From: foax@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: I DID giev up on the Amiga!
Date: 24 Jul 92 22:00:16 EDT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Cornell University

In article <33141@cbmvax.commodore.com> ricci@cbmvax.commodore.com
(Mark Ricci - CATS) writes:
> foax@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:
> >I think the biggest two things wrong with Commodore are 1) they are
> >lethargic, and 2) they are SMALL.  Consider that Apple is about six
> >times the size of Commodore in sales, and IBM is 65 times as big.
> >Commodore only has so much money it can spend on product R & D, and
> >Apple and IBM can wipe the floor with them.  It's not that surprising
> >(although a bit disturbing) that Amiga hardware fails to advance as
> >fast.  Just how many engineers can Commodore hope to employ?  (I
> >remember posting a larger expansion on this argument before, but I
> >think the damn thing never got out, since no one replied.  If this
> >paragraph sounds familiar, I'm sorry for repeating myself.)

> I don't think you should consider big to be better, especially as we
> move into the 21st century.  While a big company can have a lot of
> financial resources, it can also have a large, moribund bureaucracy.
> I think GM would be a good example of this.  They certainly have the
> resources, and they have the talent, but they also have a bureaucracy
> that impedes progress.

GM is certainly a fine example of a VERY big company with a large,
moribund bureaucracy, but there are plenty of examples of big
companies without large bureaucracies, especially in industries with
plenty of competition.  It is these companies which tend to survive.
Boeing and Airbus come to mind; those two are taking control of the
air transport marketplace because they are both large and adaptable.
Their slowly dying competitor, Douglas, once ruled the airliner
markets, but failed to adjust quickly enough when jets were introduced
and has been playing catch-up ever since.  It is doubtful whether
Douglas will survive the decade (although McDonnell, which now owns
it, may survive).  Unfortunately my dad works for them.

The big Japanese corporations come to mind too.  These are very large
firms with their hands in many pies, but they have been astute enough
and quick-moving enough to take over the consumer electronics industry
and to knock the US auto industry for a loop.  Apple is also a large,
quick-moving firm, as is Microsoft.  IBM probably falls in between
here, but this is almost certainly due to the fact that they dominated
the computer industry for so long without effective competition.  Such
competition is now forcing them to change their ways.

It seems to me that the size of a firm and its nimbleness and
adaptability are only weakly correlated.  Perhaps a better (inverse)
correlation exists between a firm's adaptability and its self-perceived
security in the market:  if a firm thinks it has a lock on its market,
it has little incentive for change.  This is only a supposition on my
part, of course.

> The way economies work now with fast changing markets and new
> technologies, the samll, nimble, fleet of foot companies are the
> successful ones because they can adapt quickly.

While the rate of technological and market change has increased, I
don't think the fundamental workings of firms have changed as much as
you suppose.  I've already commented on size vs. adaptability, but I
might add that there are quite a few small American startup companies
which have introduced new technologies, only to see themselves beaten
in the marketplace by large Japanese firms who have the engineering
talent to make someone else's new design workable, the production
capacity required to make large quantities of product cheaply, and the
marketing power needed to sell the product to the public.  (Excuse the
national comparison in the last sentence, as the same situation has
undoubtedly arisen in other countries at other times.  The current
trade frictions simply come easily to mind.)  Furthermore, there is no
shortage of innovations by large firms: the Trinitron display tube
(Sony), the 3.5 inch diskette (Sony), and the compact disk (Philips)
come immediately to mind.

> Plus, for my money, it's a single person or a small group who make the
> breakthroughs, not the 100 member teams.  There's no reason to believe
> that a small group of engineers cannot accomplish a great deal just
> because they're a small group.

You may well be right.  In which case a large corporation would be
wise to split its design staff into many small, independent teams
rather than a few large ones.  The teams should only have to interact
when there are important interactions between their respective
designs.  But a big company, suitably organized, can field far more of
such teams than a much smaller company can.  In some cases, the
product being built is so complex that it cannot possibly be built by
only a few small teams without a severe slowdown (kind of like the
advantages of parallel processing :) ).  In this case big firms have a
much greater advantage.

> These are just general comments about economies in response to your
> second point that a company inherently has problems because it is
> small.  Small companies are the future, they are where the jobs are
> being created. Look around and see who's growing and who's cutting.
> It's the big boys -- IBM, GM, DuPont who are doing the cutting.

Right now everybody is cutting, and the least successful guys are
cutting most.  IBM and GM are two firms that are trying to become more
adaptable after having grown used to market dominance.  (Dupont I know
nothing about.)  I'm sure quite a few small firms which few people
have ever heard of are going bankrupt as we speak.  But it's the big
ones that everyone hears about, as they cut the most employees and
make the most news.

> My only intent in responding is bring up an important point about the
> economy of the 1990s and the 21st century.  It's something that should
> be discussed as part of this year's election campaign.

We'll see.

> Don't interpret what I've said as dumping on or defending Commodore.
> I leave that to you folks. $*)

Actually my original statement implied that Apple and IBM were the
main reasons for Commodore's decline, because they were bigger and
therefore could compete better.  I completely neglected the importance
of the network of cooperating and competing firms that has made the PC
clone world dominant despite the antiquated nature of some of its
fundamental technology.  But I've written enough for one post.
-- 

--Colin Howell			email to howell@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu
--Cornell Astronomy Dept.	(hopefully switching to computer science)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy