Introduction:
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.
Innovation comes in different forms and relates not just new products but new systems and processes followed to attract or differentiate their products and services with their competitors. One such could be Coca-Cola’s Share a coke campaign which was highly influential in creating a new base for their customers and gave them huge publicity. Hence innovation does not mean just the products but every other
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Gaps In Holden company:
Holden has not focused on export as a component of its strategy, unlike Toyota, and the high Australian dollar did not make the Holden grow. Mitsubishi and Ford had demonstrated that auto manufacturing in Australia was not productive, which created pressure on Holden and Toyota and others in the supply chain.
“Holden has additionally had issues with its product, with reviews issued for Holden Cruzes for a defective fuel hose in 2011 and brake issues in 2012. “
Holden failed to cooperate and act on times where there was a high need for innovation and proactive actions to export cars abroad, since developing countries remained optimistic to buy Australian cars.
Strategy and mission:
Holden needs to attain temporary loans and subsidies from the government and private lenders in order to make sure that they will sustain in the market and manage the market crunch they possess.
Holden could research and manufacture electric cars and export them to countries like India, Brazil and China where there is a huge need to use electric cars due to fuel deficit and pollution
Thesis: Even though there is a lot of skepticism towards Chinese car companies making a foothold in the American car market, with the right marketing and not rushing into the market, there is a good chance that the Chinese car companies will follow the Japanese car companies and carve a spot in the American market.
The design flaw also meant that low impact accidents could have resulted in explosions that could have been deadly, even when they occur on low speeds. This could very well have been the factor that caused the Ulrich’s gas tank to rupture, causing the vehicle to catch on fire. The article also indicated that a study done by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), found that 38 cases of rear-end collisions with Ford Pintos resulted in 27 deaths. Of these deaths, 26 people died as a result of ruptured gas tanks with that escalated into fires. The investigation estimated that Ford Pinto crashes caused 500-900 burn deaths. According to Dowie, Ford was able to continue to produce and sell the same model Pinto until 1977, thanks to successful lobbying in Washington. The article is also focuses on the “Pinto Memo” and the Cost-Benefits analysis which we will go into detail
To being with the barriers of entry which including strong currency and higher labor have the most significant impacts on auto making industry. In 2013, Holden would cut 12% of its workforce and has announced a three-year pay freeze agreement to the reminding workers to keep operates the manufacturing plant in South Australia (Thurlow, R. 2013). Moreover, a strong currency not only lead to less competitive on nation exportation but also increases the amount of cheaper imports from emerging market like China and Thailand caused by globalization. For instant, China which enjoys plenty of human power which strengthen its competitive of export products (Curran, E. 2013). Australian manufacturers, therefore, have lower competitive power against imported goods and services. Although the total number of car sales increased, the sale of Australian-made vehicles has significant (20%) fall as Thurlow, R. & Glynn, J. 2013, stated. It seems barriers of entry blocked the auto making industry hardly.
Although most innovations succeed, others fail and there are a lot of factors that can be attributed to that failure. These factors can be firm related, project related, product related or even market related (Van Der Panne, 2003). Firm related factors may be due to the firm’s culture and principles where the firm was not willing to change the way they do things and the firm’s strategy to the innovation.
In conclusion, innovation and the need for it will never diminish no matter how big or small. For me, my company, and my country innovation is the key to our success and our very existence. With that being said, you better not have a great idea and have no one to sell it to. The customer will always be first, second, and third for that matter, if we are to succeed.
Toyota, the last standing Australian manufacturer, has announced that they will cease producing cars in Australia in 2017 (Toyota Australia Announces Future Plan For Local Manufacturing, 2014). The coalition government made it clear that it was not prepared to further assist the Australian car manufacturers and consequently Holden and Ford closed their doors. Toyota followed suit as manufacturing in Australia was no longer sustainable due to the unfavorably high Australian dollar, high labor costs, highly competitive domestic market and overseas competition. (Australian Government Productivity Commision, 2014). Manufacturing has been a great source of pride for Australians over the many years and so this is a solemn time for the industry.
