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Stay Focused On Your Core Business

Boeing's anti spam spin off takes flight. The aerospace giant launches its anti spam spin off, MessageGate, a commercialized version of the software the company uses internally to fight unsolicited email. [CNET News.com]

While Boeing is involved with custom software development projects for the military, and many government contractors regularly seek commercially viable products, spinning off their new anti spam software is a smart decision.

From aerospace to spam blocking

Often companies try run with commercially viable products that aren't specifically oriented to their customer base only to fail. Boeings approach to create a subsidiary organization does the following:

1. Gives them an opportunity in an industry that can generate leads for their core business,
2. Provides a partner company that can enhance existing efforts in existing network engineering contracts,
3. Isolates the risk in a separate organization protecting the core business from dilution,
4. Maintain brand focus on their core business, protecting current relationship investments,
5. Provides a great publicity channel because the launch is a newsworthy event,
6. Draws attention away from current legal battles toward a common concern for commercial businesses,

This spin-off provides another tool to rebuild the relationship damaged produced by their illegally used documents obtained from rival Lockheed Martin. This diversification in a separate unit may sure up some market open left open to rivals Lockheed and the Pentagon's best kept secret SAIC. With General Dynamics recent acquisition of Veridian more rivals are on the way and Boeing will need all the help it can get. I've worked with all five of these companies and their competitive nature is insane.

Before you take advantage of a new opportunity or launch an internal project, look at what it contributes to your core business. If it doesn't significantly enhance what your customer see you as now, then by all means, spin the project off. You can always acquire it in the future, but more often it's more profitable as a separate group.

/ grow-products | management-strategy /

By Justin Hitt at August 21, 2003 12:28 PM  Subscribe in a reader