- Feb 11, 2015
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- Alex
Various threads have mentioned this over the years, but not at this level.
Can an Industrial Giant Become a Tech Darling? (Ep. 357)
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ford
The Ford Motor Company is ditching its legacy sedans, doubling down on trucks, and trying to steer its stock price out of a long skid. But C.E.O. Jim Hackett has even bigger plans: to turn a century-old automaker into the nucleus of a “transportation operating system.” Is Hackett just whistling past the graveyard, or does he see what others can’t?
One reason Jim Hackett wasn’t on anyone’s radar is that he’s not what they call “a car guy.” In Detroit, the world is pretty much divided into “car guys” and everybody else. Hackett is a 63-year-old Ohio native who started out in sales and management at Procter and Gamble; then worked for many years at the Michigan furniture company Steelcase, including 19 years as C.E.O.; and after that, he was interim athletic director at the University of Michigan, his alma mater, where he hired the football coach Jim Harbaugh. He did join the board of directors of Ford in 2013, while he was still at Steelcase. But, like we said: not an obvious candidate for C.E.O. of one of America’s Big Three automakers.
A “transportation operating system” sounds an awful lot like something a pure technology company might talk about. This leads to several questions. Can a traditional manufacturing company like Ford really turn itself into a modern tech company? What makes Ford think they can succeed, when the companies whose turf they’re invading — Amazon and Google and Uber — are already so good at what they do? And what, exactly, is Ford good at these days? Finally: will Hackett’s vision for Ford turn out to be a brilliant repositioning or a desperate grab for relevance?
This “emerging thing” would come to be known as Ford Smart Mobility, a unit meant to boost the company’s role in ride-sharing and autonomous vehicles.
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I know the CEO of Argo AI, Ford gave them $1B. All over the streets of Pittsburgh.
https://www.argo.ai
Can an Industrial Giant Become a Tech Darling? (Ep. 357)
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ford
The Ford Motor Company is ditching its legacy sedans, doubling down on trucks, and trying to steer its stock price out of a long skid. But C.E.O. Jim Hackett has even bigger plans: to turn a century-old automaker into the nucleus of a “transportation operating system.” Is Hackett just whistling past the graveyard, or does he see what others can’t?
One reason Jim Hackett wasn’t on anyone’s radar is that he’s not what they call “a car guy.” In Detroit, the world is pretty much divided into “car guys” and everybody else. Hackett is a 63-year-old Ohio native who started out in sales and management at Procter and Gamble; then worked for many years at the Michigan furniture company Steelcase, including 19 years as C.E.O.; and after that, he was interim athletic director at the University of Michigan, his alma mater, where he hired the football coach Jim Harbaugh. He did join the board of directors of Ford in 2013, while he was still at Steelcase. But, like we said: not an obvious candidate for C.E.O. of one of America’s Big Three automakers.
A “transportation operating system” sounds an awful lot like something a pure technology company might talk about. This leads to several questions. Can a traditional manufacturing company like Ford really turn itself into a modern tech company? What makes Ford think they can succeed, when the companies whose turf they’re invading — Amazon and Google and Uber — are already so good at what they do? And what, exactly, is Ford good at these days? Finally: will Hackett’s vision for Ford turn out to be a brilliant repositioning or a desperate grab for relevance?
This “emerging thing” would come to be known as Ford Smart Mobility, a unit meant to boost the company’s role in ride-sharing and autonomous vehicles.
-----------------
I know the CEO of Argo AI, Ford gave them $1B. All over the streets of Pittsburgh.
https://www.argo.ai
