Leadership in Enterprise Software
Want to get in the head of SAP CEO Leo Apotheker? Charlie Rose does in this interview.
Leo answers a question from Charlie about what makes a software company successful. Leo responds and explains that it is taking good ideas, and incorporating them in software. He then goes on to explain that industry leaders like SAP are made by specializing in one line of business. Companies that only have Enterprise software as one of their business lines will never achieve the same level of expertise.
This is an interesting perspective. I wonder how someone from IBM or Microsoft would respond.
I also enjoyed the comments by Andrew Mcafee of the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. My favourite quote of his from this when responding to Charlie’s assertion that Google had an insurmountable lead over other search engines was. “I don’t think the people at Google would say there was ever an insurmountable lead.”
Both Andrew and Leo agreed in that the software industry was in flux with a ever present struggle to stay in the lead, or to catch the leaders. And that keeping people with expertise and knowledge engaged was key to maintaining success.
Thanks to Randy McClure of mcislog for pointing me to this interview.
This is about a 23 minute video. It was worth the watch. Take a look and let me know what other insights you see into SAP and or the supply chain software vending industry from these remarks.
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