deadlines were met by sticking to agreements about product features.

Overview of the Management System of Southwest and the Leadership Style of Herb Kellerher (44 min)

It is useful to compares this to Jack Welsh and Steve Jobs in his later years (1997-2011) when he was much more focused on creating products that would sell in large numbers.

Steve Jobs reveals important ingredients in becoming successful

Steve Wozniak summaries Steve Jobs shortly after Jobs dies

You don’t speak ill about someone when they just died. But having read the Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs, Wozniak summarizes summarizes Jobs well.

Blackberry has difficulty adjusting its strategy quickly to a changed environment

The leaders of Blackberry did not realized that the iPhone was a real threat until their marketshare had been decimated. The smartphone market is moving so fast that leaders quickly quickly becomes losers because the cannot change quickly enough.  The NY Times reports today:

At the time the first iPhone appeared in 2008, RIM had successfully moved the BlackBerry into the broad consumer market from its base of government and corporate customers. But the company was totally unprepared for the popularity of a phone that lacked a physical keyboard and ran thousands of applications — in effect a versatile Web-connected handheld computer.

RIM’s co-chief executives were initially dismissive of the challenge from Apple, and Mr. Balsillie boasted that the iPhone would enhance RIM’s fortunes by increasing awareness of smartphones.

But the iPhone introduced two broad changes to the smartphone market that had severe consequences for RIM and other phone makers, including Nokia.

The iPhone and its apps shifted the emphasis from hardware to software. Then, the iPhone’s popularity led corporate information technology departments, which once allowed only BlackBerrys to connect to their e-mail networks, to support employees’ iPhones. The arrival of Android-based phones from a variety of manufacturers only compounded RIM’s woes.

Read full story here.

Related: The New Yorker on BlackBerry’s troubles.
Click on “More” for an video message of the new CEO to employees.

Can American Society Demand that Apple create more factory jobs in the U.S.?

Now that Apple has become at least temporarily the most valuable company in the U.S and the American workers are hurting it is not surprising that the press is focusing on Apple outsourcing all it manufacturing overseas. This article brings into focus the question that we will discuss in session 4 of the class, namely what is or should be the fundamental objective of a particular firm. Who should decided this? It is possible to have many different fundamental objectives. If “yes”, how and who decides what trade-offs are to be be made.

Apple, America, and a Squeezed Middle Class: How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work in NY Times.

The Daily Show on MBAs Taking an Ethics Oath

Here is a lighthearted take on a serious issue.

New Transparency at Apple under the leadership of Cook?

Notoriously secretive Apple published a list all its suppliers. Is this a sign that Tim Cook wants to break with Steve Jobs policy of keeping as much as possible secret and bring more openness and transparency to Apple? Or is the company simply responding to a new law in California and this disclosure would have happened under Jobs as well?

Read full story by Reuters.

Critics rave about new Windows phone software: Does a new design philosophy take hold at Microsoft?

I was quite puzzled why Nokia would throw out its own smartphone operating system and replace it with Windows since the latter seemed to be quite a dud compared to Apple’s iOS or Android. But today I learned just how good critics think the new Windows operating system is. The NY Times provides an interesting look at how Microsoft finally managed to get a technology out of its company hall that has critics raving.

The tale of how Microsoft created Windows Phone starts with the introduction of the iPhone, in 2007. To Joe Belfiore, now 43, an engineer who oversees software design for Windows Phone, that was the spark.“Apple created a sea change in the industry in terms of the kinds of things they did that were unique and highly appealing to consumers,” Mr. Belfiore said in an interview at Microsoft’s campus here. “We wanted to respond with something that would be competitive, but not the same.”

Read the full NY Times article.

Insider Talk about Reasons for Failure of HP Tablet running WebOS

An article in the NYTimes takes us behind the scenes of HP’s abrupt exit from the tablet market. Palm did not have the organizational capabilities to introduce a tablet into the market. The article suggests that the WebOS operating was fundamentally to flowed to compete successfully with the iPad even when the full organizational resources of HP were thrown behind it. Read article in the NYTimes.

