Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA), number 46 on the Fortune 500 list (Cacace, 2013), has a broad innovation program that would and likely does benefit from many of the metrics listed in Table 6.2 of Making innovation work (Davila, Epstein, & Shelton, Making innovation work: How to manage it, measure it and profit from it, 2013, p. 173). As a public company, stock price measures and sales and income are important measures of overall success. However, more important for measuring innovation success are the metrics that gauge the increase in customers, revenue, or profits from specific innovation products, or customer retention and loyalty engendered by such innovations. Comcast’s innovation portfolio, particularly its Comcast Ventures affiliate (CrunchBase, 2013), also would benefit from many of the portfolio metrics listed by Davila, Epstein, and Shelton (2013).
Davila, Epstein, & Shelton Table 6.2 Metrics
Davila, Epstein, and Shelton’s Table 6.2 (2013, pp. 173-175) is a comprehensive list of innovation metrics that has general application to public companies. Comcast is largely a service-oriented business, with customer or viewer acquisition the key metric other than revenue. Consequently, metrics for innovation involve measures of customer acquisition or retention, and incremental revenue. Thus, from Table 6.2 (Davila, Epstein, & Shelton, Making innovation work: How to manage it, measure it and profit from it, 2013, pp. 173-175) the following metrics are important:
• Long-term corporate profitability: Stock price; projected sales growth; projected residual income.
• Short-term corporate profitability: Residual income growth; sales growth; return on equity; percentage of sales from new products.
• Customer acquisition: New customers gained through innovation; number of customers through existing products/services who buy new products/services; number of new customers of new products/services who go on to buy existing products/services; market share.
• Value capture: Number of new product and service lines introduced; profitability of innovation operations; revenues generated through innovation efforts (total revenue, innovation revenue, revenue per innovation customer). (p. 173).
A key metric for a company like Comcast is how many new customers are acquired due to new products (innovation) that also buy existing products or services vs. how many existing customers buy the new products to increase revenue per customer. Both measures of revenue acquisition are key to innovation.
Comcast also has an extensive external portfolio of venture capital investments through its Comcast Ventures (Comcast Ventures, 2014) venture capital arm, which has invested in 75 startups since its inception in 2003 (CrunchBase, 2013).
This requirement makes it important to look through a majority of the return ratios, which include return on sales, return on assets, and return on equity. Additionally, investors are also interested in the ratios related to the company’s earnings, such as earnings per share (EPS) and PE ratio. Looking at return on sales, we can see that Wendy’s has a 7.27% return on sales and Bob Evans has a 1.23%, which demonstrates Wendy’s has a higher profit margin. Moreover, Wendys’ return on assets is 2.85% and Bob Evans is 1.58%. Also, Wendy’s and Bob Evan 's have return on equity ratios of 6.66% and 4.30%, respectively. All of these return ratios show that Wendy’s has a better handle on turning working capital into revenue. On the other hand, although Wendy’s return ratios are higher than Bob Evans, Bob Evans has a better performance on earnings per share and PE ratio. This is due to Bob Evans having less common stock share outstanding, which makes their earnings per share and PE ratio higher than Wendy’s. Due to the EPS being higher for Bob Evans, we would recommend that investors look towards Bob
By the acquisition, Comcast was clearly investing in content; this is a huge transformation for Comcast. This acquisition signals that they want to get bigger ...
Cisco faces intense competition in the networking and communications equipment markets (Cisco Systems Inc. SWOT Analysis, 2013).Cisco also faces price competition from rival competitors in Asia, mainly in China. The company also faces competition from customers to which it licenses or supplies technology. The nature of networking requires partnerships; the company must cooperate and at the same time compete with many companies to achieve its objectives. The inability to effectively manage these complicated relationships with customers, suppliers, and strategic alliance partners may have an adverse effect on Cisco’s business. Intense competition will continue to impact Cisco’s operating results, financial condition and market shares of the company in the future (Cisco Systems, Inc. SWOT Analysis, 2013).
Television, the phone, and the internet. These inventions have uniquely shaped the 20th century and have led to the 21st century being known as the age of information. These services are the primary ways we communicate, express ourselves, and reach out in our ever increasing global world. In the United States, these services are provided by a number of different firms, chief among them is Comcast, being the largest provider of Cable and internet in America, and a large telephone provider. Next to it stands Time Warner Cable, the second largest provider of cable in the United States. The decision for Comcast to buy Time Warner Cable for forty-five billion dollars in 2014 has led to many criticizing the merger, calling it a monopoly. Others have called the whole cable system an oligopoly. For it to be a monopoly or an oligopoly, it would have to fit their respective categories. The merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable would not create a true monopoly, but would give it significant market power because it has monopoly resources and can be considered a natural monopoly. It will also further its power in a market dominated by oligopolies. People argue that it is not a danger to Americans for this merger to happen, but when one looks at the practices Comcast already uses, it paints
Reed, R., Storrud-Barnes, S., & Jessup, L. (2012). How open innovation affects the drivers of competitive advantage: Trading the benefits of IP creation and ownership for free invention. Management Decision, 50(1), 58-73.
