Ockham Technologies Case
Ockham technologies case
The case ends as James Triandiflou, the founder of Ockham Technologies, describes the company's early growth in launching an enormous deal with IBM and triumph over financing their business operations because it received financing offers from successful investors and venture capital firms. However, Ockham continues to face operational problems from assembling its human recourses to establishing outsourcing relationships for its on-going success.
Rationale for problem selection:
James Triandiflou's faced problems with assembling his executive team. Though Ockham Technologies assembled its founding team, numerous problems arose: (1) there was “friction” between co-founders Triandiflou and Meisenheimer as they shared different prospective on company's control issue leading one to make decisions without the involvement of the other (p 12). (2) Building the company's board of directors was also a challenge. Triandiflou had issues with having two members from one venture firm because he wanted to keep his board small. If Ockham does not bring together the right people, it may risk falling apart and thus jeopardizing the growth of the company.
Ockham's founding team was inexperienced. Triandiflou was aware that he needed broad range of skills. On the other hand, his team was lacking experience in the industry. The case mentions, that he was looking to find “the best athletes by hiring the “best people.” (p. 4). When it came down to developing their actual product, his team did not have the knowledge, so they relied on outsourcing their software development to Ron Hardin from Flex Solutions. They were extremely lucky to land the $100K IBM deal considering their software prototype presentation with IBM was not well prepared (pp. 6-7). Judging on their PowerPoint slides from Exhibit 5, not much thought was put into their presentations (p. 18). One point to note is that working with a big company like IBM can also pose high risks.
The case ends as James Triandiflou, the founder of Ockham Technologies, describes the company's early growth in launching an enormous deal with IBM and triumph over financing their business operations because it received financing offers from successful investors and venture capital firms. However, Ockham continues to face operational problems from assembling its human recourses to establishing outsourcing relationships for its on-going success.
Rationale for problem selection:
James Triandiflou's faced problems with assembling his executive team. Though Ockham Technologies assembled its founding team, numerous problems arose: (1) there was “friction” between co-founders Triandiflou and Meisenheimer as they shared different prospective on company's control issue leading one to make decisions without the involvement of the other (p 12). (2) Building the company's board of directors was also a challenge. Triandiflou had issues with having two members from one venture firm because he wanted to keep his board small. If Ockham does not bring together the right people, it may risk falling apart and thus jeopardizing the growth of the company.
Ockham's founding team was inexperienced. Triandiflou was aware that he needed broad range of skills. On the other hand, his team was lacking experience in the industry. The case mentions, that he was looking to find “the best athletes by hiring the “best people.” (p. 4). When it came down to developing their actual product, his team did not have the knowledge, so they relied on outsourcing their software development to Ron Hardin from Flex Solutions. They were extremely lucky to land the $100K IBM deal considering their software prototype presentation with IBM was not well prepared (pp. 6-7). Judging on their PowerPoint slides from Exhibit 5, not much thought was put into their presentations (p. 18). One point to note is that working with a big company like IBM can also pose high risks.