Developing a Product Innovation and Technology Strategy for Your Business

Innovations form the main sources of competitive advantages and are always of significance for the growth of a company. Companies or organizations put their greater efforts in improving their performance by finding new ideas and knowledge on the best way of beating their competitors and therefore give satisfaction to their customers. There are various factors involved in the innovation design system which can be either internal or external.

The second objective is to find disruptive innovations that threaten the product roadmap and which, ideally, can be incorporated into corporate strategy to yield a competitive advantage [3].

Robyn should start by getting more understanding about the product, afterward she must wrestle with the issue of what directional path the company should take and what changes in the company’s product-market-customer-technology focus would improve its current market position and future prospects. Deciding to commit the company to one path versus another pushes managers to draw some carefully reasoned conclusions about how to try to modify the company’s business makeup and the market position it should stake out. She must consider a number of direction-shaping factors where to head and why such a direction makes a good business sense.

Due to the growing competition and diminishing market share, companies are opting for different strategies to achieve their survival objectives as well as growth. Companies are thus executing grand strategies to provide their businesses with a clear direction for its strategic actions. These strategies, therefore, aim at both short term and long term sustainability and growth, and they include innovation, market development, product development, and concentration.

The root cause of Stamypor’s problems was an unstable value proposition (2, p85). DSM-NBD underestimated the value of a need analysis, which was evident from that fact that they skipped the first stage of the Stage-Gate process. This evaluation stage is used to ascertain the need for a new product (1, p9). The omission lead to uncertainties over Stamypor’s claimed ability to add value to the resin industry. Additionally, a significant portion of DSM’s budget was assigned to corporate R&D and not to NBD. Therefore, fundamental research was not involved in the Ideation stage of the Stage-Gate process (3, Figure 5.4). The fact that DSM-NBD went ahead with a sizable investment

Product Innovation – Innovation of new products had failed many times and MTI has lost reputation with Wall Street. This process had been placed on the backburner and when the CEO came on board there were only six products in the pipeline. Therefore, to be successful in the future, MTI needs to invest more in R&D and focus on delivering new products.

This is the first case study report for the course ED5317: Strategies for Managing Innovation that is based on the Harvard Business School case titled ‘Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple’. The report consists of the following question:

Russell, R. S., & Taylor,B. Operations and Supply Chain Management,8th Edition. Wiley, 2013-12-02. VitalBook file.

This course for juniors and seniors explores firm strategies related to innovation and technological change. We focus on how the success of technological innovations—new products, processes, and services—depends on the firm’s business model. Other key topics include intellectual property rights and the management of technological uncertainty through organizational arrangements such as corporate venturing, spinoffs, and alliances.

(PFMA) Increased competition has lead to greater effort for developing new products in order to meet customers demand. Therefore a lot of money has been put into Research and Development strategies, stimulating technical progress in this industry. (Mars, 2003)

New Product Development : the aggressive investment strategy into R&D division led to speed in releasing new products in the market. This gave the company higher ROI returns projections. The faster cycle of innovation led to multiple product availability in the market which led to further increasing the gap between them and the competitions and also the company indulged in manufacturing self brand products rather than Co-branded or Partnerships.

The decision to radically change the approach was a high-risk and high-reward initiative. On one hand, deciding to implement the radical change approach dramatically reduced financial risks and decreased product development cycle time. However, the decision delayed original launch date, temporarily compromised

Tidd and Bessant (2009) argued that “Unless an organization is able to move into further innovation, it risks being left behind as others take the lead in changing their offerings, their operational processes or the underlying models that drive their business”.

Innovation refers to finding new ways to improve the existing products, services, processes, technologies, and employee performance in an organizational setup. In today's competitive business environment, organizations have to focus on bringing innovation in each and every aspect of their business operations; like products or service offerings, enterprise resource planning systems, marketing and promotional efforts, and organizational structure. The market challenges and competitive pressures also force organizations to use a blend of all these innovation processes in their business activities. Therefore, it is vital to give an equal focus on product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, and organizational innovation within the limited organizational resources and capabilities.

Investing in research and development to create new product line or enhance current products adds considerable expenses. Development costs will need to be re-cooped. This will keep competitors in check, but will be challenging to keep pricing competitive.