When testing if a corporate strategy is leading the company to success, there are techniques that can be used to project data collected from the company. Long term attractiveness, competitive strength, and the nine cell industry attractiveness/business strength matrix are used to highlight strategic positions of each business in a diversified company. The industry attractiveness gages the prospects for long-term performance. Competitive strength measures how strong the units are positioned in a business in their industry. Lastly, the nine cell industry attractiveness/business strength matrix merges information on attractiveness and competitiveness to show where in the industry does a unit fit when it comes to long-term success. Walt Disney
...t, and corporate values (Baker College, 2016). It is also critical to understand that strategic plans are not “one time” events. Changes in the economy and market require management to re-evaluate the strategic plan of the organization to ensure the plan is effective and will meet the objectives that have been set (Baker College, 2016). Credit unions and their managers must understand that sales revenue depends on the demand for its products and services. It is crucial that credit union continue to evolve and remain competitive in the financial services industry to continue to grow. Jim Marous, Partner at the The Financial Brand and Publisher of the Digital Banking Report states, “Organizations are responding by making significant investments in core systems replacement, digital channels and data analytics to ensure their ongoing competitiveness” (Marous, 2014).
AT&T had developed a reputation for providing high-quality long distance telephone services. It moved rapidly to exploit this reputation in the newly competitive long distance market by aggressively marketing its services against MCI, Sprint, and other carriers. Also, AT&T had traditional strengths in research and development with its Bell Labs subsidiary. To exploit these strengths in its new global competitive context, AT&T shifted Bell Labs' mission from basic research to applied research, and then leveraged those skills by forming numerous joint ventures, acquiring NCR, and other actions. Through this process, AT&T has been able to use some of its historically important capabilities to try to position itself as a major actor in the global telecommunications and computing industry.
The five-year product objectives and marketing focus for Comcast Cable are explained in this section. This marketing focus will include the target markets, points of difference, and Comcast’s positioning of their telephone, cable, and Internet services. With this market-product focus, Comcast will utilize their specialty features to ensure continued market share growth.
Reed Hastings (co-founded) founded Netflix in 1997. During this time, Netflix offered DVD rentals by mail. As Netflix went public in 2002, shortly a year later their subscription reached the one million mark (Netflix Management, 2011). Recently, Netflix is recognized as one of the 50 most innovative companies, ranking number eight for “streaming itself into a $9 billion powerhouse (and crushing Blockbuster)” with 20 million subscribers (fastcompany.com, 2011). This success shows how Netflix embraced a business approach where their mission was to take the troublesome experience of everyday consumers and transform them into a business opportunity. Below illustrates how Netflix rank in other categories.
Technology continues to grow and change at an amazing rate. Companies come and go from the marketplace rapidly, and can be highly specialized. Historically, Yahoo had generated a large portion of its income from advertising revenue. As companies fail or leave the market, this affects Yahoo, by losing a customer who is no longer advertising (Indu & Gupta, 2007). By evaluating internet companies, and their life span, Yahoo could have recognized this issue more quickly and refocused efforts...
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
Establishing metrics is crucial to any organization, especially in technology related company projects. Metrics can be defined as a system of parameters or ways of quantitative and periodic assess of a process that is to be measured, along with procedures to carry out such measurement and the procedures for the interpretation of the assessment in the light of previous or comparable assessments. The results of the metrics can be used to record trends, efficiency, capital, and etcetera. Metrics permit organizations to measure its performance against industry sectors to determine how well the company is doing. Metrics allow organizations to optimize its productivity.
One of the most integral qualities of an entrepreneur as well as that of a successful business is the degree of innovation it possesses. Innovation refers to the creation of new ideas, improvement of existing production processes, and effective problem solving. Innovation allows for increased efficiency in a business, which in turn increases its supply potential and productive capacity. Being innovative may involve either improving upon old methods o...
Innovation in business is a key aspect of staying viable in an ever changing climate of competition. One must continuously provide insight and solutions to issues, known and presently unknown through investigation and collaboration. Within this paper we will look into four businesses and their use of innovation in attempt at a better business or greater market share. The innovative businesses of interest are: Taco Bell, Zipcar, Dollar Shave Club and Kickstarter.