Baidu Shake-Up Underscores Instability, Frustration 百度重组表明公司高层动荡及新产品受挫

By newsdoug on July 11, 2011

Baidu reorganization: footsteps in the dark Baidu’s (Nasdaq: BIDU) new restructuring announcement contains details on the four main business units it will form in its latest transformation, but the subtext in all this is the problems the company has faced retaining top talent and moving into new product areas. Clearly Baidu CEO Robin Li is trying to reassure investors by pointing out that three out of four of his new division heads have been at the company for six years or more. (company announcement) Unfortunately, what appears to be the most important new appointment — head of new commercial products and technologies — has only been with the company for a year, throwing a spotlight on the difficulty that Baidu has had in nearly all of its new product initiatives over the last few years. Its list of failing of failed new initiatives is long and varied, including a struggling Japan business (previous post) and shuttered micro-blogging and e-commerce services. (previous post) Chatter is nearly non-stop about the latest departure of top executives at the company, no doubt due in part to all these failed initiatives and possibly in part due to Li’s own difficulties in communicating with his top management team. As the latest case in point, the restructuring announcement says that senior vice president Shen Haoyu will be leaving Baidu at the end of the month for “personal reasons”, industry jargon for saying that he and Li didn’t see eye to eye on important issues. Clearly Li is worried about his company’s inability to find any new business areas to diversify beyond its core online search business, whose growth is likely to slow down in the next few years. This restructuring is probably designed to show investors Baidu is working actively to keep its growth alive, but it will take more than announcements to do that. In the meantime, look for more turmoil at the top of Baidu as it struggles to chart a new direction.

Bottom line: Baidu will continue to be plagued by turmoil in its top management and failure of its new initiatives, as CEO Robin Li struggles to find a long-term growth formula for his company.

百度<BIDU.O>最新重组声明整合四大业务部的细节，但言下之意是该公司面临留住高端人才和开发新产品的困境。百度首席执行官（CEO）李彦宏指出，四个新部门的负责人有三人在公司任职至少六年，显然希望以此打消投资者疑虑。但不幸的是，看起来最重要的新任命–新商业产品和技术部负责人却刚进百度一年，凸显百度过去几年几乎所有新产品的开发都受挫的困境。百度有很多开拓新业务以失败告终的例证，包括日文搜索引擎、微博和电子商务平台。有关百度多名高管离职的传闻不断，毫无疑问，部分原因是新举措失败，还可能因为李彦宏自身与管理团队沟通不畅。最近一个很好的例子是，重组声明称，百度高级副总裁沈皓瑜将在月底因“个人原因”离职，言外之意是他和李彦宏在重要问题上有分歧。李彦宏显然担忧百度无法拓展搜索引擎以外业务，未来几年这一核心业务势必放缓。这次重组可能是向投资者证明，百度积极采取行动，以保证其增长，但该公司要做的不止发声明这麽简单。同时，预计在百度寻找新的发展方向时，其高层还将继续发生动荡。

一句话：由於百度首席执行官李彦宏未能找到公司长期增长模式，百度未来将继续受高层动荡和新举措失败的困扰。（