The hard disk drive industry is a truly brutal industry. In 1988 there were about 30 companies making desktop hard disk drives. Only five are left. The commodification of hard disk drives led to a consolidation in the industry, which eventually led to many firms being bought over or declared bankrupt. This tells us something about the competition that takes place in this industry.

Let me now liken the automobile industry to the hard disk drive industry. What happened to the hard disk drive industry between 1988 and 1998 is now happening to the automobile industry. Proton will be nothing but a bucket of water in an Olympic-size swimming pool when the Asean Free Trade Agreement opens its doors fully to foreign competition or if Proton attempts to sell cars in mature markets like Western Europe or North America.

Someone needs to address the fundamentally slow manner in which Proton responds to change and customer requirements, and its lack of engineering know-how. Here is a better way to spend the money that the government will eventually spend bailing out Proton when it starts cracking. We all agree on one thing. We do not want our beloved homegrown company to be swallowed up by the behemoths.

Dare I say we do not have the executives to steer this still-young company towards a path of innovation and never before seen cost-cutting policies? Only the paranoid will survive, said a CEO once. Hey but we do have something. Cash. Huge reserves that we should be willing to dole out to ensure the company is profitable over the next 20 to 30 years and to ensure that it continues to be Malaysian.

Here is the other part of the equation: Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan Motors, a superb executive who has many feathers in his cap. We can offer him an obscenely high compensation package to achieve the near impossible: US$1 billion to produce the No. One selling car in the United States by 2007 (do not forget that US$290 million of the US$1 billion will come back to the government).

He will be nothing but an employee, the CEO. If he manages to make a car that is second best or third best selling we will reward him accordingly. He should be allowed an immense amount of freedom to do things his way and should face no hindrance whatsoever from the authorities. It is a win-win situation, Should he fail, he would only have improved the company and we only need to pay him his basic package (wink).