JimN

Nortel News: Rethinking Bay Networks Acquisition, Delisting Threat

Maybe I'm not the most authoritative person to comment here but having lived through that and saw first hand how this went... I've read plenty of commentary on the subject but its always easy to be an "arm-chair quarterback". Regardless, the recent article from HBR regarding flawless execution, is absolutely applicable. Even 8 years later, NT was still treating Bay separately so simply put, it wasn't the concept that was flawed or even the opportunity, it was in the execution. That was one for the business history books as a good example of how not to merge two companies.

At the end of the day, Nortel had and still has some of the most brilliant minds in technology and have had some outstanding ideas and concepts but as in any business, its how you execute that differentiates you.