Stanford is beaten in NYC project

Stanford had no experience with building a campus in NYC and bowed out the competition to build new campus in NYC because the strength of the Cornell, which had already a lot of experience building in the city. Read full story in NY Times

An overview of Jack Welsh’s career (43 min)

Why do a few companies succeed for a long time and most don’t

The economist published two useful articles on corporate longevity. The first article examines why IBM, despite a few crisis, has been able to reinvent itself and celebrate it 100s anniversary in 2011. It contrasts the firm to DELL, Microsoft and others. IBM @ 100

The second uses the context of the failure of outside CEOs HP to questions whether outsiders know enough to run a complex high-tech company. The Trouble with Outside CEO Appointments.

American CEO tries to explain bankruptcy restructuring to public

CEO Video Announcement

Economist’s commentary behind the reasons of Chapter 11 filing.

John Sculley insightful interview about the mistakes he made at Apple and about Steve Jobs

I have almost finished reading Walter Isaacson revealing new Steve Jobs biography. But a long interview with John Sculley in 2010 provides additional details that allow us to understand the history of Apple and personal computers much better. Sculley fired Steve Jobs and in this candid interview says that it would have been better if Jobs had been made CEO in 1985.  Read the full interview here.

Fundamental Objective for Founder of HTC is making unique products rather than margin

Chou [CEO of HTC] said he cares more about making unique products than making good profit margins. He listens and acts quickly. Often, when Beats co-founder and music producer Jimmy Iovine calls with an idea, Chou will have sent off an e-mail about it before the conversation is over, Iovine said. Chou said he tests the music himself. A $300 million controlling stake in Beats Electronics LLC, the headphones maker backed by rapper Dr. Dre, was part of a strategy to lure music enthusiasts with a marketing plan that included bringing singer Lady Gaga to an Oct. 6 audio party in London to release the HTC Sensation XL, its first handset featuring Beats audio technology and headphones.

Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Reinventing Post Offices in a Digital World

The American Postal Service is facing bankruptcy with $9 billion dollar negative cash flow. One way to come up with a new business model is to see what happens in other parts of the world. It turns out that European postal services have already spent to past 20 years trying to reinvent themselves, as detailed in this article in the NY Times.

Why the CEO of HP was fired after only 10 months on the job

The proximate cause was the HP Stock price.

For more distant causes click on “more”.

The Reason why HP is divesting its PC Business

From the WSJ: H-P is the world’s largest marketer of PCs. Yet Mr. Apotheker said that it isn’t possible for the Palo Alto, Calif., company to continue to invest in that business and make required structural changes to the rest of H-P. Developing a steady stream of devices that consumers want requires a lot of money and new product-development cycles that are “much faster than a conglomerate can move in most circumstances,” he said. H-P’s PC unit produced $40.1 billion in revenue and $2 billion in operating profit in its most recent fiscal year, profit that was used to fund other operations. As a standalone company, the PC unit would be able to invest in its own future, he argued.

Full Story

Kodak Tries for 30 Year to Turn its Business Around

The WSJ reports:

ROCHESTER, N.Y—After three decades of serial reorganizations, Eastman Kodak Co. is struggling to stay in the picture.
The 131-year-old company lost much of its film business to foreign competitors, then mishandled the transition to digital cameras. Now it is quickly burning through its cash as it remakes itself into a company that sells printers and ink.

On July 26, Kodak reported its fifth consecutive quarter of losses. The company’s junk-rated debt coming due in two years has moved below 80 cents on the dollar, signaling the market sees a risk of default. The company’s already battered stock has taken an especially tough pounding in recent days, falling 10% Wednesday to $1.77. Prior to this week, Kodak hadn’t closed below $2 since the 1950s, according to the Center for Research in Security Prices at the University of Chicago.

Read Full Story

Update January 5, 2012.  Kodak files for bankruptcy

Economist.com: Update January 14, 2012. Kodak is at death’s door; Fujifilm, its old rival, is thriving. Why?

