What happened to Motorola
This is really a fantastic, in-depth article, and highlights a lot of pieces about Motorola's history of which I was totally unaware. The breadth of their innovations was far greater than I realized, and the early decision to set up a world class shop in China seems to be very visible today in that area of the world.That the internal competitions eventually led to internal war between different "tribes" doesn't totally surprise me. It seems you always read about that eventually happening in the post-mortem of any company with that type of structure. I wonder if there's a good way to balance internal competition. I imagine you would have to keep close watch on the overall silo-ing of each department.I'm from the Chicago area, and I remember driving by their campus many times over the years as a kid, only really having an idea that they were somehow involved in phones. I was in high school when the Razr came out, and based on how popular it was I thought Motorola was an absolutely world-dominating company, not a business on the rebound from extremely heady heights.