Word: marketization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...released in August 1981 and was followed into the market by huge flocks of honking, beeping clones. Microsoft's DOS was one of three official PC operating systems but quickly beat out the other two. DOS was clunky and primitive at a time when the well-dressed computer was wearing UNIX from Bell Labs or (if its tastes ran upscale) some variant of the revolutionary window-menu-mouse system that Xerox had pioneered in the 1970s. But despite (or maybe because of) its stodginess, DOS established itself as the school uniform of computing. It was homely, but everyone needed...
Astute risk takers and charismatic salesmen like Ling, Bluhdorn and Geneen were among the first to see the opportunities. The bull market that began in 1962 was kinder to some companies than to others, leaving many quality firms relatively undervalued and thus takeover targets. "We had a lot of different sources of financing," says Ling, 75, of LTV, in its heyday the 14th largest company in the U.S. "But we usually swapped our companies' stock for [that of] the firms we were buying...
...peaked at 985 in 1968, the conglomerate movement comprised dozens of America's largest companies, including Textron, Litton, Teledyne, Raytheon, Walter Kidde & Co. and US Industries. The movement would sputter to a halt in the '70s, its oxygen cut off by rising interest rates and a falling market. A surprisingly anticonglomerate Nixon Administration crimped the most aggressive expansions in the interest of protecting what Ling calls "the smokestack-industry crowd" of old-line executives. Ling was forced out of LTV in 1970 as part of an antitrust settlement. Bluhdorn died on a company jet in 1983. Geneen piloted...
Alfred Sloan literally wrote the book on managing large organizations--My Years with General Motors. No large company is untouched by his concept of decentralized management. He came into a GM that was cash short, chaotic and nearly bankrupt--Ford had a 60% market share--and brought discipline to a sprawling company, clearly defining the issues of planning, strategy and organization. He mastered the concept of market segmentation--Chevrolets for Everyman, Cadillacs for the wealthy--to better target GM's sales and avoid internal competition, a strategy that left Ford behind. Sloan also understood what managers today call "consumer insight...
...Coca-Cola, proved that there is no such thing as a mature business. His critical insight was an ability to define exactly what business Coke was in--a task that is far harder than you think. For instance, he taught his executives that when they set goals for market share, they needed to focus on the share of stomach, not the share of carbonated beverages. His adversary was water, not soda. By this definition, Coke's 40%-plus market share became 3%, changing the company's view of growth. He then redefined the term global for a company that...