Pros

Technology leadership
Small company environment

Cons

- Management lacks the vision to move forward
- Too much of micro-management
- Processes are a mess
- Outdated product lines
- Not enough knowledge transfer
- Political

Advice to Senior Management

SanDisk has an exceptional engineering team, but wants to focus on retail. To me this is paradoxical.

If you want to continue to innovate and want those larger margins, focus on the OEM segment which is more capable of giving you the larger margins. The retail business is all about lowering costs, and the technology and SanDisk aren't as mature to be able to cut costs at this time while maintaining the leadership position.

Listen more to your subordinates - they know what is going on and what is needed to improve. Top down management really isn't the correct approach for a company this size.