Consider W.L. Gore’s competitive strategy. Assess the fitness of the firm’s organizational structure and controls to help the company achieve its strategic objectives. Can you identify any problem areas that may develop as the company faces oncoming competitive forces?
Competitive Strategy. W.L. Gore has a competitive strategy to form quality, high-value, and differentiated products. Gore’s unique diversification strategy allows the company to use four divisions to serve entirely different industries. This will also help to protect against any botches in any one industry and allows multiple investment avenues for W.L. Gore. However, the distinct level of diversification allows for the core competencies and organizational boundaries to be
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Gore’s flat lattice structure, cross-functional product development teams, and shared values support internal innovation and product differentiation. W.L. Gore achieves effective integration of these functions involved in internal innovation efforts without formal structural elements. Resource allocation, activity coordination, and communication throughout the organization adopt creating and strategic behavior. Continuously distributing knowledge capital and promoting internal innovations takes W.L. Gore into new markets and creates new value for the firm. The level of self-rule, innovativeness, and risk-taking within the firm suggest that the company sustains an entrepreneurial mindset as another source of internal innovation and growth. The company’s collaborative, cross-functional product development teams maintain powerful new product development processes that will adapt to its unique core competencies and to the needs of the market and easily commercialize new products. One of the company’s guiding principles is for its associates to make and keep their own commitments as If they were taking an oath. Along with this combination of freedom (dabble time) and resources (raw materials) produces viable new products. Allows for innovation to be an effective growth strategy and for a continuous flow of knowledge and technology that is required. And the analysis above offers evidence of W.L. Gore’s knowledge-sharing
WL Gore has done a great job of creating a profitable, innovative company. As a flat organization they have higher participation using an organic model (555) with cross-functional teams that have wide spans of control. This includes the free-flow of information, low formalization, and decentralization that provides for faster decisions from cross-hierarchal teams. The team/matrix structure combines functionality and product resources. This also creates generalists rather than specialists to share product resources and allows for timely completion of products closer to budget with less duplication of activities. Decentralization creates a chain of command from the team directly to the final decision maker with a lower span of control. In addition, their innovation strategy promotes unique, meaningful innovations that empower employees to introduce new products to their teams for possible manufacturing.
The skill abilities of team members within IDEO reflect the company’s doctrine of open innovation and the benefit of assembling those diverse teams. From their clients IDEO assimilates best practices and then integrates these practices back into their own business and proces...
Competitive strategy is a long-term action plan that is devised to help a company gains the competitive advantages over its competitors. There are Four Porter’s Competitive Strategy which including cost leadership, differentiation, cost-focused and focused-differentiation.
II. Company Description 3M, internationally established in 1951, is a $16 billion multinational company with its headquarters in Minnesota, U.S.A., with operations in more than 60 countries, and products sold in nearly 200 countries. (About 3M and MIS Quarterly) 3M offers products and services to the transportation, graphics and safety, healthcare, industrial, consumer and office, electro and communications, and specialty markets. (IBM Case Study on 3M) 3M, a company known for its innovation, constantly encourages employees to create new products. Thirty percent of sales must come, each year, from products less than 4 years old and scientists must spend 15% of their time trying to develop new ideas of their own. In 2001, 3M spent over $1 billion dollars alone on research and development (3M 2001 annual report). 3M's corporate culture revolves around creativity, initiative, innovation, and entrepreneurship. This unique and innovative culture is largely responsible for 3M's success. (MIS Quarterly) In accordance with having a strong need to stimulate innovation and creativity, 3M has a very decentralized corporate structure. It maintains over 40 business units that develop and market various 3M products and services. Each department operates as an individual company with its own processes systems and brands. This structure has afforded the different divisions the autonomy to conduct jobs in their own way using their initiative in a responsible manner. (Harvard Business Review and MIS Quarterly) III. The Problem Although 3Ms decentralized structure was good for innovation, it was an obstacle for the customers. Customers were seeing the 3M business units as a set of individual business instead of one unified company. Each business unit recorded its sales and product and customer information in its own database.
“Logic will get you from A to B, but imagination will take you everywhere,” a thought share by one of the great minds of innovationist, Albert Einstein. These sentiments capture the essence of what it means to be innovative as expressed by 3 M development director. “Innovation is an idea that leads to the next level of a previous conceived idea or ingenious new knowledge implied or based in a new object or service propelling new technologies connection, stirring up new creativity and passion that inspires to the next level (3M,2 013). “Like 3m, AT&T and Southwest Airlines are examples of organizations that has portrayed capitalizing on innovation ideals as a part of its culture. From a small airline in its inception, Southwest become a reckoning phenomenal as a company, while AT&T is now breaking grounds to forge international working relationships.
1. What is it about the Gore organizational culture that keeps it a leader in innovation and creativity?
Sharing of knowledge, technology, and capital that are brought to the company by the partner.
Olsen, E. (n.d.). Strategic planning: Diversification. Strategic planning kit for dummies, 2nd edition. Retrieved from http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/strategic-planning-diversification.html
Hansen M., Nohria N., and Tierney T. (1999), “What’s your Strategy for Managing Knowledge?,” Harvard Business Review (March 1999), 106–16.
Kelley,T. (2005, Oct.). The 10 faces of innovation. Fast Company, 74-77. Retrieved 6th March’ 2014 from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=9&sid=1d6a17b7-c5f7-4f00-bea4 db1d84cbef55%40sessionmgr10&hid=28&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=bth&AN=18386009
Effective knowledge transfer through a conversion of tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge can build a sustainable capacity to innovate within an organization and gain an external competitive advantage.
Over the course of this class I have learned how important it is to be creative and innovative in the way that businesses are conducted within the organizations. The ability to innovate is the “secret sauce” of business success (Dyer, et al., 2009). However, creativity and innovation cannot take place if the leaders are not willing to foster a culture of innovation within the organization. Amabile & Khaire (2008) asserted that, it is essential to motivate people to contribute ideas by making it safe to fail. Stress that the goal is to experiment constantly, fail early and often—and learn as much as possible in the process. Convince people that they won’t be punished or humiliated if they speak up or make mistakes (Amabile & Khaire, 2008).
Access to resource - One of the reasons to collaborate is to take advantage of resources. For example, an inter-company collaborates to place a product in the market where one compa...
Additionally, understood the strategy implementation, actions made by firms that carry out the formulated strategy, including strategic controls, organizational design, and leadership. environmental
Open innovation opens the doors for a vast array of ideas and suggestions that can help an organization succeed in being innovative. This will allow the organization to hold a competitive advantage when compared to their competition. Organizations who understand the importance of managing technological innovation will have an easier time succeeding than those organizations who feel they are safe and put innovation on the back burner. Managing technological innovation is essential in this day and age, where technology is advancing at a faster than