Radical Collaboration: IBM Microelectronics
Joint Development Alliances
Daniel Felipe Castro
Juan Camilo Cruz
Dilan Perdomo
Miguel Barrera
Mariana Murcia
Felipe Guevara
Administración de Negocios Internacionales
Universidad del Rosario
Administration
2020
Abstract
IBM or International business machines corporation is a technology enterprise involved in
the production, development and technology innovation for different industries They
contemplated a significant increase in the cost of the semiconductors manufactured by
themselves so far, from there they began to analyze the need for an alliance in which
innovations are developed and meets the needs of the company, but this may affect its
internal structure since they have always been self-sufficient inclusive with their raw
material.
Keywords: Costs , Collaboration , R&D
IBM DILEMMA
The American multinational is one of those companies that never stop, and when we
refer this, we mean, their continuous job of innovating and showing tech and science
advances, result of the company’s effort to keep align with a same objective internally and
externally, improving the world or offering enhances to others is the secret. According
FORBES “The key to how IBM innovates is that it manages to create collaboration among
all the moving parts—not only internally, but externally as well—into a key competitive
advantage” [ CITATION Sat16 \l 3082 ]
IBM is the global technology giant that has led the market for a long time, being
self-sufficient in most of its products and structures over the years but things will not
always be as they were at the beginning, the rise in The costs of semiconductor production
have led the company to contemplate a collaboration with companies in the history of Intel
or the new Asian technology companies.
“The physical capital is good to have because it solves a problem in managing
corporate financials in an increasingly complex world, but it is the intellectual capital you
combine that really provides the horsepower.” [CITATION Rad08 \l 3082 ]
This one was the voice of IBM after its sales lack , when the panorama was not
good because of leaving the top list of sellers of semiconductors for microprocessors in the
tech industry, and the American competence, Intel, even a Taiwanese company got the
majority of the market sales and seeing the situation IBM has to contemplate alliances to
perservere. This situation is not unrelated to other sectors that see that after all alliances are
necessary to survive given the adverse conditions that each company may encounter.
Noticing the only strength that kept IBM strong and alive was the potential career in
research and development, they had to focus in it and invest much more on investigation,
what at the end meant a huge amount of money that they were not receiving from
anywhere, a solution was needed, a solution to be competitive in long terms while the cost
of semiconductors increased and the accelerated innovation demanded to be up to the fast
production that competence had.
In addition to these constant investments in research and development without
achieving some solutions to the given needs, the company obtained by the collaborative
model together with the other giants of the technology sector, this entails a care of the
information that is shared from one organization to another, that is It is well known that the
most valuable asset of a company is its intellectual property. The economic answer of part
and part in the matter of investigation must be clear and know what the roles of each
organization are in the alliance, in this case IBM must be concise in its need and go for the
exclusive tools that it does not have.
The society of “radial collaboration” cross borders, from thinking to producing
together, that was the big jump, the more companies getting involved into the alliances the
more upcoming ideas they had, the manufacturing partners started more than sharing just
facts in pro of tech to be better, to gain money from it. Three companies in the
collaboration alliance actually had the production “recipe”: Samsung, IBM and Chartered.
Conditions for success in IBM were a nightmare, but collaboration and their
capacity to understand the differentiation with competition was successful, even when they
had some issues ”competing” internally on the alliance the launch of technologies and
innovation at a lower cost than if they had done it individually.
From the moment that companies begin to believe that alliances between
organizations are adequate and not neglecting the core of the research and development
division of companies is a strategy that can be ideal in complex environments such as the
this year for some companies. Bringing today IBM has begun to achieve collaborations
between companies, not on a large scale as with Intel, but for example it has managed to
diversify in other sectors such as real estate, IBM made an alliance with Marhnos, a real
estate development consultancy "Thanks to the automation of processes and intelligent
management through IBM Maximo, the company managed to reduce by 40% the penalties
associated with very strict service level indicators," said the company. [ CITATION Hen20 \l
3082 ] Speaking well of the collaborations today.
Conclusion
To conclude we can affirm that Bernard Meyerson, responsible of IBM'S
semiconductor alliances could never preview the high scopes of the “radical collaboration”
project when working by the hand of big companies in order to think, develop , produce
and finally gain money. The licensed cooperation society is still growing, adapting and
including new companies for focusing in more processes innovation, surely the company
not only have increase sales, one of the biggest problem at the beginning, also IBM had
found the way to grow fast and with the intelligence of the best, the future is challenging,
the question is would the alliance be strong enough to confront it and be positive for new
alliances with different companies like Marhnos?
References
Willy Shih, (2008) Radical Collaboration: IBM Microelectronics Joint
Development Alliances. Taked of papers Harvard Business School 9-608-121
Greg Satell (2016) How IBM innovate?. Taked of Forbes/Site 19
Antonio Jimenez (2020) Alianza de desarrollo entre Marhnos e IBM
taked of edificiosmx/alianzas
