Food for Thought

Many years ago I met Wilbur Ross who was a college and business school classmate of a friend of mine. Since that meeting Ross has become a billionaire. He began his business career (he first aspired to be a writer) by gluing back the wrecks of Michael Milken's junk-bond financings. Last fall he was interviewed on National Public Radio. He talked about one of his newest investments, SpiceJet, a low-cost airline in India. During the interview he elaborated on one of the reasons for his investment in SpiceJet:

“India is a very large land mass, very large distances between the major population centers, but ground transportation is very, very difficult. They've not put enough into infrastructure for roads or even railroads to make that a very good means of transport. So air transport, we think, is uniquely important to India.”

I found this interesting because the same can be said about many other emerging economies, such as China, Russia, etc. And when you think about it - how easy is it to get to places like Spring Hill, Tennessee (the location of the original Saturn plant) or many other small factory towns in the United States? Driving, taking a train, or bus is not practical when speed is of the essence to restart a shut-down assembly line.

The three Detroit automobile CEOs should have taken a page from Lee Iacocca when he came begging for loan guarantees in he early 1980s. Iacocca replied to the grandstanding congressmen when they suggested he sell his company’s Gulfstream jet, “OK, I’ll sell it, but I will be damned if I know how I will run Chrysler’s plants in small towns all over the USA. I guess will just have to lease it back.” And that’s what he did, and he saved Chrysler.

How Iacocca got to Washington is not known, but it was not the public relations disaster of last fall. The Washington offices of the car companies advised the CEO not to fly to Washington in their companus’ jets. Thet ignored the advice and the rest is history.

And where is Iacocca when we need him. Well he is back and has written a new book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? If you have an answer, post a comment below.