Acer, Inc: Taiwan’s Rampaging Dragon
Michelle L
Danielle Humphreys
Lizbeth
Esi
2) Executive summary
Acer, Inc, is a Taiwanese personal computer (pc) company, originally known as Multitech, was founded in Taiwan in 1976, by Stan Shih, his wife and three friends. Under the guidance of the CEO Shih, a strong norm of frugality, nobility, evidenced by his many slogans, employee involvement and ownership, an anti-classic Chinese entrepreneur’s tight personal control, and joint ventures led to early successes for the company and guided early expansion
The case describes the strategic, organizational, and management changes that led Acer from its 1976 startup to become the world's second-largest computer manufacturer. Outlines the birth of the company, the painful "professionalization" of its management, the plunge into losses, and the transformation under founder Stan Shih's radical "fast food" business concept and his "client server" organization model, which are put to the test when a young product manager in Acer America develops a radically new multimedia home PC with global potential. Shih must decide whether to give an inexperienced manager in a loss-generating subsidiary the green light.
3) Introduction of the problem and issues in the case
After just a couple years, Shih started on a globalization process, as he targeted smaller neighboring markets, of lesser interest to the global giants, and established partnerships with dealers and distributors in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. As the company moved into the international stage, primarily through Asia, Middle East and Latin America, multitech introduced its first mainstream, commercial product, the inexpensive “microprocessor” computer. Suc ...