Word: sloan
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Indeed, the luxury movement represents the industry's first significant market shift since the introduction of the minivan and the Jeep Grand Cherokee in the mid-1980s. And it suggests that the old model developed by General Motors' Alfred P. Sloan in the early 1920s, which sliced the industry into carefully graded segments and moved consumers up as their income rose, may be headed for extinction. Instead, as automakers lavish more and more attention on a narrower, wealthier band of consumer, the U.S. is moving to a more European marketing model built around sales of luxury cars to the affluent...
...list, recognizing only 20 people, is by definition subjective, especially since we sought to recognize leadership in several different industries. If, as I believe, the automobile is the product of the century, we could easily have filled the list with the names of famous automakers, including Alfred P. Sloan, Charles Kettering and William Durant (all from General Motors), Walter Chrysler, Ferdinand Porsche (Porsche and Volkswagen), Ransom Olds, Clement Studebaker and the Dodge brothers. Henry J. Kaiser not only built cars but also played a key role in shipbuilding, construction, housing and hospitals. In the end, however, we settled on Henry...
...bias toward innovators and company founders and against managers kept several famous names off the list--not only Sloan, whose organizational and management skills helped consolidate several disparate automakers into General Motors, but also a number of chief executives best known for their ability to manage large enterprises and increase shareholder value. It should be remembered that Ford Motor Co. was foundering when Henry Ford died, and it was left to his grandson Henry Ford II to revive the company after World War II with the help of a group of button-down managers, the "Whiz Kids," including Robert McNamara...
...then Alfred P. Sloan had combined various car companies into a powerful General Motors, with a variety of models and prices to suit all tastes. He had also made labor peace. That left Ford in the dust, its management in turmoil. And if World War II hadn't turned the company's manufacturing prowess to the business of making B-24 bombers and jeeps, it is entirely possible that the 1932 V-8 engine might have been Ford's last innovation...
...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...