The multiplicity and diversity of customers continually enrich firms' know-how and improve the efficiency of their operating methods.
Nor did anyone working for the firm know how to read or speak Chinese.
Many portfolio companies have opened offices in the U.S., so the firm knows how to enter the U.S. market too.
According to Sethi and Carroll, the whole firm knows how much cash its portfolio companies have on hand and what their burn rates are.
"Honestly, I don't think any of these financial firms know how this is going to play out," he said.
"By the end, none of the securities firms knew how leveraged Long-Term was," a senior official at the Securities and Exchange Commission told me.
Microsoft, of course, disputes the definition of a "computer", and it all gets a bit passive aggressive, in the only way semi-restrained US tech firms know how.
These firms know how to present stories slickly on screens and to create a buzz for their wares on social media.It is rare for venture capitalists to invest in the news business, especially at a time when many owners of newspapers are selling them, from Gannett (publisher of USA Today) to Tribune Company (the Los Angeles Times).
Why, he asks, "were Moody's and Standard & Poor's willing to bless 80 percent of a pool of dicey mortgage loans with the same triple-A rating they bestowed on the debts of the U.S. Treasury?" Because, he suggests, Wall Street firms knew how to game the system; they knew how to get the rating agencies (which were eager to collect big fees for their services) to ineptly rate dangerous bonds.
Such failure cases indicate that not all firms know how to adopt an ERP solution effectively.
Flat-screen prices have been falling 25% a year, but the most coveted big screens may not deflate as fast as small screens do because fewer firms know how to make the big LCDs.
