The Innovator’s Dilemma is a book designed to look at and analyze why good companies with good management, and who are known for their abilities to innovate and execute fail to stay atop their industries when confronted with certain types of technological and market change. The companies analyzed in the book are all well managed, listen intently to the needs and wants of their customers, invest in new technologies, and still end up losing their market dominance. The book also looks at companies in different industries that move at different paces, some fast and some slow, all of which were market leaders, in-order to show that the theory presented can be applied and justified in multiple industries and not just fast moving ones such as microcomputers.
The first point that The Innovator’s Dilemma addresses is the fact that the decisions leading up to the downfall of industry leading companies were made when the firms were being widely regarded as astutely managed firms. The explanation for this failure is attributed to the fact that these firms were as well-run as a firm could expect to be, but there is something in the way that the decisions within the firm are made that lead to their failure. The Innovator’s Dilemma states that because firms listened to their customers, invested aggressively in technologies that would provide their customers with more and better products of the type they wanted, and because they studied market trends very intently and allocated capital toward innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions as leaders within their industry. The book declares that there are times at which its better to not listen to customers, to invest in developing lower-performance products that promise ...
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...asis of competition. The third strategic option for dealing with these dynamics is to use marketing initiatives to steepen the slopes of the market trajectories so that customers demand the performance improvements that the technologists provide.” (154).
The ideas and theories presented in this book relate to this course because they can directly affect the way a company develops its supply chain. If large companies are going to pursue the development of disruptive technologies then they are going to have to implement a separate supply chain from their current corporate model. The supply chain will have to be tailored to meet small market demands. Doing so will allow these large organizations to avoid the costs associated the over production of a product. Also the supply chains will have to be designed to operate and be profitable in small margin product markets.
“Today we’re seeing industries competing with industries, different arenas where competition manifests itself. Strategy, entrepreneurship, and innovation are all bleeding into each other” (cited in Crainer and Dearlove, 2014, chapter 1, last para.).
Both CEO’s were able to save their companies from suffering major reverses. Yet, each company received their own strategic inflection points and applied different strategies to get their competitive advantage according to Krames. Both men suffered resistance in presenting and promoting their ideas. Dell faced resistance from his management teams. The management teams forced thei...
Schumpeter’s view of competition is that companies’ innovation is continuously destructive to processes and assets. In that respect, new technologies displace the older ones making way for greater growth than in the conservative and stable markets. The authors’ review of the failure by IBM and Microsoft provides a good description of that Schumpeterian competition and diseconomy of scope. In that analysis, the author’s address the question on the causes of creative destruction through which they challenge the view that failure in new technological areas by companies that have been successful in theindustry is explained by two scenarios. One being that the companies fear the cannibalization hence ends up under-investing in the new market. The other explanation challenged is that the companies tend to develop cognitive frameworks and organizational capabilities that slow their identification and response to new opportunit...
Innovation has become a must in many businesses considering the current economic climate and the variety of needs of customers. With stagnating economic climate and the amount of competition in each market businesses have been in hard ground. The growing competition for businesses has made it much harder to for businesses to have a good margin for their profits.
We never had a “New Economy”; we had an evolving innovation economy. Surviving and prospering, calls for a sound grasp of the drivers of change. The fact that there has never been a “golden company” that consistently beat the market is due to differing principles under which capital markets and corporations operates. Markets, built on the assumption of “discontinuity” enable, manage and control the process of creative destruction by encouraging new entrants that produce superior results and value by “remorselessly” replacing weak performers that consume wealth. This process is has always been at the heart of capitalism, but the pace of change is accelerating to the extent that we have entered what Peter Drucker calls the Age of Discontinuity.
