Lack of refinement hurts entry-level DSLRs
in [Digital Cameras]
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From: tony cooper on 25 Mar 2010 08:45 On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:22:35 -0400, "Neil Harrington" <never(a)home.com> wrote: >> So who do YOU think gave the engineering department the green light to do >> the research for the project? > >Management. Of course. You seem to think that "management" is a separate function. In actuality, some of the management people and some of the engineering people are in management. Some of the top management will come from the engineering side and some from the marketing side. >> And how many space shuttles did they sell to the public? > >That is my point. The space shuttle was not designed for the mass market. >Neither was the $25,000 Kodak DSC. Ergo, there was no particular reason for >your "marketing people" to be involved. That's a silly example. The shuttle was not designed to be re-sold so there is no "market" involved. -- Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
From: tony cooper on 25 Mar 2010 08:51 On 25 Mar 2010 10:38:24 GMT, Chris Malcolm <cam(a)holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote: >It also matters a great deal who the CEO is. Sometimes the CEO is the >original founder of the company and basically a visionary engineer. In >those cases we often see that when the original CEO dies or retires >accountants advised by marketing take over the running of the >company. The company stops being visionary and becomes more of a >conservative "me-too" player in the marketplace. It ossifies and stops >being innovative. The other side of the coin is when the original CEO is gone and engineers take over and the company goes into a death spiral because the company starts to develop innovative products that are so expensive to produce that they can't be sold at a profit or are products that have such a limited market that not enough are sold. The successful company is one with a balance of engineering and marketing influence. -- Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
From: stephe_k on 25 Mar 2010 12:57 tony cooper wrote: > On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:22:35 -0400, "Neil Harrington" <never(a)home.com> > wrote: > >>> So who do YOU think gave the engineering department the green light to do >>> the research for the project? >> Management. Of course. > > You seem to think that "management" is a separate function. In > actuality, some of the management people and some of the engineering > people are in management. Some of the top management will come from > the engineering side and some from the marketing side. > He's clueless or else just wants to argue semantics.. Stephanie
From: stephe_k on 25 Mar 2010 13:02 Chris Malcolm wrote: > > There have also been a number of cases where what management and > marketing were insisting on working on was considered to be so stupid > by some of their best engineers that they left and formed their own > company to develop the new innovative product that those engineers > were sure the market wanted, but which the company refused to put a > penny of development towards. > I have no doubt this happens, but what started this thread was the "feature set" a specific DSLR model in the lineup has enabled. Not how a totally brand new product comes about. I stand by my post that the marketing people make this decision, not the guys in the lab. Stephanie
From: stephe_k on 25 Mar 2010 13:09
Chris Malcolm wrote: > > You understand how these companies are meant to work, and how the top > management often think they work, but not how in practice how some of > the most successful really work. There are also some companies whose > top management is sophisticated and intelligent enough to organise > themselves in such a way as to encourage that kind of decentralised > thinking which gives the head to their best engineering visionaries. > Uh, we were talking about Kodak here right? Do you think the above describes them? :P As you also stated when you posted "Of course this strategy will only work if the engineering teams can accurately predict what marketing will decide they want a year or few in advance." eventually the marketing/management people give the green light on these projects no matter how much of a -pet project- this might be in the lab. I agree successful companies don't rely 100% on the marketing dept, but we did switch from "which feature set is enabled" to Kodak and in both cases I feel the marketing dept has control. Stephanie |