Enterprise 3.0 Collaboration: eProject (Part 3)

[Part 2] Looks like the company is strong in terms of Market Opportunity and Solution Offering. But how about the Team?

Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 11)

After undertaking significant changes, cost cutting and other strategic moves, Finisar has emerged as a company poised for increased market growth. SM: And your stock went from under a dollar to quite a bit higher now? JR: Our stock is quite volatile, and always has been. It went from less than a dollar to, I

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Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 10)

More on the strategic decisions and cost-cutting measures taken. SM: How did you do that? Did you change materials, did you negotiate your supply contracts? I mean 70% of material costs is a lot of material costs to shave. JR: The way we did it was we bought a laser fab in Fremont to make

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It’s A “Dry” Cold… (Part 2)

By Calvin McElroy, Guest Author [Second part of Cal’s review of the Canadian Venture Finance scene]

It’s A “Dry” Cold… (Part 1)

by Calvin McElroy, Guest Author [Cal writes a funny and informative piece on the Canadian Venture Capital industry. The good news: Entrepreneurship in Canada is alive and well.]

Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 9)

Essential to the turnaround of Finisar were decisions which were much different than those being made by competitors, and different than prevailing popular trends. Ultimately, these decisions were also the right ones for Finisar’s survival. SM: And there were lots of process innovations along the way? JR: Exactly. So sharing all of that with a

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Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 8)

After confronting the realities of the new market, difficult decisions needed to be made. Here the “engineer” in Jerry proves very helpful as he tackles the issue, at least in some ways, as an engineering problem. Cutting costs and establishing new operating procedures required far reaching changes. Also, I find it impressive that Jerry did

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Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 7)

Dramatic changes in the market had forced major fiber optic giants like Lucent into tough decisions. The market also proved to be volitile and unpredictable. Nortel, in desperation, offered Finisar its optics business. SM: Nortel had interest in survival. JR: Yes. We spent two weeks in Ottawa trying to figure out how we could assume

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