Does your Company Innovate or Follow and Copy Innovative Companies?
Innovate and communicate or go down with your Silo and personal pride. Sieze the Window of Opportunity.
Sony is really hurting. They operate in Silos, keep secrets from other divisions, and seem to have lost their way according to an article on CNBC
, compare that to the article on Instagram’s success on CNBC.
This post is my own opinion and based on personal experience. I love Sony and HP products. Here’s the story: I love Sony TV’s the best. I even thought Sony was so smart to buy movie studios I wanted to invest in them. I love HP laptops, calculators, and printers. Hewlett Packard has some of the same problems as Sony. Stubborn division managers, proprietary operating systems on the first PCs, Some silo thinking. I worked at HP and my wife’s bank wanted to buy a new computer system and software. I knew HP was in that business and wanted to grow it. I worked there and contacted marketing and totally could not really get through to anyone interested in a million dollar sale. I should have sold my HPQ stock right then and there. I sold it later at a lower price. HP did finally contact the bank and failed miserably with their offer as the hardware and software guys did not operate as a team. Unisys came in as a coordinated team with hardware and software as a solution, worked to understand the customers needs and provides a solution that met the business needs and got the business.
Then there is a couple engineers that wanted to come up with a mini computer. HP managers turned them down so they left and formed Apple.
I really wish Meg Whitman the best in dealing the the “Good Old Boy” network at HP and breaking down the Silo’s because there are still a lot of really smart innovative people there. Not sure why they licensed the iPod from Apple or are building cameras. How about sticking with building the best most innovative Servers, Computers, and Printers and be the supplier of choice for all the Cloud infrastructure being build around the world. HP should not copy IBM, HP needs to figure out where the puck is going and be there when it arrives. Any time a company tries to copy a competitor they are a follower and loose market share as they are always behind the curve. HP in my opinion is disjointed, difficult to contact the responsible party within the company and operates in Silo’s, at least when I worked there. They totally want to build the best products and if you take apart a HP product and a competitor you will find some tighter specification parts in the HP product.
It’s just that if you want to have a successful company, you need to innovate, plan strategize and implement plans in a timely manner. There is no magic bullet to success, it takes hard work. If your company is growing fast, do not let Ego’s build teams that compete with each other unless its for a what design wins. Do what you can to encourage communication and cooperation and remember that the metrics you set will determine the behavior. If you face the customer and are going on a visit, take enough team members to answer the customers questions and let them know you are a coordinated well oiled team that works together and provides a solution that is backed by humans and a caring management team that supports what it takes to keep the customer happy.
So do you think Sony or HP can turn around the company and become an innovator and grow shareholder value?
What do you do in your business to ensure growth and happy customers?
