Best Practices in Attaining a Sustainable Competitive Advantage With New Product Development

When we analyze the technological environment, we look at what could create a new market or develop new products. In order to turn new advances in technology into competitive advantages and opportunities, companies such as Apple need to be aware of the changes happening in the market. Technology affects consumers’ life style, consumption and spending patterns, as well as the economy. Also, advances in the technological sector can sometimes create new industries or destroy existing ones. Additionally, technological changes affect the 4P’s of an organization. Due to the previously mentioned reasons, we think the constant development in technology is a key driving force in the Smartphone industry.

The short product life cycle in this industry requires competitors to continuously evolve. This continual innovation is difficult for new entrants to achieve. Also, existing products, such as Apple’s iPhone, have built brand loyalty and associated switching costs for consumers, which pose as barriers to entry for new competitors.

market in that sense, and not use it in the more general sense of a marketplace

The market is never static and the preferences of the customers keep changing. In this case the executives at Apple must always ensure that the needs of the clients are effectively addressed at all times. In the same way, the industry has become very competitive in the recent past and the organization has to find ways and means of staying ahead of its competitors. In this case, innovation plays a major role in ensuring that new products are constantly produced by the organization.

This shows that a product development strategy for entry into a new market is successful; it may lead the company into introducing more innovative products into the same market or parallel markets, such as in the introduction of iPhone into the smart phone market, and most recently the iPad into the slate PC market.

CPA firms, whose focus is in the provision of tax services to the customers and businesses have to improve their efficiency and effectiveness of the workflows as a way of meeting the expectations of their clients. The firms deal with the pressure of management of fees, and staffing resources in the wake of busy tax seasons. The firms that are future focused should turn to the cloud technology for digitization and automation of their tax preparation procedures as a way of defining their maximum productivity while ensuring that they keep at pace with the quality needs of their clients (Blair-Stanek, 2015).

New product developments are one of the main sources of competitive advantage for companies today. Companies need new product to keep up with its’ competitors. New product development can be considered as activities that aim to bring new products to market.

Since the founding of Apple Inc, Steve Jobs, and his partners, have always given Apple’s products the most unique ideas in the World. In the article “The perils of best practice: Should you emulate Apple?” the author mentions that Apple is always the company that brings never before seen

In our textbook[1], it says to move quickly and also avoid expensive new-product failures, companies should follow an organized new-product development process: (1) idea generation, (2) screening, (3) idea evaluation, (4) development (of product and marketing mix), and (5) commercialization. The hypothesis to have marketers to discover product flaws early, and find the remedy to it, has proven unprofitable. This process requires much analysis of the idea before the company spends money to develop and market a product.

Is sustainable competitive advantage possible, and how can technology be used as its catalyst? This is the question that has vexed managers and business leaders for decades. According to Michael Porter, the answer lies in how technology is used. In this Case Study Report, Team 3 discusses how Mrs. Fields, Inc. leveraged technology for strategic positioning. Mrs. Fields, Inc. did not create the sweet snack industry, but it was the company’s innovative use of technology that helped the company sustain a competitive advantage over other companies vying for those same impulse snack dollars.

Companies that wants demanding customers and to be one of the revolutionary businesses in the nation must be constantly stepping up their game to be the best innovator.

1. Core competencies are the skills, characteristics, and assets that set your company apart from competitors. They are the fuel for innovation and the roots of competitive advantage, or in other words; Core competencies are the skills, characteristics, and assets that set your company apart from competitors. They are the fuel for innovation and the roots of competitive advantage.

Today, Dell uses sentiment analysis to identify issues with their brand and products in order to proactively solve customer support issues. They monitor consumer trends for potential research and development benefits. Additionally, they analyze their industry’s social stream to stay informed of competitor impact and activities. Techniques in accelerating product development and market introduction are critical to gaining competitive advantage since it determines the speed with which a firm responds to market opportunities and its success in attaining market share. Accelerating new product development may be used to extend product life cycles, to alter the stance of the firm, and gain ground against slower competitors. Leading edge companies stress incremental innovation as opposed to major breakthroughs.

The confluence of these factors changed what it took to win in the technology space. Vertically integrated players of the past were replaced with engineering-savvy, asset-light marketing and design companies.3 As such, both large and small technology companies had the opportunity to bring products to market through the use of sub-contracting. By the late 1990s, consumers not only had more product choices but also multiple channels to buy from, including online stores, which were becoming popular. Within the world of technology products, the supply chain systems for the wide-ranging product types were not uniform. For example, the more complex large systems, such as telecom base stations, had a different supply chain model from the smaller consumer electronics products, such as personal MP3 players and laptop computers. This case focuses on the small consumer electronics supply chain, whose characteristics included having many component suppliers, with assembly sites doing the final assembly and testing. The modular structure of technology products meant that the brand owners had to manage a large network of suppliers. To stay competitive, large and small technology companies began to outsource a significant part of their supply chain to third party vendors in order to focus their resources on brand differentiating activities, such as product design and

As previously stated, it is difficult to pinpoint a competitive advantage due to of the hyper competitive environment. Our strengths of the program are matched or exceeded by competitors. The areas we could potentially capitalize on are our academic rigor, our passionate staff in Southeast Online and the nursing department who provide excellent customer service, and the prevalence of nursing courses being taught by tenure track faculty. However, we aren’t the only program that has passionate staff, that teaches using tenured faculty, and are academically rigorous. The only way to provide leverage is if we are able to be the best in one of these area’s compared to our top regional competitors due to of the preference to attend within 100 miles from home. With all of our weaknesses and strengths identified, and considering that our students ranked helpfulness of staff higher than quality of the program, customer intimacy is our best chance of differentiating ourselves.