In a traditional manufacturing company, the supply chain covers the following roles: suppliers, labour, engineering, production, product, quality assurance, inventory, competitors and customers. The last role, that of customers, is different from the rest of the roles within a classic supply chain, meaning that suppliers are oriented upstream, while customers downstream; the labour is situated internally, while customers are external; engineering is done only by qualified engineers; production is protected from customers; products represent the offering that the customers obtain; quality assurance prevents faulty products to get to the customers; inventory can be managed in order to saturate the demand in time; and finally competitors offer customers different choices to satisfy their needs. Taking separately, the customer role in the traditional supply chain often resumes at “selecting, paying for, and using the outputs” and sometimes proving feed-back and promoting a company’s offerings by recommending to others (Sampson and Spring,
Thank you for agreeing to participate in an interview. This interview is part of an assignment for an Intrapreneurship and Innovation Course at Grand Canyon University. The assignment asks students to garner first-hand perspective on the challenges of innovation and reflect on what they have learned in the course. Information collected during the interview will be used solely to complete the assignment and may be shared with class members and the instructor. If you have additional questions or concerns, or you would like to withdraw your consent to participate in the interview process, you can contact Frank Spitznogle at frank.spitznogle@gcu.edu. Again, thank you for taking the time to participate in an interview and contribute to the educational experience of business students at Grand Canyon
...gy not likes leader, concept, and culture; it is an accelerator for the company. Good-to-great companies used technology as an accelerator of momentum, not a creator of it. None of the good-to-great company began their transformations with pioneering technology, yet they all became pioneers in the application of technology once they grasped how it fit with their three circles and after they hit breakthrough (Collins, 2001, p.162). Before become a pioneer in the application of the technology, we have to do the external and internal scanning to see is it the technology fit our long term strategic and hedgehog concept.
Miles and Snow analyze the strategies of a business unit by classifying them as one of four specific strategic types: prospectors, defenders, analyzers, and reactors (Parnell, 2014). Under Miles and Snow’s strategy, prospectors strategize how to bring new products, designs and innovation to their specific industry. They are the ones who react quickly to changes in the market and are constantly looking for at ways to develop new products and services. Parnell (2014) relays that prospectors often seek first-mover advantage; meaning that they are quick to take their product to market in an attempt to gain an advantage over their competition by being first to present a new or original product. They practice product differentiation. Defenders, on
Large companies who are in upward market stream lack the creative capability as that of evolving companies, in motivating people who possess ability to innovate. (Stringer 2000).
In 1984 Michael Dell was a college student pursuing a degree in medicine. He also happened to have a hobby of building computers. He decided to sell the product of his hobby, and began the business in his dorm room. Business quickly took off, and he soon abandoned his dreams of practicing medicine to develop Dell Computers. From these humble beginnings the company rapidly grew to be a major competitor in the personal computer market. Dell's focus on efficiency of manufacturing, and a direct marketing approach, allowed him to continue gaining ground on the competition. In 1992, his company joined the Fortune 500 list as one of the largest companies in the world. In 1993 their growth placed them in the top five computer system manufacturers. Through this paper I can suggests that with a focus on maintaining a strong position in the core market and strategic involvement in related sectors, Dell can not only maintain its dominant position, but can extend it.
The article raises the issue of revenue growth stalls that affect even the most successful companies. The article focuses on four major causes of the crisis. The first cause is the premium-position captivity that is”the inability of a firm to respond effectively to new, low-cost competitive challenge or to a significant shift in customer valuation of product features” (p.54). The second reason is the innovation management breakdown that is”some chronic problem in managing the internal business process for updating existing product and services and creating new one” (p.56). Third reason is the premature core abandonment that means “the failure to fully exploit growth opportunities in the existing core business” and “acquisitions of growth initiatives in areas relatively distant from existing customers, products, and channels”(p.56). Finally, the fourth cause is the talent bench shortfall that is “a lack of leaders and staff with the skills and capabilities required for strategy execution” (p.58). Authors emphasize that these causes are mainly within management control since they result from “a choice about strategy or organizational design” (p.54).
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
To improve their performance and to succeed in the digital world, firms must manage people, technology, and processes across the entire value chain. Supply Chain Management facilitates the interaction among different factors and partners in the system. Thus, the supply chain has evolved to a Supply Chain Network due to the development of the Internet and the technological advancements. The study describes the Supply Chain Management System.
Keeping up with technology is difficult, tiresome, and firms find it very costly to keep at pace with it. Technology rapidly and constantly keeps on changing. Being at par technologically requires extensive research and strategic analysis of acquiring new innovation. Enforcing new technology requires staff retraining and in some cases making employees redundant.