Emanual focused on selling the machinery and instruments as the business model. He mainly was targeting boutique institutions that would give him a high margin on the sales of his decisions, such as research centers, because they were always the customers for fewer products but more advanced ones. On the other hand, Isolde focused on hospitals and laboratories where they needed more different types of supplies, compounds, and chemicals to conduct their experiments. The example they used was when some shaving companies sell razors for cheap, but they make most of their money from razor blades, which makes sense because these kinds of customers need a high supply of compounds, and sometimes they would need extra chemicals, which was provided for free as part of the bought test.
Having such a hybrid model allowed the company to be flexible and nimble in changing how they make money to serve the customer in the best way possible. However, such changes in business models can break down the risk models the company has designed over time, and it will probably need to redo them from scratch. It can also introduce uncertainty for investors in predicting the company’s future cash flow while taking the risk that changing the revenue model might lead to higher profit for the company.
In the case of a merger, the best action for a product manager would be to spend some time working with the employees of the other division to fully understand their processes and design a merger roadmap while minimizing potential conflicts between the two divisions. It is also essential for the product manager to allow the senior members of each decision to have their opinions heard in the process. The product manager should spend a lot of time running their decisions by the senior members.
