Synergy Is Out At AOL
from the decentralized-is-in dept
Lots of places are talking about AOL's reorg, whereby they're splitting the company into four separate units (Access, Audience, Digital Services and AOL Europe) in order to respond more quickly and be more nimble. Of course, this seems like a typical pendulum shift. For a while, everyone wants to be decentralized and nimble. Then, things change and they start talking up the importance of synergy. So, they merge different groups and set up a central administration to make sure that synergy works. Then, the big combined "synergistic" company discovers that bureaucracy slows things down, and suddenly they want to be decentralized and nimble again. So, while AOL continues to falter, you have to wonder how long it will be until they start talking about synergies again. Extra points go to Broadband Reports for noting that the executive who once declared that dialup would "be around forever," is no longer going to be around -- as she's now a casualty of the reorg.
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Ooops. Big difference.
In any case, the AOL Broadband strategy was mostly wishful thinking based on the premise that miracles do happen to large corporation with lots of money. Other people at AOL have said far stupider things in the past, some continue to do so.
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