@b4 If its not in a slide deck or a spreadsheet it never existed.
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Simple Lexmark leaders = future, xerox leaders = you now report to Lexmark leader.
@ab that’s exactly the problem. Experts in slide decks and not much else
Sorry Lexmark and Xerox but as an X Xeroid and having worked with a large VAR with multiple vendors it is a sh1tshow all round.
Too many vendors selling to a shrinking market, think PCs, how many vendors?
If you are need a future, print is, sadly, not it.
Well, Lexmark's F1 team ain't losing races. lol.
@a9 You hinted at the core problem.
Executives of a TECHNOLOGY company not understanding the least bit of the technology itself or even why paying customers received over half a century of world-class value from an entity that was #21 on the Fortune 500 list at its peak.
People who understand spreadsheets and slide decks, but not people and products.
@a9 I think the poster was trying to say Xerox initially since the post referenced Xerox Parc which was never part of Lexmark. Looks like a typo.
@a8 Doesn't this point more to the leadership failures or culture at Lexmark to capitalize on the ideas that come from with company. I think this failure goes the way back to Xerox Parc and ideas that came from that research but with that said ti's hard for leadership to know where to put capital and invest in R&D products with a 10-20 year horizon ahead of the developments.
Lexmark could make a box that put marks on a page.
Xerox, which invented the technology to do so, gave away its capacity to do that.
Lexmark did not have a box with “brains” needed in the modern office to be efficiently managed, they did not have a competent service/support infrastructure, and most importantly, were de-listed from GSA schedules due to foreign control.
Lexmark had worse cost structures and was losing more as a percentage of its total revenue as a result.
But the post-Mulcahy executives failed to appreciate that the boxes with “brains” saved Xerox from bankruptcy in the early 2000’s, and went from malicious (UB) to simply mo--nic (the Carl Icahn-installed club).
So rather than mating the specific competencies of Lexmark and Xerox, Lexmark management—devoid of real world strategy beyond developing and manufacturing a box—won out. Which will accelerate the decline instead of offering the possibility of a turnaround after some very deep but surgical cuts.
Had they not paid out a dividend the past decade, and put that cash into R&D, the process efficiencies would exist to sustain the company and the share price would be probably 20x.
The ignorance of how to develop a long term strategy to achieve cost savings through technology that no one else has versus off the shelf garbage that is not designed to achieve long term cost savings, is the only real legacy of the post-Mulcahy company.
Some of us wish we were never invited and were invited to another establishment :) No matter how good or bad of a friend you think we are.
Lexmark is just like Danka or Kodak or Savin. Not to mention Xerox
If you have 2 useless friends and you invite 4 more useless friends over, do you honestly think you will truthfully accomplish something, due to the supposed extra brain power and money they have ? I’m betting that’s not the best idea you may have.