Siiquent’s market was hospitals and diagnostic labs. Teomic’s market was research labs and universities. It somewhat makes sense then that Siiquent optimizes around the inputs — perhaps hospitals and diagnostic labs which already have a lot of machinery thus value the innovation of the gene-based diagnosis process. And on the other hand, Teomic’s market might not have as much apparatus and thus their competitive advantage is tethered around the actual machinery.
Both companies have seen success. And given this history, the co-leaders, Isolde and Emanuel, seem to be very bullish on their continued success. They say that their competitive advantage is the dynamic revenue structure which adapts based to customer demand. Imposing the structure of a single revenue model comes with the risk of losing customers and their competitive edge, in addition to internal friction with upstarting this revenue model. The path of least resistance, what they’ve always been doing, allows them to continue business as usual, which is booming. However, the case study does mention that the patents for their technology will be expiring soon, and so it seems that the co-leaders could be subscribing to a fallacy. The risks associated with continuing along this flexible model is that when the merger occurs, there will be internal collapse between departments, information sharing cannot occur, and their approaches could be so antithetical that it drives business away.
At the end of the case study, it seems that the co-leaders are united in being disunited, and they both feel quite passionately. It seems that a top-level approach, which consultant Peter represented, will not work. This provides an opening for a PM to come in and say: how can we meet in the middle? I would recognize where each department head is coming from and validate their experience, hopefully to reduce initial defensiveness. Then, I would ask them to affirm what are their individual values, and what are their shared values. Perhaps in this brainstorming & sharing out, we could bridge the gap between the individual values that diverge, or focusing on the shared commonality. I would ask them what are they willing to compromise on, and what they are not willing to compromise on. Perhaps there is more wiggle room to negotiate here and find win-win scenarios.
Ultimately, I do think that there needs to be more input here from the CEO, as PMs have little authority. However, hopefully the PM could really contribute to finding common ground and being real with the department heads: this is the reality we are currently operating under, so how can we make the most of this situation?