Feb 1, 2012: Wharton Professors comment on the demise of Kodak. What’s Wrong with This Picture: Kodak’s 30-year Slide into Bankruptcy

May 2, 2012:  John Kotter traces to failure of Kodak to complacency that set in even before the digital revolution. Read Barriers to Change: The Real Reason Behind the Kodak Downfall

Funny Description of what the life of an entrepreneurs is like

Nokia needs to win back confidence for turnaround

Nokia is in trouble. The CEO realized that to win time before new phones based on Microsoft Operating system are coming out, he needs to win back confidence of key stakeholders. It will be fascinating to watch whether Nokia will be able to stem the market share loss. Clearly, the CEO understands the urgency of the situation and his communication strategy seems to be on target.  Read the full article about Nokia’s new N9 smartphone on NYTimes.com. Click on more to find stats on how Nokia is losing market share.

Can Apple Retail Executive Lead J.C. Penney?

Information Overload in Water Systems

PM: What does not get measured does not get managed. This is a principle I subscribe to. But you need a second principle to make this work: Avoid information overload. Here is an example of how a company figure out how to analyze large amounts of data to identify useful information that can be acted upon.

Pipe Dreams: To plug leaks from the water supply, you first have to find them.
An effective way of detecting leaks [in municipal water systems], both accidental and deliberate, would therefore be welcome.
TaKaDu, a firm based near Tel Aviv, thinks it has one. The problem, in the view of its founder, Amir Peleg, is not a lack of data per se, but a lack of analysis. If anything, water companies—at least, those in the rich world—have too much information. A typical firm’s network may have hundreds, or even thousands, of sensors. The actual difficulty faced by water companies, Dr Peleg believes, is interpreting the signals those sensors are sending. It is impossible for people to handle all the incoming signals, and surprisingly hard for a computer, too.

Bob Lutz: Life Lessons From the Car Guy

This fascinating excerpt from Bob Lutz’s book highlights a couple of key issues: one needs to have deep knowledge about an industry to make the right decisions, one needs to select the right leadership style for the organizational context, and finally if one wants to have a long last impact, one needs to institutionalize the change. The reason why Lutz failed to institutionalize is product develop process at Chrysler but believes that it will stick may have nothing to do with him: GM went through bankruptcy and the old ways may have been forced to retreat.

Read full story at WSJ.com

A few days later Lutz was interviewed about the book and the article by the WSJ. Click on

Speaking about Paul Feyerabend

This semester Lex Donaldson is teaching the Intellectual Foundation of Social Science class alone. But he asked me to come in and speak a bit about Feyerabend’s philosophy and my encounter with him when I took his undergraduate class on Ancient Philosophy at Berkekely.

The Conglomerate Discount in USA is 9%

Breaking up big companies is back in vogue. In Australia, the Fosters group is spinning out its Wine business because the expectation is that the parts individually are worth more than valuation of whole company. Read the full story in on Economist.com and why emerging markets don’t have this conglomerate discount.

Nokia Announces its Turnaround strategy:  Ally with Microsoft for High-end Smartphones

Does Microsoft have Game Changing Device with Kinect

From NY Times:

Microsoft has long salivated over the notion of controlling the living room and becoming a major entertainment force. Kinect may well stand as its best bet yet for turning that vision into a reality. “This is an incredibly amazing, wonderful first step toward making interactivity in the living room available to everybody,” says Mr. Ballmer, while cautioning that Microsoft still has “a lot of work to do.”

The first Kinect prototype cost Microsoft $30,000 to build, but 1,000 workers would eventually be involved in the project. And now, hundreds of millions of dollars later, the company has a product it can sell for $150 a pop and still turn a profit, Mr. Mattrick says. (People who don’t have an Xbox can pay $300 for a package that includes the console, Kinect and a game.)

For Mr. Ballmer, Kinect is far more than a business opportunity or a pleasant diversion for consumers. It offers a moment to prove to investors and company directors that Microsoft is capable of an Applesque, game-changing moment under his leadership.

Read Full Story

Siemens Tightens up it Corporate Strategy

The Economist published a great story on how Siemens, battered by bribery scandal, recruited an outsider CEO and now has started to leverage the potential benefits of owning several business that could be run as stand-alone companies, operating at large scale all across the world, and avoiding to over-engineer products. The story illustrates most of the key ideas of SM3, including how to implement a corporate strategy. 

