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Old 20 July 2008, 05:55 AM   #14 (permalink)
Varese2002
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Location: Apeldoorn, Netherlands
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Froggy View Post
--- I think that René Hanriot was a good manufacturer but a bad administrator, and Ponnier had good financial ressources but was a bad manufacturer...
---
Hi Bruno, thanks for the extra information about the 'job-hopping' in those times. You are quite right. To run a business you need a team of people who can do the job. To run an aircraft firm in those times, you needed at least the following talent:
  • a designer
  • a production oriented man who could organize and plan the manufacturing. Producing the machines within tight limits of cost, money and quality
  • a financial business man, who could organize the selling and making good (profitable) deals

The problem is that the whole team must be good. A brilliant example are the brothers Morane (financial and producing) and Raymond Saulnier
(Saulnier the brilliant designer).
There are far more teams which did not work together, examples are here Ponnier and Hanriot.
Special was of course Anthony Fokker who claimed to do all things, but in reality he was the shrewd business man, making brilliant financial profits, but leaving the designing and the production to others. Later he claimed in his autobiography he had done almost everything by himself. A typical distortion of history

Cheers

Kees
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