By Vadim Kotelnikov. Main source of information: "Venture Catalyst", Donald L. Laurie.
Hit hard by the global economic and financial crisis, on January 14, 2009, Nortel filed for protection from creditors in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, in order to restructure its debt and financial obligations. In June, the company announced it no longer planned to continue operations and that it would sell off all of its business units. Nortel's CDMA wireless business and LTE access technology was sold to Ericsson; the Enterprise business unit was purchased by Avaya; the Metro Ethernet Networks unit was sold to Ciena Corporation; and the GSM business was sold to Ericsson and Kapsch |
Nortel's Core Competence – Seeking out the Discontinuities Having declared its independence from AT&T and Bell Canada in 1976, Nortel has grown to become a world market leader in telecommunications, voice, and data transmission. By the turn of the century, Nortel owned up to 90% of the world market for its selected competence areas such as ten-gigabit systems. The key to this success is the company's ability to seek out the discontinuities, whether they crop up in technology or in the market it serves. Having mastered this ability, the company knows what to do when - and quite often before – the discontinuity happens. Unwilling to settle to mediocre results, Nortel has developed a significantly advanced technology program and is serious about finding and implementing disruptive technologies in such areas as wireless communications and optical networks.
Sources of Nortel's Competitive Advantage... Partnering with Venture Capital Firms... Formalizing Relationships with VC Firms... Reciprocal Preferential Treatment... Corporate Investing Through External Venture Capital Firms...
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