Idea 16 - Diversification
Web
overlords Amazon and Google have grown so fast that they arrived at the 'what
next?' moment rather more quickly than most companies. Speed is uncommonly
integral to the industry they inhabit but when it comes to sustaining growth,
they have the same strategic options as anyone else: expand or diversify, build
or buy. Amazon, the retailer, now wants to sell online storage and computing
power. Google, the search engine, is squaring up to Microsoft with its own
office software package. Can they pull it off? Diversification, the route both
are now taking, is never the safe option.
Diversification is a classic growth strategy, and every
successful company will consider it, at the very least, at some point in its
evolution. In its pure form - new product, new market - it is the riskiest of
the four growth options in Ansoff's product-market matrix, advocated and
deplored with equal passion. Diversification strategy set off an early US
merger wave around 1916, but it had its heyday in the 1960s and early 1970s,
the age of the corporate planner. Top managers regarded themselves as
professionals who could manage anything and some built empires of completely
unrelated businesses as a result. Harold Geneen's ITT was a stark example of
the conglomerates that emerged, acquiring a family as dysfunctional as Sheraton
Hotels, Avis Rent-a-Car, insurer The Hartford and Continental Baking.
The conglomerate has fallen from grace since then, at least
in Europe and the US, and many diversified companies began disposing of
unprofitable non-core businesses in the 1980s. Many of the conglomerates were
taken over or broken up, or both. The pendulum started to swing back in the
1990s, though it has stopped well short of a return to the lTT model: The taste
has been more for strategic restructuring around a common theme, and the
acquisition of related businesses that offer some kind of industrial or market
synergy.
Shareholder
muscle one reason for the decline of the diversified
conglomerate was the 1980s flexing of shareholder muscle. In many cases,
stockholders felt that acquisitive diversification was being driven more by
size and managerial ego than by any desire to increase profitability. Since
most mergers do not, in the end, increase profitability, the shareholders
had a point. They were able to press it home by ousting the
management or selling the stock, so depressing the share price of the company
in question and leaving it vulnerable to predators. The corporate bloodshed
that followed, culminating in the record-breaking 1988 takeover of RJR Nabisco
by a leveraged buyout firm, has been a powerful incentive for managers to
behave in a more constrained manner ever since.
Another justification put forward for high-proof
diversification was that it spread risk. There is some basis for this - if a
firm is in non-correlated industries which tend to be in different phases of
the business cycle, its income is likely to be less volatile. But the
shareholders have spiked that argument too, insisting that they can diversify
their holdings more widely than conglomerate can, thank you, and that they
prefer to invest in 'pure plays'.
Less
risky-In this post-conglomerate age, 'diversification' is
often more loosely applied to include the introduction of new products to
existing markets and vice versa. Bearing in mind that diversification can be
built as well as bought, shareholders see such variations as less risky, as
long as they can be convinced that the motives are sound. One of the most
common
Motives is economies of scope, where several products can
share the same resources, such as marketing, distribution, research and
development, or even brand names. Another is to extend one's core skills into a
related segment, as Gillette did when it began making toiletries, or as clothes
retailer Marks & Spencer did when it diversified into food.
Some argue that geographical expansion is preferable to
industrial diversification. This provides economies of scale (lower unit costs
from producing more of the same) and allows the firm to use its marketing
resources more effectively. Multinationals are more flexible than domestic
companies, because they can move production around to where raw materials
prices or labour rates are low or falling. And this kind of geographic spread
provides more opportunities for moving profits or tax losses to wherever they
will have the best tax advantages. Rule one of diversification is don't even
think of it until the original business is on a sound footing. Diversification
will suck time, money and concentration away from the main enterprise.
Does the new market offer better prospects for profit than
the existing one? If not, you could be better advised to grow your share of the
market you're already in. It may be that the existing market is mature or
declining and simply doesn't offer any more growth potential. In that case,
diversification might be a viable defensive strategy. But what is the cost of
entry, and can you afford it? Finally, do you have, or can you establish, a
competitive advantage over companies that are already occupying the intended
space?
While failures by far outnumber the successes, there have
been some triumphal moves into new markets, often by leveraging an existing
corporate brand. Virgin makes lTT look like a focused business. It started as a
record label, but now embraces an airline, drinks, cable TV, mobile phones,
financial services, health clubs and wedding dresses. Canon has made the leap
from cameras to office equipment.
There is plenty of opinion on the wisdom or otherwise of
Amazon's and Google's diversification strategies. Some say Amazon should move
next door into other forms of retailing, instead of crossing the road to computer
services. Others believe that, whatever the outcome of Google's software
excursions, it has already invoked the 'winner's curse' by winning a costly
bidding war for YouTube. Whether these roads lead to green pasture or the
wilderness, they will be required reading in business schools some years hence
- guaranteed.
Reference: 50 Management Ideas You Really Need to Know
Book by Edward Russell-Walling
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