living, thinking and writing
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| PRACTICE living, thinking and writing |
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Sunday, November 23, 2003 Acquisition and stealing Having dinner last night with Jiangfeng, one of Bin's old friends. He is working in a high-tech company in Irvine, and he is on his second job in two years. Being retreating to school for so long, we were intrigued by everything we learnt about corporation world. For one that impressed me the most is the strategy in acquiring new technology. In Taiwan, the fist company that have the break-through innovation is the one lose money. Investing a lot in R&D, its product demands a high price to offset its cost. Regardless of high margin, very soon other dozens of companies will be able to manufacture same products at much lower price. How? The general scheme is to steal the key R&D personnel from the old company by promising astounding high salary and fabulous benefit. Once acquiring the key technology, these later companies will be able to produce and market in much lower price. The lacking of IP protection makes almost every pioneer company the victim of the unfair competition. Acer, one of the biggest digital manufacturers even boasted for their spirit of "always compete for the second place". In US, the situation is different. The omnipresence of IP law made impossible to just use other's technology by stealing the scientist. The most common practice is to buying the whole company. In this way, the new owner can be legitimately enjoy the profit of new technology. Jiangfeng's boss, who is a Taiwanese, had acquired 10 companies or so in past several years, and switched their direction again and again. In conclusion, in High-tech industry, technology marketing is even more important than R&D itself. The early slum of IT industry in California, in large degree, is the result of mass acquisition in a blind way. Unable to finding the right innovators, the company will gamble to buy as many other companies as possible, in order to top others in sense of time to enter the market. posted by lmeimei @1:56 PM| permanent link| | |
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