So, basically, Oracle is a horribly governed company, but it seems to be pretty well run. Which inevitably raises some questions about the true value of the standards and practices that go under the label of good governance.
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But it’s hard to get around the reality that, so far, the company’s frequent disdain of good-governance practices has gone hand in hand with spectacular, sustained success. It could be that Larry Ellison knows a few things that the governance watchdogs don’t.
It’s not a new idea that manufacturing and innovation are linked. Seventy percent of industrial research and development spending in the U.S. comes from the manufacturing sector. Some have been skeptical, however, that innovation requires manufacturing know-how.
In short, the Apple WATCH means nothing to Swiss manufactures.
If smartwatches were ever to totally supplant traditional mechanical watches, I believe it would be a sign of something much more momentous: a large-scale abandonment of the luxurious and the artisanal in favor of the mass-market and the utilitarian. And somehow that is difficult to imagine.
Meanwhile, in arguably one of the worst decisions ever made by a major corporate CEO, Zander struck a deal with his Silicon Valley friend Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple. Together their companies created a Motorola iTunes phone, the first phone connected to Apple’s music store. “We can’t think of a more natural partnership than this one with Apple,” Zander said at the time. Named the Rokr, the phone launched in the fall of 2005. Jobs, who introduced it, called it “an iPod Shuffle right on your phone.”
Zander says he believed that by working with Apple, Motorola could become cool again. But much as it had taught the Chinese to compete with it years before, Motorola was teaching one of the most creative, competitive, and consumer-savvy companies of all time how to make a phone.
Abnormal Capitalist 