Acer : From Start-Up To Aspire
Submitted by dslade on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
- Category: English
- Words: 1542
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Acer : From Start-Up To Aspire
Introduction
Acer (former founded as "Multitech") is a multinational, publicly traded, Taiwanese PC company, built on its founder Shih's "poor man's" philosophy. Recently it is developing a potential blockbuster product: Aspire. Acer is hesitating introducing this new product, because of the highly competitive American PC market. Furthermore it is doubtful, whether the organizational structure with its sales and marketing oriented "Regional Business Units" (RBUs) have the resources and capabilities for the development and rollout of this highly value added product.
Startup Success Factors
There are lots of factors that promoted Acer's great success in the startup phase. First there are a lot of principles, which had been introduced by the founder Shih. He taught his employees the importance of frugality, receiving cash and avoiding debt. Moreover he particularly focused on customers; employees came second and shareholders third. By delegating a lot of responsiveness, he forwarded supported and harnessed entrepreneurial spirit. This spirit was further fostered by equity offerings to the employees (in compensation for quite low wages). A familiar working environment was created by treating coworkers fairly and a non patriarch-dominated leadership style (which was unusual for Asian companies).
Precociously Shih recognized the enormous potential of the developing PC market. Therefore Acer number of products was steadily growing. Rapid design and developing as well as Acer's manufacturing capability supported this growth. Furthermore Shih pushed forward alliances and joint ventures, in order to expand operations and sales without the risk of hiring more people or raising more capital. Although Shih first focused on smaller neighbor target markets (because he considered them to be of lower interest to global giants), Acer started expanding worldwide in1986, opening subsidies in Düsseldorf, Amsterdam and...
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