Founder returns to Acer Shih who?

When children are in trouble, their parents always come forward, and many founders will be able to turn back the tide.

Recently, the business has a huge loss of Acer, welcomed back to the founder of nearly a decade of retirement, "Taiwan it godfather," said the 69-Year-old Shih. Shih as the company's new chairman and interim president.

The business is always seeing the founder return to save the "fire" case: The company is the founder jobs after the power to climb to the second peak of the enterprise; In the 2009 Lenovo was in trouble, founder Liu also took over the chairmanship of the Chairman, and the Organization of personnel and strategic adjustment, With 3 quarters of the completion of the loss: suffered a sharp decline in orders, stocks fell, and other issues, in July 2012, China's local sporting goods maker Li Ning I walked to the front desk.

Retired years of Shih, to which save the "fire" big guy to mark?

The founders of different regression paths

For Shih Mountain, can lead Acer out of the mire of losses, technology industry personage, flying Elephant net President Xiang to "first financial daily" reporter said, "cautious optimistic."

Acer lost three of its market share in the PC industry since 2009, when it failed to bet on a netbook because of its failure to judge the industry. Acer lost 343 million NT dollars (about $11.4 million) in the second quarter of this year. In the third quarter, Acer's net loss amounted to NT $13.12 billion ($ 446 million trillion).

In Xiang's view, the 69-Year-old Shih, perhaps more is to play the role of corporate banner and appeal, so that the company's internal stability, access to partners and customers more confidence and recognition, mobilize all aspects of resources to help Acer innovate, but the actual operation may also need to find suitable managers and successors.

Although Shih in the industry ' respected ', but its mountain also faces the important challenge. "CIC Consultant Senior Researcher He Yinhua, this performance in its rich experience, but also may be the experience caused by the mind-set, the current market environment and before the great changes, it technology, products and other upgrading speed also gradually improved, its exit line has been long, need a period of time to adapt."

Despite the return of the founders of the tech industry, in Xiang's view, "The return of Shih is very different from that of Steve Jobs and Liu."

He said that when he returned to Apple, he was young enough to take part in specific tasks such as direct corporate strategy, operations, and Shih, who returned after retirement and should not be specifically involved in operational matters.

There are also a lot of people who put Shih back in the same position as Mr Liu's return to Lenovo as chairman, and even think that the plight of Acer and Lenovo's 2009 business focused on the PC sector, and that its business has suffered a huge loss.

Xiang said that the two godfather-level founders of the same place is that there will be a big strategic aspects of the company have some unique judgments, but from the market timing, when Lenovo made the transition time earlier, the layout of mobile communications has now accounted for half of the legend, and Shih Mountain, More striking strategies and new market opportunities may be needed.

He also believes that Liu's exit time of about 5 years, jobs even if a period of time out of the Apple, but still in the IT industry struggle, the market is more sensitive. And Shih away from the enterprise for a long time, the industry and the company's control may be weak, replication Liu, jobs and other success has a certain degree of difficulty.

The challenge and opportunity to reshape the glorious

The return of founders to the tech industry, as opposed to the successful return of Mr Jobs and Mr Liu, seems less pronounced. In 2006, Dell lost 7 consecutive years of global PC first position, the following year, its founder, Michael Dell, a hurried return to take over the power of Dell CEO, to regain the PC territory, leading the company back to supremacy.

In the next few years, Michael Layout is not the dominant consumer retail market, the first implementation of channel distribution strategy. However, the global PC market has begun to cool, but more than half of the company's revenues are still being sold by PCs. He has also tried to break PC limits by introducing Android-based Smartphone Aero, Streak Pro and flat-panel Streak7 and 10 for emerging personal products, but the results are not ideal.

During the 6 years of Michael's comeback, Dell's annual sales were flat, with a 2008 fiscal year of 61 billion dollars and a 2012 fiscal year of 62 billion dollars. However, Dell's share price on Wall Street fell by more than 40% per cent.

"The return of Apple's founders is more significant than the return of the founder of Dell," Peter Capley, a professor of management at the Wharton School of Business and director of Human Resource Center Peter Cappelli, said in an interview.

Because, Dell relies on selling more or less of the goods others are selling to make money, just sell it cheaper, while providing customized services, and Apple is in a completely different way, that is, relying on innovation. Apple has always faced consumers directly, trying to advertise something new to them, and its founder is known for its novelty, his return may have injected Apple with vigor, but more importantly, it has helped the company sell its products.

"Although the symbolic meaning of the founders ' return would be to inspire staff morale in extraordinary times, it would also be more forceful to promote the idea to the outside world. "Peter Capley that companies need different skills at different times, and that the founders, despite their entrepreneurial zeal and ideas, are often not necessarily the ones who can bring them into the next stage of development."

And especially in the rapidly changing science and technology sector, Xiang that the success of the founders of the two key factors, first of all in the big strategic direction can be better control. Although Shih seems to have been away from the enterprise for a long time, but certainly for the industry is still a big pattern of concern, the future test is in front of the mobile link layout from behind, or to new forward-looking direction such as wearable equipment, things such as networking layout development.

Another factor is in decision-making and executive power. In recent years, Acer has certainly noted the market trends of mobile communications, but has not been in a timely fashion, which may be related to the decision making power of the former leaders and the company's executive power. Will Shih be able to understand the industry's changes more profoundly and make faster and more accurate decisions than competitors after years of leaving the industry?

In addition to strategic decisions, Xu Yunjian, a global partner, believes that the ability to find, judge and use appropriate and executive power is important to Acer's transformation, but whether the Shih has such a keen and cumulative presence in the industry for many years, the business model and behavior change rapidly in the rapidly changing field of technology. , how to face the impact of cultural change, and so on, these shih after the mountain is a major test of whether or not to revive Acer.