Posts
Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock said Bartz possessed "the exact combination of seasoned technology executive and savvy leader that the Board was looking for ..."
"She is admired in the Valley as well as on Wall Street for her deep management expertise, strong customer orientation, excellent people skills, and firm understanding of the challenges facing our industry,' he said in a statement. " Carol meets all of the criteria we set for the search and is the only person to whom we offered the job.
Big moves...Former Autodesk Chief Carol Bartz to Replace Jerry Yang as Yahoo CEO. "and firm understanding of the challenges facing our industry."
What are the challenges facing their industry?
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2009/01/13/bartz-google-yahoo-tech-enter-cx_ec_0113bartz.html?feed=rss_technology
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/01/former-autodesk.html
send: Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The Internet's Godfather?
Labels: carol bartz, jerry yang, management, transition, yahoo
Posted by Scott at 11:04 PM
8 comments:
In response to the article I think that Carol Bartz will bring a new energy to the company that is much needed. In such a competitive and fast pace field the experience she has is sure to carry Yahoo in a positive direction. As far as the challenges facing the industry as a whole I would have to say that there are many. Some of the ones that I feel stand out are security and mobility as well as finding the next new trend. The mobility aspect is one area that I feel could really improve the company depending on how they address the needs of the mobile market.
In reference to the challenges that Carol will face I believe there are many, as she is now head of Yahoo. Because technology is continuously evolving, I think the main challenge is staying up-to-date with their competition and trends in the market. With this being said, I think it will be important for her to focus a lot of attention on her competition. This entails understanding their core competencies and their customers demands. A clear understanding of these fundamentals will allow for yahoo to see why people chose their competitors over them and also what they offer that their competitors do not. Yahoo can focus their attention on what they do best and improve in the areas that they find their competitor are doing better. After an analysis of the competition is complete, yahoo will be able to offer the most efficient service possible to its customers and offer the newest and most demanded product possible in regards to what certain trends are at the present time.
Reliability of service, constant innovation, and customer loyalty are what I would argue are the biggest challenges faced by the industry that Yahoo finds themselves in.
Yahoo is a company that does not target business professionals but the individual user. With that comes the need to capture an individuals attention and hold it until the end of time. This translates into a free service that is more robust in what you can do and easier to use than competitors. Obviously not a small challenge when you have competition such as Google. Because although Yahoo will have it's search engine, yahoo mail, and yahoo answers. Google has it's search engine, G-mail, and Google Calendar.
The strategy for this industry has become all about building the one stop perfect package for a user in an effort to make the user content enough with the service that they are using that they do not want/need any other service being offered by a different company. Probably why acquisitions are so frequent in technology today and you see more "suite's" than standalone programs.
Yahoo needs to keep innovating and perfecting what they do. By looking at what they have done in terms of the mobile market such as Yahoo Go, it looks like they are on the right track. But they need to get moving because the most popular mobile smart phone application is Google Maps
Hope this answered the question
I think Carol Bartz will work out well for Yahoo. It sounds like she has a lot of experience and has done great things at Autodesk. It also sounds like she has deep management expertise, strong customer orientation, excellent people skills, and a firm understanding of the challenges facing the technology industry. With technology ever changing, it will be a challenge for her to bring the company up to its fullest potential, but I think that she has the capability of doing so. Technology companies will have to face hard times ahead as the economy limps into 2009. The downturn will definitely be a challenge not only for Yahoo but for all technology companies to manage.
Carol Bartz seems to be the right spark to ignite Yahoo's fire. She views their financial and technological downfalls and woes as internal problems that should be dealt with as an evolving process. Her background at Sun and under McNealy has taught her to create a sense of urgency, a desire to win, and a passionate approach to business. I think it will be interesting in the coming months to view her performance with the company's challenges. These challenges are multifaceted including adaptation of current offerings and technologies to mobile devices. People are always on the go and are increasingly requiring their reception of information on an instantaneous basis. The challenge will be to capitalize on this trend by innovating current product offerings to all modes of communication for the market. Yahoo will have its hands full.
Carol Bartz seems to be the right spark to ignite Yahoo's fire. She views their financial and technological downfalls and woes as internal problems that should be dealt with as an evolving process. Her background at Sun and under McNealy has taught her to create a sense of urgency, a desire to win, and a passionate approach to business. I think it will be interesting in the coming months to view her performance with the company's challenges. These challenges are multifaceted including adaptation of current offerings and technologies to mobile devices. People are always on the go and are increasingly requiring their reception of information on an instantaneous basis. The challenge will be to capitalize on this trend by innovating current product offerings to all modes of communication for the market. Yahoo will have its hands full.
All - nice work. I agree with pretty much all you said. I think Yahoo! has to innovate and position itself in the mobile market AND maintain their profitable web-based products. Companies like Yahoo! "spin a lot of plates" and it is very costly to continue "spinning several plates." In other words, they try to do a lot. If they are affected by the economic crisis they might have to drop some products and services. Finally, they depend on a lot of advertising revenue, will the economy affect their advertising revenue?
See even google is shutting down some offerings.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_giveth_and_it_taketh_away.php
Post a Comment