• Research Paper on:
    Failure Caused by Company Successes

    Number of Pages: 14

     

    Summary of the research paper:

    In fourteen pages the argument made by Professor Danny Miller that successful companies can cause their own failure because of a narrowness of theme or vision as represented in the 1993 article, 'The Architecture of Simplicity,' is assessed. Ten sources are cited in the bibliography.

    Name of Research Paper File: MM12_PGmlsmpl.rtf

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    Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
    one narrow simple theme, activity or issue. This article has been cited in numerous documents since it was written. This essay reviews and comments on the article and addresses  the question: Over time, does a successful dominant firms narrow focus fail to recognize the end of a product life cycle or is the firm a victim of simplicity? To  address this question, Millers article will be reviewed along with comments about Millers ideas as well as theories from other writers, such as the concept of product life cycle. The  thesis for this essay is that companies fail for two reasons: they do not consider the product life cycle and they fall into the simplicity trap. In effect, these two  reasons may well be causative. By that I mean that companies that specialize too much and that become so narrow in their focus would naturally fail to consider a products  life cycle. The Architecture of Simplicity While most researchers conclude that successful companies lose their edge because they become stale, Miller argues that they lose their edge  because they concentrate on one single strength to the exclusion of others and develop too great an edge (Miller, 1993). These successful companies who were once complex become simple and  then fail (Miller, 1993). It is that excessive simplicity that eventually causes their ruin (Miller, 1993). Miller offers Polaroid, Wang Labs and Control Data as examples of this premise; these  companies were known for their innovation and because this is what led to their initial successive, they emphasized technological innovation to the neglect of everything else (Miller, 1993). They focused  all efforts on the innovative process and did not tend to marketing, production or even fiscal considerations in their quest for more and better scientific innovations (Miller, 1993). Miller 

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