Play Podcast  (Right click to download)

In the heady days of the Internet Bubble, the sea was full of big-company fish with big appetites for smaller-company fish, along with their promising technologies. They snapped them up, sometimes in chunks, sometimes swallowing them whole, and with dizzying speed. And now, after the long drought of activity that followed the Bubble's burst, when some big technology fish are again getting hungry, isn't it a good time to take a close look at those M&A moves of the 1990s: what succeeded, what failed, and why?

Enter Prof. Saikat Chaudhuri of the Wharton School of Business, whose work focuses on technological innovation, mergers and acquisitions, and organizational adaptation. There are more challenges to M&As than the usual concerns about pricing and complexity, cautions Chaudhuri. There's that deep, murky Bermuda Triangle of uncertainty that has bedeviled, and ultimately led to the failure, of a number of promising deals.

In this podcast, Dr. Chaudhuri talks about findings from his scrutiny of successful, and not-so-successful mergers and aquisitions, and even gives tips on how to solve some of the problems he's found, and how to avoid others.

Resources

The Innovation-through-Acquisition Strategy: Why the Pay-off Isn't Always There

Dr. Saikat Chaudhuri, Web Page

Bio

Saikat Chaudhuri, DBA, is an Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School of Business. He has consulted with a range of technology-based companies on acquisition and other corporate growth strategies, and with the Indian government on IT-based economic development opportunities.

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer