Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.

It’s not news that Sony is a global company or that (25%) of all Play Station profits’ for the past seven years came from Sony to Japan. After all that’s what international marketing and the global economy are all about, companies like Sega, Nintendo, Microsoft, X-Box doing business around the world. The global economy now reaches every corner of the United States. Current interest in international marketing can be explained by changing competitive structures coupled with shifts in demand characteristics in markets throughout the world. With the increasing globalization of markets, companies find they are unavoidably enmeshed with foreign customers, competitors and suppliers. A significant portion of all products made in the United

Sony is one of the largest consumer electronics manufacturers in the world. It has introduced various high quality products such as the Play Station series product line. However, Sony has not managed to have a positive net income and has faced six net loss in the last seven years. Aiming for a turning a round, Sony declares a goal of $4.8 million of operating profit in the fiscal year 2017 and targets a 10% return on equity (the Economist, 2015). Sony’s business strategy to is to restructure and divide the company into three sectors, which are Growth Drivers, Stable Profit Generators, and Volatility Management, to give the business sectors the independence to operate in the most efficient manner (Baker, 2015).

A wise man once said, “The only permanent thing in the world is change,” an adage that rings especially true for organizations in this fast-changing era of technology and communication. Daft very deftly puts the inescapable need for change in three simple words, “Innovate or Perish” in his book “Understanding the Theory & Design of Organizations” [2].

The typical experience of video games is one with a controller with joysticks that are used to control where the playable character is looking along with a monitor or television screen in front of the player. Today, this scenario is so

This case study goes through the evolution of IT governance at Cisco and the related project management. This case is a classic example of the result of a decentralized governance of business units. What happened to CISCO due to the decentralized governance, how the business processes were modified to overcome the chaos created by the decentralized governance and how the employees and management reacted to this change in CISCO’s business governance? This case clearly illustrates the effect of a totally decentralized governance and how changing to a centralized governance leads to unrest and resistance. It also illustrates how the cultural/managerial change effects the business decisions needed to be made

The appellant is a manufacturer of console games in the form of game disks and Sony Play Station. To play the console games, one has to load a game disk into a console or play station which has a connection to the television of the user. On the other hand, to play the PC games, one loads a game disk into the CD drive contained in a personal computer. However, Sony has engineered its play station game disks in such a way that it is not possible to play them on the Personal computer but only on a TV. With a lucrative and enormous market for video games, Sony inc. has managed to be the market leader with this unique technology (Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc., v. Bleem, LLC et al. (2000)).

Copyright 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America This chapter was originally published as chapter 1 of The Adventures of an IT Leader, copyright 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the

Unique user requirements are met but because one organization maintains the software baseline, the coalition or the whole benefit from each contribution. The genius of this organization is that it is available for those who want to seek their solution through this agency versus being mandated to participate. As a result, the program office is incentivized to deliver on their user’s requirements as a small percentage of the funding is used to maintain the overhead and needs of the program office. The competitive marketplace environment and this Life-Form organizational structure seem like a huge potential in the Department of Defense to motivate and breed a culture where innovations would be rewarded much more than the current structure and

When the CEO launches two new strategic initiatives requiring integration across all business units, the organization – whose IT decisions have been largely delegated to its business units in proportion to their revenue generating capacity – now faces the dilemma of how to prioritize its IT projects in order to support the new strategic “enterprise” vision.

The current IT infrastructure is strong enough to meet the current operational needs of the organization, but is constructed with a combination of commercial-off-the-shelf hardware/software and home developed middleware with no comprehensive documentation available. Even though policy management, standardization and documented procedures needed a lot of work, there were some operational practices such as password management, business continuity, disaster recovery, and data backup and storage that seem to work. VTBC was able to continue processing orders if there was a failure in network conductivity. VTBC’s e-commerce applications were hosted outside of Vermont which gave them a position to capitalize on the nation’s internet infrastructure. There are seven veteran IT employees that possess a lot of the current working knowledge of the IT infrastructure and successful procedures but are limited in practical IT applications to make the infrastructure more efficient. With the implementation of various hardware and software applications, change control is not implemented or executed. Vermont Teddy Bear Company successfully operates three different product brands, using four different communication channels and but each of those channels is supported by different software. Vermont Teddy Bear Company utilized the “best of breed” approach for software acquisition. This method allowed the organization to

Investment in IT - is determined by the senior management team resulting in a business monarchy model.

IT faces several challenges as they try to align business goals with IT. In larger firms with several business units, IT may be highly aligned with the goals of each individual business unit, yet not with the overall company goals. Creating many individual solutions for separate business units in isolation from the

A Critical Review of “Chasing the hottest IT: Effects of Information Technology Fashion on Organizations” Introduction In his article “Chasing the hottest IT: Effects of Information Technology Fashion on Organizations”, Paul Wang seeks to examine the effects that IT fashion has on organizations. He collected data from 109 Fortune 500 companies, and this helped him to establish that the firms that were reputable for implementation of IT fashions in the media did not particularly experience higher performance, especially in the short term. Paul Wang’s article used easily comprehensible language and presented the results in an impressive manner. However, the methodology used in obtaining the data and subsequently the results was heavily dependent on independent commercial firm and this thus raises credibility questions. Summary There has been consistent evolution of new technologies and managers are faced with the tough choice of deciding whether new technologies are merely passing fads or important “next big things”. There is a big difference between these two types of technologies. A passing fad will often attract high amounts of interest and attention and trigger embellished expectations concerning its benefits during its short lived stint. However, the next big things in IT, are usually important innovations that potentially transform organizational practices and performances hence are widely adopted and institutionalized. Nevertheless, both types of technologies have to

Seeing is believing, these words are the best combination to understand the meaning of Virtual Reality (VR). VR is one of the best asset and aspect of our future. No other technology has seen such a revolution like VR has. It is practically in use in almost every field such as entertainment, gaming, defense, robotics, medical, healthcare, military, education, fashion, heritage, business, engineering and many more fields. VR sometimes called Virtual Environment has drawn much attention in the last two decade. Extensive media coverage causes the much more rapid increase in the interest of the masses. Very few people, however, really know what VR is and what are its open problems are. In this report a historical overview of virtual reality is presented, basic terminology as an introduction are listed, followed by applications of this technology in science, work, and entertainment areas. Its present developments are thoroughly discussed in this report. Finally, the future of VR is considered in two aspects: technological and social. New research directions, technological frontiers and potential applications are pointed out. The possible positive and negative influence of VR on life of average people is speculated.

This paper will discuss the processes and pitfalls faced by Information Technology managers in today’s world of business. Today’s IT managers need not only be savvy about existing equipment and upcoming technology; but must also understand the budget issues they face and how to properly address them. The IT manager is asked to look into a crystal ball and predict what products will be beneficial and which requirements can be cut from the budget. They must be able to differentiate between the new shiny fad and products that will be a true asset to the company’s visions and goals. An IT budget can no longer be a static number on the company’s finance sheet; it must be a clear vision of the department’s future spending while falling in line with the goals and expectations of the company.