Skip to content
Surprising Science

CISCO Actually a Role Model

CISCO is attracting flak for its strategy and layoffs but could this criticism be misplaced? Here are three reasons why it’s a model for other American companies.
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

What’s the Latest Development?


In the last few days, CISCO (CSCO) has attracted criticism over its strategy and layoffs (around 6,500). What if the criticism is misplaced? Haydn Shaughnessy argues that it is. He gives three reasons why CISCO should actually be seen as a model for the American economy.

What’s the Big Idea?

Shaughnessy says that that  innovative companies are often quasi-monopolist but in CISCO’s case that monopoly power is over. We need to learn from how it responds because many American companies are going to feel the same heat. “We too are culturally limited in how we assess the transition from monopolist to competitor.” “CISCO is a model for what happens in a period of deep structural economic change.”

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Related
This essay describes a model for urban development that takes into account and makes use of the externalities that exist in the built environment. Buildings and the people that inhabitat them makes neighborhoods and vice versa the value of a building is in its locations. How can better frame this relationship between an object and its environment? How can develop strategies for a integral area development that learn from the best global examples?

Up Next