As a guest of AMD, I went to Indianapolis to watch the top Ferrari team once again whomp the other nine teams in what remains one of the most expensive sports in the world. This racing team has been winning for so long and is so dominant in this sport that I often wonder why anyone watches these races anymore. The outcome often seems preordained. There are four major tech companies that back Formula One racing: AMD, HP, Intel and Siemens. I’ve studied tech companies for several years and can see parallels between the companies that do well in racing and in the tech industry.
Its great to see writers such as Rob looking at F1 as a benchmark for business strategy and team development. In my opinion (I must admit, it's a little biased) F1 is a showcase of the most talented and dedicated personnel of any sport on earth. Most you don't even see at the track. I do have a couple of points to raise regarding Rob's article from a fan's perspective.<br> Firstly, "...I often wonder why anyone watches these races anymore." In answer to this, there has always been a dominant team in Formula One. If you look back through the history of F1, teams such as Mclaren and Williams both have had periods of utter domination, and people have said exactly the same thing as Rob has. McLaren for example in one season won 15 of the 16 races Ferrari have not done that (yet), Williams have been dominant for years in a row. I admit that no-one has won as many world championships as Ferrari but you need to look back to 1998 and Ferrari weren't even scoring points in most races, this was due to (among other factors), their policy of hiring mainly Italians. Now I'm not saying that Italians are bad at what they do but in this case Ferrari were denying themselves the best talent available from around the world. There is a fantastic article written in a formula one journal that discusses this issue of team development cycles (build - rebuild - decline) which would be perfect to use as a benchmark for any business...I digress. Secondly, Rob mentions Toyota, "...Toyota doing poorly, but that poor performance reflects badly on the Intel processor line". They have only been in F1 for 3 full seasons and they are designing and building both engine and chassis from scratch, no mean feat. They have been able to score points in a number of races, again no mean feat. Success in F1 takes timeThis would be another good case for analysis in terms of team dynamics when building one from scratch. Now, I understand that the point of the article was not Formula One itself, but I thought I might mention these couple of things in case anyone's interested.
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High-Tech Companies and Formula One Racing
Posted by: Rob Enderle November 27, 2004 05:00 AMAs a guest of AMD, I went to Indianapolis to watch the top Ferrari team once again whomp the other nine teams in what remains one of the most expensive sports in the world. This racing team has been winning for so long and is so dominant in this sport that I often wonder why anyone watches these races anymore. The outcome often seems preordained. There are four major tech companies that back Formula One racing: AMD, HP, Intel and Siemens. I’ve studied tech companies for several years and can see parallels between the companies that do well in racing and in the tech industry.
I do have a couple of points to raise regarding Rob's article from a fan's perspective.<br>
Firstly, "...I often wonder why anyone watches these races anymore." In answer to this, there has always been a dominant team in Formula One. If you look back through the history of F1, teams such as Mclaren and Williams both have had periods of utter domination, and people have said exactly the same thing as Rob has. McLaren for example in one season won 15 of the 16 races Ferrari have not done that (yet), Williams have been dominant for years in a row. I admit that no-one has won as many world championships as Ferrari but you need to look back to 1998 and Ferrari weren't even scoring points in most races, this was due to (among other factors), their policy of hiring mainly Italians. Now I'm not saying that Italians are bad at what they do but in this case Ferrari were denying themselves the best talent available from around the world.
There is a fantastic article written in a formula one journal that discusses this issue of team development cycles (build - rebuild - decline) which would be perfect to use as a benchmark for any business...I digress.
Secondly, Rob mentions Toyota, "...Toyota doing poorly, but that poor performance reflects badly on the Intel processor line". They have only been in F1 for 3 full seasons and they are designing and building both engine and chassis from scratch, no mean feat. They have been able to score points in a number of races, again no mean feat. Success in F1 takes timeThis would be another good case for analysis in terms of team dynamics when building one from scratch.
Now, I understand that the point of the article was not Formula One itself, but I thought I might mention these couple of things in case anyone's interested.