Telco fusiones que no funcionaron

La nota la trae The Economist: Alcatel y Lucent se despiden. ¿Qué pasó?

Extracto 1:

"...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..."

Las sinergias sólo existen de cara al GRAN CRECIMIENTO: si de éste no son propicios los tiempos, de aquellas menos

Extracto 2:

"The bonanza of 2000-05, when European operators upgraded their mobile-phone networks to new “third-generation” (3G) technology, is winding down. Sales growth is slowing, and even Ericsson, the industry leader, has seen its share price fall by 50% in the past year..."

Extracto 3:

"Margins have also been squeezed by the rise of Huawei and ZTE, two Chinese firms. Their prices are sometimes 40-50% lower than those of Western vendors..."

Y súmesele el asunto de procrastinar con la innovación:

Extracto 4:

"The merger was supposed to make Alcatel-Lucent more competitive, but cost savings have been hard to realise, despite 16,500 job losses from a workforce of 88,000. The combined company was also weak in W-CDMA, the dominant 3G technology, and relied too much on CDMA, a rival standard that is less popular. This made Alcatel-Lucent unusually dependent on a few key customers, such as Sprint, an ailing American operator. Alcatel-Lucent should have focused its research spending in a handful of carefully chosen areas, says Sylvain Fabre of Gartner, a consultancy, instead of maintaining a sprawling product portfolio..."

No hay sustituto ni atajo para los clientes bien servidos, innovadoramente servidos, las ventajas de costos (si las hay) duran poco y mal acostumbran y distraen a la organización de las disciplinas que debería estar siguiendo. No hay competidor grande ni invencible: uno suele ser su mayor competidor (al olvidar el sueño de la innovación que algún día lo hizo grande)