Monday, June 07, 2004
Whatever Happened to the British Motor Cycle Industry?"
Over the weekend I skimmed through the book
"Whatever Happened to the British Motor Cycle Industry?" by Bert Hopwood which has been reissued by Haynes.
For those who don't know, this book is about how the British Motorcycle industry managed to go from being a world leader to scarcely existing in under 20 years.
I can't claim to have read it thoroughly, but I will. It's almost Bert Hopwood's autobiography and he was there when the events described took place. You have to be interested in motorcycles (now pretty old motorcycles) to get anything from this, if you're not, then you're going to find it dull. However, if you get beyond that then it is an interesting story - almost a tragedy. Parts of it are like a horror story where you want to shout to the characters "Don't do that! Don't open that door! Don't waste money on that hopeless model! Don't cancel one of the few projects which might get you out of this mess!". But, and this is where I want to read it more carefully, the question it doesn't really answer is: "When did it _start_ to go wrong?"
Clearly when he wrote it Bert felt bitter about some of the things which happened,
and some of the decisions were just stupid, but I kept on looking for lessons I could apply elsewhere.
So far all I've come up with is a list of negatives:
And two observations:
But "When did it _start_ to go wrong?"
"Whatever Happened to the British Motor Cycle Industry?" by Bert Hopwood which has been reissued by Haynes.
For those who don't know, this book is about how the British Motorcycle industry managed to go from being a world leader to scarcely existing in under 20 years.
I can't claim to have read it thoroughly, but I will. It's almost Bert Hopwood's autobiography and he was there when the events described took place. You have to be interested in motorcycles (now pretty old motorcycles) to get anything from this, if you're not, then you're going to find it dull. However, if you get beyond that then it is an interesting story - almost a tragedy. Parts of it are like a horror story where you want to shout to the characters "Don't do that! Don't open that door! Don't waste money on that hopeless model! Don't cancel one of the few projects which might get you out of this mess!". But, and this is where I want to read it more carefully, the question it doesn't really answer is: "When did it _start_ to go wrong?"
Clearly when he wrote it Bert felt bitter about some of the things which happened,
and some of the decisions were just stupid, but I kept on looking for lessons I could apply elsewhere.
So far all I've come up with is a list of negatives:
- Don't lose sight of your customer
- Don't show contempt for your customer
- Don't ship poor quality product
- Don't allow the board to lose touch with marketing, manufacturing or development
(and certainly not all three at once) - Don't start gambling on "silver bullet" (or "killer app") products
And two observations:
- The whole thing from fledgling industry, through world leader,
to lame duck to stone dead took place in a man's working life-time.
In fact, many of the same names appear at different times. - At that time (70's) a lot of British industry seemed to have problems.
It wasn't just the motorbikes.
But "When did it _start_ to go wrong?"
# posted by tom_gillies @ 11:03 AM 
