Word: fiat
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Since he took over as chief executive of Italy's Fiat in 2004, the chain-smoking Canadian Italian has used Apple as a model, focusing on the way Steve Jobs transformed it from an also-ran computer company into a global icon of cool. He encourages Fiat managers to take a close look at Apple's branding prowess and even asks them to benchmark their activities against the company. His biggest success at Fiat is the 500--a tiny, very cool 21st century version of a 52-year-old Italian icon once driven by movie stars such as Marcello Mastroianni...
...this has a touch of Italian hyperbole, but the point is a serious one as Marchionne, 57, tackles his next big challenge: Chrysler. For at Chrysler, he's moving, just as he did at Fiat, to restructure the organization, overhaul production, revamp the lineup, motivate a beaten-down workforce and deal with prickly shareholders--this time including the U.S. government...
...Marchionne is to succeed, he needs above all to reposition Chrysler from maker of clunky, overpowered gas guzzlers to purveyor of must-own, energy-efficient vehicles. "The challenge for Fiat Chrysler is to move away from popular products and into 'pop' products, full of cool environmental technology and on the right side of history," says Carlo Alberto Carnevale, a professor of strategic management at Bocconi University's business school in Milan and a close watcher of Fiat. "In that sense, it's the same bet as Steve Jobs'. That's why Marchionne uses that metaphor...
...jazz-loving Marchionne, who left Italy as a teenager to move to Canada and for a while lived just across the river from Detroit, is not a micromanager. He declined to be interviewed, but in a first-person account of the Fiat turnaround published in Harvard Business Review, he talked about how he had abandoned the "Great Man model of leadership" that long characterized the Italian firm. Fiat's Great Man was the late Gianni Agnelli, grandson of founder Giovanni, whose family was nothing short of Italian industrial royalty and still controls the firm...
...Detroit Fiat Takes Control of Chrysler Chrysler's planned alliance with Italian carmaker Fiat was cemented on June 10 after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the deal brought by Chrysler's creditors and concerned consumer groups. The White House--backed arrangement gives Fiat a controlling stake in the embattled 84-year-old company, which will be called Chrysler Group LLC and could serve as a model for the reorganization of larger rival General Motors, which filed for bankruptcy on June 1. The pact--the latest attempt to salvage America's sagging auto industry--creates...