Read: A Giant Awakens
Europe’s biggest engineering firm used to be known for two things: making everything but a profit; and scandal. Now things look very different

Why Starbuck’s Failed in Australia

When Starbucks entered the Australian market in 2000, it was one of the biggest coffee chains globally, opening one new store every day somewhere in the world, notes Patterson. Its success in the US, which had not previously enjoyed a strong coffee-drinking culture, had given the brand great confidence to enter other markets including Japan (1996) and China (1998). The company now has more than 15,000 stores in 44 territories. But in mid 2008, Starbucks’ management announced that it would close 61 of its 84 Australian stores. The closures took place swiftly – within one month. Losses were enormous, including 685 jobs and A$143 million. Just 23 Australian stores were left operating in prime locations. What went so wrong?

Read the full analysis by Profeessors Paul Patternson and Marc Uncles in Knowledge @ The Australian School of Business.

Short Introduction to the Strategic Management Year of the AGSM MBA (Executive) by Peter Murmann

Short Introduction to Strategic Management 1 by Peter Moran

Short Introduction to Strategic Management 2 by Rose Trevelyan

Short Introduction to Strategic Management 3 by Shayne Gary

Short Introduction to Strategic Management 4 by Peter Murmann

James Yuille Strategies for Networking

Don’t front up at a neworking function expecting to make a sale. “Networking is an opportunity to meet people in a neutral environment, to form relationship and to built trust. People who are too anxious about making a dollar will only ostracise themselves from the rest of the group.” Other tips include: be open-minded, don’t be pushy, be a good listener and think to long-term. [...] “I have known someone [though networking] for 12 year and only last year did that relationship come up with business.”

From: BRW, September 2—8, 2010, p. 38

Peter Murmann: These tips can be applied not only to win business but also to advance one’s career.

Lehman Brothers’ did not Walk to Talk of its Mission Statement

Dramatic Challenge to Barnes & Nobles Business Model

This one of the most vivid examples of challenges to the existing business model of a firm. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Google’s New Search Homepage: Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Data as well as Intuitions

Excellent Overview of the Philosophy of Social Sciences

Daniel Little’s article for the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides an excellent overview of the key issues in the philosophy of social sciences. You can read it here.

Logical Incrementalism in Product Development

The Power of Infinity

Steven Strogatz explains beautifully how the concept of inifinity first tripped up philosophers but then provided them with a powerful tool to calculate things that could not be calculated without taking things to inifity. I wish I had had as good a math teacher as Strogatz. The lesson here is also that Strogatz does not provide a solution to Zeno’s paradox but that he shows that even without fully removing the puzzles around infinity one can use the concept to get more knowledge in other areas.
Read his column Take It to the Limit.

Apple with only 7% of Sales account today for 35% of Industry Profits

According to a Business Insider article, the banking giant has aggregated numbers from the top ten PC makers in the world and determined that, while Apple only commands 7 percent of overall revenues in the PC market, its products account for 35 percent of the operating profits. See Full Article.

Blackboard Course Website

For all information and resources regarding the course, UNSW students should log into the Blackboard Course Website.

Couse Outline for Intellectual Foundation of Social Sciences now available

Here you can find the course outline. STRE 8005 More information for enrolled students is available at the UNSW course webpage.

Richard Branson’s Fundamental Objective

The Financial Times posed twenty questions to Richard Branson. Here are the two important ones that touch upon the idea of a fundamental objective.

How important is money?
My priority is learning and trying to improve the world – not being rich.

How do you want to be remembered?
That I have made a difference.

Read full interview.

Duplicity

Rarely is a Hollywood movie such a great teaching instrument. Duplicity gives a wonderful picture of how far large companies go in figuring out what their competition is up to. What’s more, the principles of game theory are very well illustrated by Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, who make a wonderful pair. I recommend that every Strategic Management student watch this film.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs

Rolls-Royce: Transforming its Jet-Engine Business Model

The Economist reports how Rolls-Royse figured out a different way to make money in the jet engine business:
The big pay-off from getting engines under more wings comes from selling spares and servicing them. This is because selling aircraft engines is like selling razors. The razor and engine make little if any profit; that comes later, from blades or spare parts and servicing (see chart 3). Gross margins from rebuilding engines are thought to be about 35%; analysts at Credit Suisse, an investment bank, estimate that some makers of jet engines get about seven times as much revenue from servicing and selling spare parts as they do from selling engines. Many analysts suspect that Rolls-Royce (and others) sell engines at a loss. Judging this is hard, though, because of the way Rolls-Royce accounts for long-term contracts, often by booking a profit on the sale for income that will be received only over many years. Rolls-Royce says that, on average, engines are sold at a profit. The trouble with selling razors at a loss is that someone else may make the blades to fit them. And the juicy margins in engine maintenance have indeed attracted a swarm of independent servicing firms (and engine-makers after each other’s business).

