Comments on: Mitt Romney and the Expertise Fallacy http://wordandobject.com/2008/11/mitt-romney-and-the-expertise-fallacy/ Fri, 30 Sep 2011 06:05:10 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 By: Dustin http://wordandobject.com/2008/11/mitt-romney-and-the-expertise-fallacy/comment-page-1/#comment-23 Dustin Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:47:32 +0000 http://wordandobject.com/?p=34#comment-23 Good points, and I think I mostly agree with you. However, whether Romney's "experience shift" (his idea of moving experts from one industry to another) works probably is more dependent on the individual industries and experts in question. Case in point: the current turnaround at Ford. In 2006, Ford hired Alan Mulally as CEO, at which point Ford started cutting jobs and closing plants aggressively. These aggressive moves made headlines and Ford looked like it was doomed, but after the financial crisis hit Alan Mulally's restructuring looked genius. Ford was the only US car company not to take federal bailout money, and Ford has recently overtaken GM in auto sales. Prior to working at Ford, Mulally worked for 35 years in aerospace at Boeing, so he had no prior auto experience. So the expertise shift does work in some circumstances. It depends on the person (Mulally is a genius) and the overlap between industries (aerospace -> auto probably works better than dog toy retailer - auto industry). Good points, and I think I mostly agree with you. However, whether Romney’s “experience shift” (his idea of moving experts from one industry to another) works probably is more dependent on the individual industries and experts in question.

Case in point: the current turnaround at Ford. In 2006, Ford hired Alan Mulally as CEO, at which point Ford started cutting jobs and closing plants aggressively. These aggressive moves made headlines and Ford looked like it was doomed, but after the financial crisis hit Alan Mulally’s restructuring looked genius. Ford was the only US car company not to take federal bailout money, and Ford has recently overtaken GM in auto sales. Prior to working at Ford, Mulally worked for 35 years in aerospace at Boeing, so he had no prior auto experience.

So the expertise shift does work in some circumstances. It depends on the person (Mulally is a genius) and the overlap between industries (aerospace -> auto probably works better than dog toy retailer – auto industry).

]]>