Were the Chinese spying on Nortel? Perhaps. Was this a proximate cause of Nortel's collapse? Seems unlikely that it was even a distal cause and more likely that insiders - such as the person quoted in the CBC article - are attempting to either deflect blame and attention to outside factors or are attempting to maintain their wilfull ignorance of the management rot within the former corporate behemoth.<p>I worked for several years at BNR, Nortel's old R&D division, then joined a group that spun out of Nortel. A lot of folks pursued that path when they could or simply left for other more entrepreneurial places, because of Nortel's culture and poor management. It was a sluggish dinosaur of a company with barely an entrepreneurial bone and a huge sense of entitlement, entitlement both to government assistance and to the old ways (the 40 year copper renewal cycle, etc.).<p>Why the diatribe? Because citing Nortel as evidence in favour of one's arguments in this case diminishes the value of those arguments, makes the whole thesis suspect.<p>Nortel collapsed due to bad management. End of story.
Given how much I dislike DRM etc. from Big Copyright, I was surprised how often I found myself nodding agreeably to this editorial.<p>I wonder how much this ties into conceptions (dare I say, prejudices?) some non-technical leaders have, where their technology-side is seen more as a cost-center rather than an ongoing investment.