Levitt Case Study

nation. Through development of industry, the United States was able to grow as a manufacturing

America had a huge industrial revolution in the late 1800”s. Many changes happened to our great nation, which factored into this. The evidence clearly shows that advancements in new technology, a large wave of immigrants into our country and new views of our government, helped to promote America’s huge industrial growth from the period of 1860-1900.

Near the last decades of the 19th century, America’s industrial economy skyrocketed. As these industrial leaders like Carnegie and Rockefeller not only lead the expansion through their respective industries, but revolutionized businesses while crushing free-market competition in the process. As

Vargo, Stephen L. and Robert F. Lusch (2004a), “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing,” Journal of Marketing, 68 (January), 1-17.

The growth helped transport goods more efficiently and diversify the market. Document 5 shows that from 1850 to 1900, industry based on animals and humans decreased while industry bases on water and coal increased. This provides evidence that industry was more reliant on resources instead on animals and humans. Water and coal resources effectively created power sources and pushed forward industrialization (Doc 5). Document 7 states “In 1882 the Carnegie Steel Company.. Inaugurated a policy whose object was to control all the factors which contributed to the production of steel, from the ore and coal in the ground to the steel billet and the steel rail.”

By 1900 the US was the largest producer while also being the lowest cost producer, and demand for steel seemed never-ending. Output had more than tripled since 1890, but customers, rather than the producers, mostly benefited. New technology encouraged faster

Firms must consider many strategies when attempting to realize growth. Depending upon the stage of

* Growth rate is higher than the industry’s growth rate for each of last 10 years.

Review of: Olson, Matthew S., Van Bever, Derek ,Verry, Seth. 2008. When Growth Stalls. Harvard Business Review, 51-62.

industry has been facing challenges. The industry is in a decline. This is because people may be

firms It has been suggested that the disappointing performance of U.S. firms during the 1980s in technology-intensive, global markets was from failure to improve upon products and processes. It has been cited that "the U.S. makes the breakthroughs, while other countries, especially Japan, provide the follow-through." Revolutionary innovation has been contrasted with less dramatic advancements. Incremental improvement can turn products over and get more, newer models out. This may all sound dull, but the achievements can be exhilarating. American firms may have failed to follow up on their breakthroughs with such continuous improvements. Where there were successes, they were built upon a combination of breakthroughs and incremental improvements. It is the subject of yet another discourse as to what constitutes an innovation: a breakthrough or an incremental improvement, or both, and/or everything in between. 4. To take advantage of opportunity It is no surprise that surprises, often disappointing surprises, are the seeds of innovation. Take the oil companies. It is no surprise that some oil companies are becoming oil-andgas companies. Why? Because gas is found more often and in greater abundance than oil

This can be clearly illustrated by the situation Gillette faced during the leadership of the CEO Vincent Ziegler. He started to buy other companies and failed to generate more profit. At first his plan looked very promissory and generated revenue but at the end the company ended up losing money and time they could have invested in their own business.

* Managers have an interest in organisational growth but this might be at the expense of short term profits.

Flat industry Sales: The industry growth rate average was 3%, an indicator that the industry has matured and on the other hand, lower growth rates have increased

As the overall size of the industry does not increase at a significant rate the focus then becomes on attaining a larger share of the overall market. On way of doing this is to compete