[Barry Pearson]

I should note that Sony's LA-EA2 adapter is not a SLR attachment; the mirror is fixed, thus requiring less space (it doesn't have to cover the full area, either; just the AF points).

A real "blast from the past" would have a retractable mirror just for focusing, like the Corfield Periflex!

(I'm not expecting to see that re-emerge).

[Fogel70]

I should note that Sony's LA-EA2 adapter is not a SLR attachment; the mirror is fixed, thus requiring less space (it doesn't have to cover the full area, either; just the AF points).

And the LA-EA2 adapter only support APS-C, so it's highly unlikely they can make an adapter like this for FF.

[glanglois]

CIsco has a reputation of integrating acquisitions in 30 days; that's the corporate goal. Everything from management to signs on buildings to HR policy to marketing collateral. Re-arranging engineering, product development, etc. isn't fully done in 30 days but there's no doubt about who's the boss and what the goal is.

A large Japanese company operating on a consensus basis (as they do) can take a very long time to integrate a merger or acquisition. I expect that a good portion of Pentax and Ricoh staff still think of themselves in that way - as Pentax or Ricoh - and management works hard to keep them all feeling valued and respected by waiting patiently for them to get to consensus. This is not an environment conducive to innovation and rapid development.

[RobA_Oz]

CIsco has a reputation of integrating acquisitions in 30 days; that's the corporate goal. Everything from management to signs on buildings to HR policy to marketing collateral. Re-arranging engineering, product development, etc. isn't fully done in 30 days but there's no doubt about who's the boss and what the goal is.

A large Japanese company operating on a consensus basis (as they do) can take a very long time to integrate a merger or acquisition. I expect that a good portion of Pentax and Ricoh staff still think of themselves in that way - as Pentax or Ricoh - and management works hard to keep them all feeling valued and respected by waiting patiently for them to get to consensus. This is not an environment conducive to innovation and rapid development.

Well, I think your half right there. It certainly isn't an environment that's conducive to rapid development. However, people who feel under pressure from major change or unsupportive, bottom-line or shareholder-vaue focused bosses don't tend to innovate, either. They tend to leave, if anything.

Of course we are, as others have pointed out, talking about Japanese culture overlaying all this, so innovation in that circumstance is rarely going to be other than incremental or accidental.

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Last edited by RobA_Oz; 08-30-2013 at 06:40 AM.

[Kunzite]

Well, I think that integrating LED lightning into a flash is innovative, and no accident

[gazonk]

CIsco has a reputation of integrating acquisitions in 30 days; that's the corporate goal.

They didn't do that with Linksys. In fact, they gave up and sold them again after 10 years :-)

[RobA_Oz]

Well, I think that integrating LED lightning into a flash is innovative, and no accident

Of course it is, but it's incremental, rather than revolutionary. It doesn't have to be revolutionary.

[Kunzite]

"Incremental", "evolutionary" and "revolutionary" terms are pretty subjective, so I won't argue about it Though, I believe the changes are more than incremental (they're basically new products).
Anyway, what I wanted to say is that innovation is happening inside Pentax/Ricoh Imaging, maybe not as fast as we'd like. We heard about Pentax experimenting with LED lightning in one of the interviews with Kitazawa-san (don't remember the date, maybe around December 2012?), and at CP+ the AF 360FGZII prototype shown didn't had it.

[Caat]

Well, I think that integrating LED lightning into a flash is innovative, and no accident

I suppose, although the WG compacts have had LED lights to complement the flash for a couple of generations (I think a couple anyway)

[monochrome]

CIsco has a reputation of integrating acquisitions in 30 days; that's the corporate goal. Everything from management to signs on buildings to HR policy to marketing collateral. Re-arranging engineering, product development, etc. isn't fully done in 30 days but there's no doubt about who's the boss and what the goal is.

A large Japanese company operating on a consensus basis (as they do) can take a very long time to integrate a merger or acquisition. I expect that a good portion of Pentax and Ricoh staff still think of themselves in that way - as Pentax or Ricoh - and management works hard to keep them all feeling valued and respected by waiting patiently for them to get to consensus. This is not an environment conducive to innovation and rapid development.

Well, I think your half right there. It certainly isn't an environment that's conducive to rapid development. However, people who feel under pessure from major change or unsupportive, bottom-line or shareholder-vaue focused bosses don't tend to innovate, either. They tend to leave, if anything.

Of course we are, as others have pointed out, talking about Japanese culture overlaying all this, so innovation in that circumstance is rarely going to be other than incremental or accidental.

I certainly don't know the real background in this case, but often in friendlier mergers and acquisitions there is an extended "Due Diligence" period in which the to-be-acquired company shares estensively (under an NDA) its internal operations, controls, processes, philosophy, general personnel profile and everything else. The acquirer then can have a very accurate value decision and idea of what they want to pay, or can walk away if the seller is asking too much.

I think it likely that a company like Cisco would have spent months developing their integration strategy before the deal was even announced, then more months while the deal was finalized. Implementation in 30 days would then merely be following a script.

We have no idea whether such a Due Diligence process was followed by Ricoh and Hoya, or whether it was more like the investment bankers threw the company out there and Ricoh made an impulse bid, like a lens sold on eBay. If it was closer to the latter (little due diligence) then it would take 8-2 quarters to fully integrate. We're seeing the implementation of integration, literally, right now.

[mrNewt]

I've said it before and I'll say it again... a new mount is a good idea... a better idea is to have the new mount and offer an adapter for k-mount.
Kill 2 birds with one stone basically.

Only time will tell what's going to be...

[Jan67]

I think it likely that a company like Cisco would have spent months developing their integration strategy before the deal was even announced, then more months while the deal was finalized. Implementation in 30 days would then merely be following a script.

I spent ca 8 years at Cisco. And I can confirm, that every purchased company, which became one of the business units of Cisco, used immediately the same company tools like ordering, financial reporting and tens of other apps and every employee (who was btw valuated as a big asset) used exactly same phone or notebook with access to sources. So the fluctuation of "purchased" employees was at minimum.
The number of acquisitions was quite high, more than 200 if I remember well...

Well, Ricoh Pentax case may be a bit different. But there should be clear decision at the begining, whether they keep independent products or not. And this message is still missing or at least is unclear for me.

[monochrome]

Well, Ricoh Pentax case may be a bit different. But there should be clear decision at the begining, whether they keep independent products or not. And this message is still missing or at least is unclear for me.

My point was Ricoh wasn't really given time to perform proper pre-acquisiton due diligence and planning - some of that has been done on-the-fly.

Ricoh's message has been very clear. People at PF just don't want to hear it. HOYA reduced the employee force. Ricoh is merging teams and hiring at Pentax. Perhaps they learned something from their experience acquiring office products companies.

[Aristophanes]

Well, I think that integrating LED lightning into a flash is innovative, and no accident

Like the LED's around the lens of the WG series.

[thibs]

Like the LED's around the lens of the WG series.

Yep but Kunzite points to something else... coming in the supposedly coming body which is proper Video support if I decrypt correctly Kunzite thinking