Martin
Strategic Concepts & Mechanics
Primary Evidence
"The meetings went off without a hitch. Steve did a fantastic job mesmerizing Quattrone and Martin over Pixar’s potential. They could hardly have been more enthusiastic about the vision and strategy. They understood Pixar was not the typical Silicon Valley tech company, and both said they wanted to involve their entertainment specialists in LA. Even the discussion over Pixar’s risks had gone well."
"Brenner was unwilling to give up part of his responsibilities and didn’t get along with Tobin. It took them months to negotiate the transfer of responsibilities and executives; Tobin wanted to control project management and set the road map for what services and apps would be developed, but the two never reached an agreement and that role largely stayed with Brenner. “I think Alan assumed that my job was to market and sell whatever [apps and services] he wanted to build, and my instructions were that he needed to build to what I required,” says Tobin. “Because the roles and responsibilities weren’t clear, it created some conflict. Alan felt he was capable of handling the business side as well as the technology side.” Balsillie didn’t agree—he felt Brenner should stick to technology—and Lazaridis didn’t care; when Tobin tried to escalate the issue to both Balsillie and Martin, he was redirected to Yach, Brenner’s boss, who sent him back to work things out with Brenner. To many it made no sense to split the responsibilities between two people; it just caused confusion and gridlock. “Those two jobs aren’t really separate,” said McDowell. “Tobin wasn’t looking for Brenner to tell him what to do, and Brenner wasn’t looking for Tobin to tell him what to do.… The net result is a stalemate.”"
"At the Fouquet's, during the famous little party among friends intended to celebrate Nicolas Sarkozy's "victory," the two barons of capitalism looked at each other like cats and dogs. At the wedding of his son Yannick to Chloé Bouygues, Martin's niece, on June 17, 2006, at the Armenonville pavilion, Vincent Bolloré even allegedly confided, "When my son told me he was marrying a Bouygues, I thought of that sketch by Muriel Robin where her daughter tells her she wants to marry a Black man, and she responds: a Black man... black?"..."