The Sony Hack and Nortel's Demise: Piracy vs. Crown Jewel Theft

Were the Chinese spying on Nortel? Perhaps. Was this a proximate cause of Nortel's collapse? Seems unlikely that it was even a distal cause and more likely that insiders - such as the person quoted in the CBC article - are attempting to either deflect blame and attention to outside factors or are attempting to maintain their wilfull ignorance of the management rot within the former corporate behemoth.

I worked for several years at BNR, Nortel's old R&D division, then joined a group that spun out of Nortel. A lot of folks pursued that path when they could or simply left for other more entrepreneurial places, because of Nortel's culture and poor management. It was a sluggish dinosaur of a company with barely an entrepreneurial bone and a huge sense of entitlement, entitlement both to government assistance and to the old ways (the 40 year copper renewal cycle, etc.).

Why the diatribe? Because citing Nortel as evidence in favour of one's arguments in this case diminishes the value of those arguments, makes the whole thesis suspect.

Nortel collapsed due to bad management. End of story.

Given how much I dislike DRM etc. from Big Copyright, I was surprised how often I found myself nodding agreeably to this editorial.

I wonder how much this ties into conceptions (dare I say, prejudices?) some non-technical leaders have, where their technology-side is seen more as a cost-center rather than an ongoing investment.