What the Alcatel/Lucent Merger Means to Fast-Growth Businesses

Make no bones about it. Lucent’s decision to merge with Alcatel is the admittance of complete and total failure on the part of Lucent to create value in any meaningful way. Had Lucent focused on creating value by solving the problems their customers didn’t know about, instead of just “monetizing” their patents, Lucent would not be merging. Who would have thought this would be Lucent’s fate when they split from AT&T.

Armed with patents, research, capital and an “installed base of customers.” Lucent got beaten badly. No matter how successful you look or feel today, the moment you forget that you’re only as good as your last innovation, and that commoditization impacts every business; your future becomes precarious. It proves that the most dangerous thing in business is complacency.

Andy Grove said it best – only the paranoid survive. Don’t let the death of another landmark company go by without giving some pause yourself. Stay hungry.

For more on creating demand, click here or here.