Alcatel-Lucent vs Google : How organization determines success ?

In 1998, Google was embryonic with only two students and an innovative solution promising to face world IT giants. In less than a decade, Google became a defiant rival to Microsoft’s near-monopoly. On the stock-market, the value of Google reached c. $210 billions by December 2007 and endless growth opportunities.

Also in the technology market, Alcatel accumulated eighty years of innovation history, six Nobel prizes and a large portfolio of products (such as semiconductors solutions or Internet protocols), and it merged with Lucent in 2006. The new formed giant promised to become a powerful faster player in the ever-more-competitive IT market. In September 2008, however, the Alcatel-Lucent stock-value was half Alcatel’s alone former quotation.

For both companies, innovation seems to be a critical success factor in granting both growth and long-term sustainability. Yet Google seems to be far more successful at designing a corporate strategy and respective organizational design to deliver it, whilst Alcatel-Lucent seems to be lost both in Franco-American translations and strategic forecasting.

This paper compares both organizations from the 3 lenses perspective –strategic, political and cultural- and suggests cues to why organization design has played a critical role in Google’s success and in Alcatel’s dismal failure. As we will hopefully be able to show, Google has created an organization built to serve and service innovation whilst at Alcatel-Lucent innovation seems to exist so that the organization can be served.

Cliquer sur le document joint pour consulter le livre blanc.