Why do some cos outgrow their founders?
The irony is that the founders who steer the company through some of the roughest times in the initial years may not always be the right people to take the company forward.
By INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK |
Every entrepreneurial venture passes through two phases. Phase I is development of the concept and getting the firm off the ground. Phase II is when the company stabilises and starts to grow. The irony is that the founders who steer the company through some of the roughest times in the initial years may not always be the right people to take the company forward.
Recent corporate history is littered with names of people who were fabulous as founders but when they stayed on beyond a point, their companies bled. Scott McNealy, for instance, ended up hurting Sun Microsystems, the company he had created and led for 22 years. Among other things, he staunchly resisted layoffs to pare down the mammoth workforce and took much too long to embrace lower-cost technologies to cut losses.
There are others too, who got ousted from their positions of power before they could inflict further damage. A case in point is Raymond Noorda, the founder of Linux distributing company Novell. He was forced to leave the company he had founded. He died a bitter man in June this year. But why do some companies ‘outgrow’ their founders? Write your views on this.
Recent corporate history is littered with names of people who were fabulous as founders but when they stayed on beyond a point, their companies bled. Scott McNealy, for instance, ended up hurting Sun Microsystems, the company he had created and led for 22 years. Among other things, he staunchly resisted layoffs to pare down the mammoth workforce and took much too long to embrace lower-cost technologies to cut losses.
There are others too, who got ousted from their positions of power before they could inflict further damage. A case in point is Raymond Noorda, the founder of Linux distributing company Novell. He was forced to leave the company he had founded. He died a bitter man in June this year. But why do some companies ‘outgrow’ their founders? Write your views on this.
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