I remember the same debate from the 80s, about fabs, investments, capital, shareholder value and short term,
quarterly goals.
That is, when Japan (and Korea) took over the business (which includes the business of producing the tools
to make the tools to make and run the fabs)
The legendary Sony founder wrote an interesting piece on long-short term investment and destructive
speculations in both currencies and the capital market, noting what it takes to invest for something
to be up and running in 5-7 years, etc..
The analysis on "american memories" concluded that in addition to this, impossible in USA,
even if it would work, the risk and unpredictabilty of quality would kill the possibility to even get started.
Japanese also have a good saying "one should not eat ones hands"
That is, the capital market actually exists to provide the productive industry with capital, not the other way
around.
But I'm sure the next bubble will be just as wild, free money for everyone, make money
by buying and selling money,etc..
Ilmarinen
Btw, EU has (had for a long time) a long term project on both education and "corporate culture".
Nokia applied much of it in late 80s (one interesting thing is that every new employee, young or old,
should get a inital course in "the Nokia culture", to unlearn possible earlier habits, or to avoid just
picking them up "by random accident" during the first 2-3 weeks)
Keywords also "constructive" and "destructive" competition.
Deutche Telecom commented "the cost of doing business", also an intersting thing.
(and declined giving short term detailed accounting) |
