Good Business Decision Story of Facebook
Any business plan which has clear definitions of scope, schedule, and budget could be successfully executed.? Then, if the expected ROI pan out and become reality, then the benefit would be harvested.
Visionary product provides revenue streams for many years into the future, e.g., iPad or iPhone.
Good commercial products provide revenue for couple of years at the most, before incrementally enhanced product replace the legacy.
These business plans are well thought off and vetted by both technical and business professionals and moved forward to executions and produce revenue streams.
In technical industry, there are times that a business plan is launched and only critically vetted by business professionals.? The technical challenges are unknown to the business community, therefore are not properly scoped, and the cost of doing the project increases significantly without a clear path for execution and harvesting any ROI.
The sooner the burning cash is realized, the sooner the cost saving begins, and increases the opportunity for investment in the area of expertise which could yield ROI.
Sometime in 2013, Facebook business executives, decided to launch their SoC design and development for XR applications.? The idea was to start design and developing SoC and associated HW/FW which would support Facebook XR business goals.
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Facebook went to hiring hundreds number of Engineering from semiconductor industries with many years of successful SoC experiences from bottoms up, e.g., engineers and some managers.? The business plan was in full motion.? The business plan has not been vetted before launch by technical exports of the semiconductor industry.? The technical scopes and responsibilities were loosely defined and there were not metrics to identify technical challenges and risk.
Fast forward 9 years later in the Summer of 2022, couple of Billion dollars investments later, Facebook realized that SoC design and developments requires many engineering disciplines that Facebook does not have and cannot necessarily recruit in time to complete the business plan concept of 2013.
Facebook laid off thousands SoC/HW/FW/SW engineers which supported that XR business plan.
The new business decision was to partner with SoC experts to harvest this new XR verticals.
Qualcomm’s bread and butter business is design and developments of SoC and has resources, network, proven track record, and understand the cost model of working within semiconductor industry.
The Summer of 2022 Facebook decision was an excellent decision made by Facebook executives to partner with Qualcomm.
The 2022 business decision will bear fruit, much more profitable for both companies which alone could not have realized.