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A typical management dance move. Why build something if it “already exists” elsewhere? Integrating that 3rd-party tech is typically more expensive than growin
by tempodox 8y ago
A typical management dance move. Why build something if it “already exists” elsewhere? Integrating that 3rd-party tech is typically more expensive than growing something organically that would have been integrated from its inception. Except that this way, you don't really need a plan nor architecture and can blame “failure to integrate” on the other party.
- MatekCopatek 8y agoI don't really have any relevant data to counter, but are you sure it ends badly more often than not? As tech news readers, we might be a bit biased. I think evil corporations buying lovely startups is a typical story where devout users are pissed off, angry tweets are tweeted and bitter blogposts written. If an integration later fails, it's a great moment to remind everyone you called it as soon as it was announced. But big companies are still buying smaller ones all the time and maybe we're just not noticing successful projects because they're not news.
- clairity 8y agomergers & acquisitions fail about half the time (somewhere between 40% and 60%, from what i remember from business school). it's often either a failure to merge cultures or a failure to read the market, rather than a technology or operations failure (although those do also occur, but less frequently). despite this, CEOs keep pushing for them because it's such a feather in the cap, both for the splashiness of the event and the ability to manage a larger enterprise (not to mention the extra cash and non-cash compensation).
- gumby 8y agoExcel and Powerpoint were successful product acquisitions for Microsoft; Maps and Android were successful product acquisitions for Google. Both did better post-acquisition than they could have on their own.