What the Financial Crisis Taught us about Human Decision Making

David Brooks writes in the NY Times:
Once there was just Newtonian physics and the world seemed neat and mechanical. Then quantum physics came along and revealed that deep down things are much weirder than they seem. Something similar is now happening with public policy.Once, classical economics dominated policy thinking. The classical models presumed a certain sort of orderly human makeup. Inside each person, reason rides the passions the way a rider sits atop a horse. Sometimes people do stupid things, but generally the rider makes deliberative decisions, and the market rewards rational behavior. Markets tend toward efficiency. People respond in pretty straightforward ways to incentives. The invisible hand forms a spontaneous, dynamic order. Economic behavior can be accurately predicted through elegant models. This view explains a lot, but not the current financial crisis — how so many people could be so stupid, incompetent and self-destructive all at once. The crisis has delivered a blow to classical economics and taken a body of psychological work that was at the edge of public policy thought and brought it front and center. In this new body of thought, you get a very different picture of human nature. Reason is not like a rider atop a horse. Instead, each person’s mind contains a panoply of instincts, strategies, intuitions, emotions, memories and habits, which vie for supremacy. An irregular, idiosyncratic and largely unconscious process determines which of these internal players gets to control behavior at any instant.

BP does not try to run its rural service stations in Australia

Excerpt from BRW: For an expanding independent petroleum retailer, customer relationships are everything.
Biq organisations are usually considered to be more efficient than smaller enes - but rarely more customer-friendly. Case in point, big banks. sharehelders love their taut back offices and fat profits; customers hate their skinny front lines and rate them well below small credit unions and building societies in satisfaction surveys.
It is a business theory that influences how oil companies distribute fuels in Australia. In cities, drivers have choices and can seek out the service station offering the cheapest petrol. In the country, the distance between service stations is qreater and what people expect from them - mechanical repairs and farm deliveries as well as fuel - is more varied.
Accordingly, the local arms of some of the world’s biqgest companies run city statiens themselves but use independent operators elsewhere. “I don’t think we have the ability to understand and build the sort of relationship with customers that is really important in rural Australia,” ‘BP Australia’s vice-president of wholesale reseller and retail, ‘Dean Salter, says.  However, ene of Salter’s independent operators, led by a predecessor in his position, is trying to prove that big orqanisations can be intimate as well as efficient.

Scorecard: Wesfarmers after Coles Acquisition

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Wesfarmers showed how a corporation could be successful with a similar strategy as GE in America: buying and selling unrelated businesses. But then private capital entered the acquisition market,  bidding up the price for Australian corporations that were up for sales. Wesfarmers found it more difficult to pursue it disciplined strategy of finding acquisitions that you be managed more effectively and unlock shareholder value. Almost two years ago Wesfarmers but the underperforming Coles supermarket chain. Plenty of commentators were worried that Wefarmers, breaking its traditions, overpaid for Coles and would never be able to improve the performance of Coles as the Perth-based conglomerate had done with earlier acquisitions such as Bunnings.

Alcaltel & Lucent: The French American Merger does not realize the promised benefits

WHEN Alcatel, a French maker of telecoms equipment, announced its plan in 2006 to merge with Lucent, an American rival, reactions were mixed. There was general agreement that bigger was better and that the combined firm would benefit from greater geographical reach. But there was also scepticism that its French and American managers would be able to get along. With good reason, it seems: on July 29th Alcatel-Lucent announced its sixth consecutive quarterly loss and the resignations of Serge Tchuruk, its French chairman, and Patricia Russo, its American chief executive. Their firm’s troubles stem in large part from its internal clash of cultures. Read more on Economist.com

Adrian Finlayson on the Difference of Being a Consultant and Being a CEO

“It’s much harder doing than telling. Things take a lot longer than you initially think, and along the way you have to manage a broad stakeholder base, including your team, investors and the board. A chief executive is a management consultant who has to implement his own recommendations.”