Ford’s production plants rely on very high-tech computers and automated assembly. It takes a significant financial investment and time to reconfigure a production plant after a vehicle model is setup for assembly. Ford has made this mistake in the past and surprisingly hasn’t learned the valuable lesson as evidence from the hybrid revolution their missing out on today. Between 1927 and 1928, Ford set in motion their “1928 Plan” of establishing worldwide operations. Unfortunately, the strategic plan didn’t account for economic factors in Europe driving the demand for smaller vehicles. Henry Ford established plants in Europe for the larger North American model A. Their market share in 1929 was 5.7% in England and 7.2% in France (Dassbach, 1988). Economic changes can wreak havoc on a corporation’s bottom line and profitability as well as their brand.
To explain the barriers of entry, let us take the example of America's best-selling SUV in 2014 which was the Honda CR-V, for the third consecutive year followed by Ford Escape. These two companies with their immense economies of scale are posing a high barrier to entry for their share of the market. Honda CRV is able to offer the better fuel economy and safety rating without incurring a loss and maintaining the majority of the market share. This makes it difficult for firms like Volkswagen who are leaders in Europe to enter this market.
The company Tesla Motors Inc could be said to have been born in 2003, those whom founded and invested into the organisation are known for their innovative minds, in previous companies. Elton Musk is the founder of PayPal, Sergey Brin and Larry Page the founders of Google, they are among a handful of investors. The primary aim of the company was not just to make the traditional motor vehicle which has become a normality in the last century but to go beyond that. Instead the establishing group of Silicon Valley engineers aimed to develop electric vehicles (Musk, 2006). On the surface Tulsa Motors strategy when explained by the co-founder Elton Musk, is quite simple one would think when he said ‘The starting point is a high performance sports car, but the long term vision is to build cars of all kinds, including low cost family vehicles” (Hamilton,2006)
O'Connor et al. (2008) point out that the lack of consensous about the innovation concept itself tends to generate confusion between work teams. This problem is also associated to the slowness and failure to achieve an innovation capability by the organizations. Nelson e Winter (1982) defends that any modification in a product or process without previous experience can be understood as an innovation. For Bessant e Tidd (2009), the theory around innovation process (i.e. Cooper’s stage-gates) were developed based on technological innovations, particularly from the industrial sector. This article adopts the concept proposed by the Innovation Report (DTI, 2003) which define innovation as a successful exploration of new ideas, involving new technologies or applications and its importance to product and service generation, new production process, more efficient or cleaner business models.
The government should increase the Automotive New Markets Initiative’s funding in response to Toyota’s announcement that it would cease manufacturing in Australia by 2017. This program provides “grants of up to $1 million for firms in the automotive supply chain” (“Productivity Commission”, 2014). These grants will encourage component manufacturers to diversify into other industries or into export markets, if they remain reliant on passenger vehicle production in Australia for their business they will be heavily affected by the closures of the assembly and engine manufacturing plants in Australia (“Productivity Commission”, 2014).
Automobile firms like GM Holden, Toyota, and Ford decided to shut down their plants in Australia and shift to another country. The automobile industry ranks among the crucial significant business phenomena of the twentieth century and remains vitally important today. Other words, the world’s automobile industry has played an important economic role (Wynn-Williams, 2009, p. 2). It is now is one of the largest industries in the world, the industry of industries (Drucker, 1972 , p. 176). It can be seen that there exists a fairly wide degree of consensus among car industry commentators over a large number of issues. The industry has found it hard to adjust to recent challenges and is no longer much valued by the capital markets. The slowing down in car sales in the more mature markets such as North America and Western Europe similarly with the much faster growth of sales in the relatively countries of the third world like China, India. Consequently, this assignment firstly overviews Australia’s automobile market-the operations in Australia and then highlight both challenges and opportunities in China, a potential automobile market in order to suggest a way for Holden entering China’s market. The assignment is intended to investigate the competitive advantages of China and how China could attract many foreign automobile companies in short period. The assignment also uses a number of journals, books, reports, and internet sources to deeply understand the Australian automobile context as well as China’s context.
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