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Technology Stocks : EMC How high can it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Allegoria who wrote (11838)	1/12/2001 2:28:21 PM
From: Bill Fischofer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17183

Re: Gorillas The problem with business-book buzzwords is that most users of the buzzwords have either never read the book or else have forgotten what's in it. The two leading books that exhibit this phenomenon are Geoffrey Moore's The Gorilla Game and Clayton Christiansen's The Innovator's Dilemma. The seminal concept that Moore introduced in identifying gorillas is the value chain. A company can be very successful in its own right but what distinguishes the true gorilla is the number of other companies who labor on its behalf. Classic gorillas like INTC and MSFT owe their status not so much to their own performance but to the thousands of other companies, large and small, who labor each day to promote the Wintel agenda. For this reason I have always characterized EMC as a potential or emerging gorilla. NTAP is not even on the map by Moore's criteria. The fundamental problem with gorillas is that it is extraordinarily difficult to identify one before it truly emerges. The flip side is that gorillas have incredibly durable franchise value, so being late to the party is seldom a problem. True gorillas such as GE are quintessential buy-and-hold stories that are best viewed as core holdings rather than trading vehicles. Note that this doesn't mean that NTAP or any other company may not represent a fine investment. But to confuse "gorilla" with "good investment" is to completely miss the point of Moore's work.