Dell Needs to Change its Business Model

In SMI we are doing a case study of how Dell developed a market positioning and orgnanizational strategy that allowed it to outcompete all other firms in the PC industry. Dell seemed unstoppable and.  The Economist reports on the current troubles of Dell and how the returned founder of the firm tries to turn the firm around and restore it to glory, i.e. growth and profitability.  Read Story
September 5, 2008 update: Dell plans to sell all its factories

LaudaMotion’s New Business Model for Car Rentals: 1 Euro a day if drive at least 30 kilometers

Laudamotion is gambling that it can charge advertisers rather than rental customers for the cost of renting out small car in a city. If you drive more than 30 kilometers a day in a metropolitan area, you only pay 1 euro. The service is presently available in some major German and Austrian cities. Will LaudaMotion’s novel rental car business model work?

Danger Looming in Different Market Segment: The iPhone Challenge for Blackberry

Blackberry’s dominate the business PDA email market. But Apple’s iPhone initially designed for consumers may invade the business market as well.

Henry Kravis On Creating Value

Henry Kravis: The thing that is really important as you think about the private equity industry is that it has changed dramatically. In the late nineties we made a lot of mistakes at KKR. I’m not saying it’s good that we made the mistakes, but we did learn from our mistakes, because we changed the way we do business. The first thing we did was to make sure we acted and thought like industrialists. The days of just financial engineering are over. You have to really operate the business. Our whole approach at KKR since 1999 is that our job begins the day we buy a company. I like to say any fool can buy a company. There’s plenty of financing around. But what do you do with a business to create value? We’ve had an in-house consulting firm since the early eighties, but today we have a very large one. These operating consultants put metrics into every business that we’re involved with, they improve productivity, they shorten the supply chain, they improve sales. We expect everyone at KKR to understand their industry from the bottom up, and talk to purchasing managers, marketing people, salespeople, customers, suppliers, and understand the metrics, understand the best practices, the economic drivers, what drives an industry.

Has the Macquarie Group found a way to achieve higher returns without increasing risk?

Read the story on Economist.com

Ford Turnaround

Ford has tried to regain a competitive position a number of times without success. Will the company succeed this time as its struggles for survial. Read article on WSJ.com.

April 24, 2008: In Surprise, Ford Swings to Profit in First Quarter

CEO of GE Discusses Earnings Miss on TV

Part 1
Part 2

Falling margins in Flat Panel TVs force Philips out of North American Producer Market

As prices decline, profits have been increasingly difficult to achieve. According to iSuppli, the average selling price for a 42-inch L.C.D. television has fallen from $2,082 one year ago to $1,544 today, a 26 percent drop. Depending on the manufacturer, the profit margin for that size set is between 9 and 16 percent.

Full Story at NY Times

Coming Soon Superfast Internet

Book Review Instructions

Myer is more valuable after becoming once again independent from Coles

How to get around the difficulty of estimating returns from innovation

Bombardier Recreational Products, based in Quebec, has spent C$225m ($195m) over 11 years developing the Can-Am Spyder Roadster, a three-wheeled motor vehicle. When it goes on sale later this year the $15,000 Spyder will be aimed at baby-boomers who like the idea of riding al fresco but do not feel comfortable on a two-wheeler, says Jose Boisjoli, BRP’s boss. Mr Boisjoli admits that his firm has no idea how much demand there will be for the Spyder. One way to think about how much you should spend on innovation is to ask: how much money can I lose with a failed innovation without jeopardizing the existence of the firm.

Conglomerate Watch: Immelt find it tough to follow Jack Welsh’s act

Understanding the Strategies of Airbus and Boeing

The World’s Most Innovative Companies

Wesfarmers: Interview with Former CEO Michael Chaney

In the spirit of “Where are the Now”, here is an interview with the outgoing CEO of Wesfarmers, Michael Chaney, before he became chairman of the National Australian Bank (NAB).

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