monopolistic corporation goes for buying-out approach.

in project 154, there's a key mega corp called systems corporation that started in software, but eventually branched out into multiple industries, kinda like Disney.

they keep getting bigger by buying out smaller companies and kind of assimilating them into one mass. monopoly is their ultimate goal.

at the same time, branches of SC keep working on major projects such as the titular project 154, which is essentially mass-produced clone slaves. [the legalities have already been handled due to lobbying and sneaky legislature, the ethics are not an issue yet because project is secret for time being as it is still in development]

is buying out approach alongside developing expensive projects financially a good idea?

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Depends on the number of existing rival corporations and to "where" they are expanding to.

Wal-Mart has tried doing a different approach but with similar risks, here in Brazil. They made absurdly good deals to the local population by lowering their prices. They hoped the Brazilians would stop buying from national corporations and go for them instead, even though they'd have to elevate the prices later to make up for the low prices.

But then it didn't work, probably because of the anti-USA sentiment that's been growing among Brazilians in these recent decades.

hmm, at this point in 2040's, p154's setting, it's already really difficult to do anything in the us without your money eventually going into sc's till.

i've also never made reference to a rival corp, so i guess there isn't a corp quite as big as sc.

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Then I suppose it'd be a good idea to work on slave clones and keep expanding.

As long as they don't suffer from a sudden scandal, of course.

funny, p154 is leaked just after [or during the very late] events of the story and naturally people are furious.

sc plays it well by releasing the project a little early and having tours and exhibits to expose general populace to p154 as much as possible.

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Hm, with such a giant corporation on a God-Given assimilation mission, they will have 'coherency' issues - i.e. the logistics and organization of all their sub-departments down the line. It is though, that with a monopoly on the branches of market, they will have plenty choice on what price to offer. (i.e. there's little need to lower prices for the sake of beating competition.)

One possible problem which may arise is the dissatisfaction with no alternatives to choose. (And also because some people don't like seeing a name spread everywhere. It's like Big Brother's logo is always watching you.) A single company manages a diversity of products, and there runs the risk of becoming generic, and sloppy in its handlings.

I imagine with little competition, it may be the megacorp loses a drive to innovate - start treating its customers with a "Take it or Leave it" attitude, because you don't seem to have much choice in where you can get the product.

Outside of perhaps, small business which crop up to fill a niche. (Until they get stomped down by ze megacorp, that is.)

systems corp uses many names, actually. and many formerly independent companies are allowed to continue to use their name.

they own the equivalent of google, for example, which is called xanxis.

edited 29th Jun '11 1:41:35 PM by annebeeche

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I suppose it can be a good approach for garnering influence then, for the purposes of these large projects.

In the 1980s and early 90s, the lovable cut-ups running the US economy started buying and merging companies. They thought it was another way to save money by consolidating management. Then they realized that knowing how to make and market, say, magazines didn't necessarily translate to knowing how to make and market, say, movies, or comic books, or deodorant, or chocolate, or an Internet portal. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Time Warner AOL.)

As with any other sort of power, the more tentacles you have and the further you spread them, the harder it is to control them or even know what they're doing. In terms of your story, as the company gets bigger, its goals get more and more diffuse, its operations get more bureaucratic, and often the left tentacle doesn't know what the right tentacle is doing.

Under World. It rocks!

makes perfect sense to me.

also makes me wonder if a company that big would eventually undergo mitosis and split, like how the roman empire split into western roman empire and byzantine.

edited 30th Jun '11 1:38:52 PM by annebeeche

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A company that large is likely to have many "wholly owned subsidiaries" rather than be controlled from a single monolithic board (unless it wants to die a horrible bureaucratic death).

Large megacorps can easily run expensive test projects, assuming it has a lot of key profit sectors that rake in the money.

For instance, Microsoft is able to enter into totally new markets it was never even close to by virtue of using money from its operating systems division. Then based on whether or not they entered the new market well, that new piece of the organisation can survive on its own and provide money back to the parent.

Systems corp does, in fact, do exactly that.

It helps in keeping the general populace from feeling like they're only surrounded by one corporate name—that Big Brother thing.

edited 30th Jun '11 4:57:05 PM by annebeeche

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Yeah so, in answering your OP, corporations do this today thus it makes perfect sense (those corporations are quite successful afterall)

I'll give you an example of Intel. They spend billions on R&D for new chips but they also make huge buyouts (last major one was a 7 billion dollar buyout).

Now, about organisational civil war, it also happens. It's of course less spectacular in today's world because corporations don't have private armies but even economic in-fighting can be quite harsh. Maybe nobody dropped bombs but a hundred thousand jobs lost can trash a city just as well. It'd mostly centre around people trying to climb to the top by backstabbing one another. It's a very unfortunate event you see in corporate entities today where someone tries to get a leg up by doing short-term cost cutting or playing a blame-game on project deadline overruns or cost overruns.

edited 30th Jun '11 9:42:56 PM by breadloaf

if it helps any think about a corporation like cell, as it gets bigger the service area to volume ratio goes wild a la the square/cube Law [1]. so they have to specialize like crazy, set up strategic business units, contract out, connect with each other, and eat smaller corps to get anything done.

of course if that makes the mega corp or the corporate infighting itself cancer is any-one's guess.

Interesting you should mention that as Project 154 doubles as Systems Corps's private army.

If I am correct, cancer is basically mitosis gone out of control. Tumors are clumps of the excess cells that result from the uncontrolled mitosis.

edited 30th Jun '11 9:58:28 PM by annebeeche

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I would have imagined so. There'd presumably also be wings that do private policing or military work too, I mean, you gotta have those in a megacorp :)

Project One Fifty Four itself is the pawns, soldiers, legion, the pieces that are actually played in war *

. They are, after all, merely clones raised specifically for the purpose of being malleable hive-minded serfs.

At the time my novel takes place, the Project is still in the final stage of development.

edited 30th Jun '11 10:10:58 PM by annebeeche

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If I am correct, cancer is basically mitosis gone out of control. Tumors are clumps of the excess cells that result from the uncontrolled mitosis.

yes, but the thing is that's kind of where the metaphor breaks down. cancer is a result of a natural process that fails to either to put on the breaks or failure to step off the accelerator. while a tumor is just a lump of cancer, possibly with veins that sucks nutrients into it and divides indefinitely. IIRC one of the first identified cancers currently outweighs the original progenitor and is survived by said progenitor with no stopping in sight.

so how does that relate to Mega Corps one might ask. You could argue that it's either a cancer or a tumor possibly metathesized but it doesn't really have the properties of either exclusively or completely. or the fact that humans are a bit more complicated than cancer. not to mention such things as if it's a cultural thing, an inevitability, or a bad thing.

or that Giant Space Chinchilla is literal minded. but that's hardly an argument.

Eh, I say the metaphor works as long as you don't put cancer into the equation.

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