What Went Wrong At Cisco
from the mistakes-were-made dept
A very interesting article from the Wall Street Journal (reprinted at MSNBC) explaining why Cisco kept pushing forward even though there were clear slowdown warnings. Cisco honestly believed that - despite their rivals' warnings that business was slowing - they were different. They misread backlog numbers, and didn't realize how badly some of their customers were being affected by the downturn. They still put a positive spin on it, and think they're in a better position than their rivals, but they also made a few mistakes. Their basic plan was to use the downturn to solve backlog problems - which have now turned into inventory problems. If the slowdown wasn't as bad as everyone predicted, it would have been a really smart move.
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