Greetings Night Writer,
I agree with you completely: Compaq is no longer just a box maker. My earlier response was obviously unclear (one of the problems with trying to communicate in this medium). Comparing Compaq to Dell is like comparing a single family house (Dell) to an apartment building (Compaq). I shudder at the thought of comparing Compaq to IBM purely because in my mind, it was the internal, corporate structure that did IBM in.
Part of the problem I see is that despite Compaq's doing a lot more than build boxes, people still have the mind-set that it is a box maker, and thereby best compared to a Dell. This, I believe, helps Dell and hinders Compaq when it comes to the PEs these two sell for.
I credit--or blame--Compaq's public relations/news division for perpetrating this myth. They are not doing a good job of changing mind-sets. For example, in a posting you made to this thread after the one I am replying to, you quote part of a news item and give the URL. Part of the text in your message reads:
""In the first and second quarter we depleted the channel
inventory. We are at a very positive and low level and we can
assume we can have better than market growth," he said."
Yes, this one sentence is quoted by me out of context. My point is that when one reads a news item from/about Compaq, especially ones that have to do with PC sales/inventories, etc., Compaq's own news writers reinforce Compaq=box maker, compare Compaq=Dell. They have to start writing _all_ news releases in a way that makes it perfectly clear, at the *beginning* of the article, that they are talking about one and merely one division of Compaq. Tucking additional, after the fact, information that would lead one to think Compaq is anything more than a box maker is useless--chatter at the bottom gets lost. You and I know, but there are a lot of people, including Compaq shareholders, that do not even know AltaVista is part of Compaq: not all shareholders use the web or even necessarily own computers (I personally know people in their 60s, 70s who do not own computers but hold shares of Compaq).
For a non-tech comparison, how many people think 'Ralston Purina' when they see the Energizer bunny?
So, as a shareholder two of the things I want the powers that be at Compaq to address are:
1. Changing the mental template of _their_own_ news release writers. Without this, the public will not change their views.
2. Studying how the internal structure of IBM ultimately was its undoing so Compaq does not make the same mistakes. Big and diversified does not necessarily have to have clumsy as its end result. IBM was indeed a hippo but Compaq, no matter how many areas it expands into, can remain a gazel. It depends on structural integration, autonomy of units on one level yet integration on another.
Lynn |
