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The following quotes are from the transcript of John Donahoe’s rambling Legg Mason Forum presentation on 26 September 2007. Note the date: it indicates that Donahoe’s “three year turnaround” was underway prior to September 2007—therefore we are now well into the next three-year “Great Leap Forward”. Regrettably, just like in Mao’s case, there has been effectively no forward movement.

http://www.leggmason.com/thoug...ference/donahoe.html

The whole of this 2007 Forum transcript really is required reading for anyone wanting to know the direction this headless turkey thinks he is taking the eBay farmyard. I particularly like the accompanying photo of the chief headless turkey, and you have to wonder why so many publishers appear to select such unflattering photos of the “eBafia Don”. Of course, once you have read these following quotes you will understand why: they obviously understand that this man is a fool.

“By using a real focus on the customer, we embarked on a series of fundamental changes that will ultimately span a three year period. We started by creating a future vision. This was critical because not everyone felt the impetus to change, given the amount of success we were experiencing. There’s a real push to keep doing what you’re doing because it’s working.”—John Donahoe (26 Sept 2007).

“We have such volume that many of our buyers said that there was too much abundance. They just want to buy a Nike watch and instead they get 12,000 results back. That’s too many. They want to get to what they want, faster. We agreed.”—John Donahoe (26 Sept 2007).

“We talk and listen to customers, but for this kind of innovation, customers don’t always know what they want.”—John Donahoe (26 Sept 2007).

“Even though people think I’m an expert at technological innovation, my own instinct for technology was frozen in place in 1982.”—John Donahoe (Sept 2007).

“Today we’re dealing with phase two or phase three [he can’t even remember which one] of disruptive innovation. We’ve had the disruption, now we must disrupt our own disruption.”—John Donahoe (26 Sept 2007).

“Based on our experience, here’s how innovation at the core worked. We had to create a mind shift at our company—we had to think bold and not just incremental. We had to create a vision of the future so people could let go of a very successful past.”—John Donahoe (26 Sept 2007).
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