John Horner wrote:
Brian Henderson wrote:
On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 12:09:52 -0500, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

Uh, you missed their taking over the entire consumer electronics
industry.

Because the Japanese could make a better product for less money, why
shouldn't they take over the industry? They earned it!

The question you should be asking is why the U.S. completely wasted
their superiority.

Because in the 1960s and 1970s their group think mentality concluded
that stereos and televisions were a "mature" market not worthy of
further investment. This is MBA doctrine 101, get out of slow growth
mature businesses and invest in high expected growth new opportunities.

Little did they foresee that here we are a few decades later and
consumer electronics are by far the runaway hits of the Christmas
shopping season.

There is no good reason why the flat panel television bonanza couldn't
have been Made in the USA. The management herds all ran away from that
business and it is now gone forever.

That again is an oversimplification -- was in E TN where there was a
nearby facility of, Motorola/Quasar/Sylvania/I forget the pedigree as it
went through a succession trying to keep it alive. In the end, the
labor costs were the killer as compared to offshore and despite several
major retoolings for the electronics portions, the cabinetry and
peripherals remained the high-cost items they couldn't compete against
and eventually the whole facility went away...but it was the last US
production facility and management didn't walk away early or lightly.

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