Extra Credit Blog - Current Event

This blog post is intended to fulfill an extra credit assignment for Professor Voelker’s Strategic Management Seminar course (MGMT 6731) at University of Houston Clear Lake this Fall 2012 semester.  The extra credit assignment is to provide an additional overview of a current event associated with an assigned topic area, in this case relating strategic management and innovation.  To fulfill this requirement I have chosen what I have found to be an interesting current event regarding how businesses innovatively leverage new venues for selling products and encourage their advocacy during the holiday season to create additional sales, in this particular case what has now come to be known as “Mobile Tuesday.”

Along with our Thanksgiving holiday American’s have come to look forward to Black Friday sales as a way of officially recognizing the Christmas season is upon us.  What used to be the treasure trove all retailers looked forward to for moving their year end performance out of the red and into the black has been further extended with the invention of the web along with a means for secure online transactions by the resulting innovative creation a new sales holiday we have come to look forward to known as Cyber Monday.  Now if two back to back sales holidays weren’t quite enough to spur the ever budget conscious public into easing up on the purse strings controlling their pocket books, we now have a back to back to back sales holiday to look forward to - this time known as “Mobile Tuesday.” 

What drives the creation of these new sales holidays?  A new factor that must be considered when deliberating the four P’s of the marketing mix.  Technologies that create new venues for marketing and securing sales.  Whereas people used to have to go in person through store after store shopping around for the best deals, with the internet they were able to reside comfortably at their personal computer perusing many different online providers to choose the best deals for the products they desired to give during the holiday season.  Now with the creation of mobile networks and hand held cellular devices such as smart phones and tablets that most everyone can now afford, shopping is more convenient, easier and speedier that ever before.  Mobile Tuesday makes it possible to use your cellular devices wherever you are and whenever you want to quickly scan through a multitude of new deals and make associated purchases should you have been reluctant to make those initial holiday purchases earlier on either in person on Black Friday or online on Cyber Monday.

This is an important and evolving innovation development because it means business managers creating new strategies for marketing and to secure sales will need to stay abreast of the latest choices in information technology available to their customers.  The new technologies create the possibility for new venues driving sales.  This provides leverage to help keep organizations a step ahead especially when applying the appropriate level of marketing hype at opportune times such extending national holidays beyond their normal presence of sales duration.  This is also important not just for the business community as charitable organizations seeking to increase their share of contributions are quick to take up the new marketing opportunity themselves too. 

Citations:

1.       Zephrin Lasker, November 6, 2011.  Cyber Monday? How About Mobile Tuesday. Forbes.  Accessed at http://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2011/12/06/cyber-monday-how-about-mobile-tuesday/  on November 29, 2012.

2.       Author Unknown, October 16, 2012.  Brooklyn Website Taking A Stab At ‘Mobile Tuesday’. New York Business Journal.  Accessed at http://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2012/10/16/brooklyn-website-taking-a-stab-at.html  on November 29, 2012.

3.       George Koprowicz, November 27, 2012.  Giving Tuesday Is The Mobile Charitable Alternative After Cyber Monday.  Examiner.com.  Accessed at http://www.examiner.com/article/giving-tuesday-is-the-mobile-charitable-alternative-after-cyber-monday  on November 29, 2012.

RFID- Post number 4

RFID

 

As prices for RFID continue to fall, this technology becomes a part of our lives more and more whether we like it or not.  Implications are broad, and include medical management, inventory control, passport/ID protection, etc…  Larger players such as Wal-Mart have profound impacts on smaller companies regarding RFID.  Regarding inventory control, Wal-Mart requires suppliers to provide RFID as part of its shipment packages.  Some suppliers are not otherwise incentivized to incur such an expense, but must do so anyway to continue doing business with Wal-Mart.  Over time, however, this seems to have lost momentum, and many stores do not use this technology yet.  RFID appears to be a great idea on the surface, but it is not without its critics.  As with most technology, there are others who can exploit weaknesses in RFID to steal identities of others, conduct corporate espionage, and pose risks to military/government organizations that use this technology.  There are also issues with standardizing chips that are used, so that they may be readable from company to company, and from any overseeing agency that needs to regulate a given industry.  Although there are a fair share of potential issues, RFID has many uses in the future, and managers of all industries may likely be exposed to this technology and must be aware of its implications. 

 

 

 

“RFID Technology Transforming Food Retailers Like Walmart”,

http://seekingalpha.com/article/194466-rfid-technology-transforming-food-retailers-like-wal-mart, retrieved 11/20/2012.

RFID's Second Wave, BusinessWeek, retrieved 11/20/2012.

"Radio Silence". The Economist. 7 June 2007. http://economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9249278.

Blog Post 4 – Current Event

This blog post is intended to fulfill a requirement for Professor Voelker’s Strategic Management Seminar course (MGMT 6731) at University of Houston Clear Lake this Fall 2012 semester.  The requirement in question is to provide an overview of a current event associated with an assigned topic area, in this case relating strategic management and innovation.  To fulfill this requirement I have chosen what I have found to be a very interesting current event on how busisnesses leverage social media to innovatively improve teamwork via internal communication, in this particular case as a system called “Colab” by General Electric.

How can a firm leverage the experience of all their employees in one fell swoop?  GE has the way.  It’s called “Colab”.  A social networking system internal to the company that allows employees to post items of interest they are in need of resolving and provides a mehanism where other employees who might have unique insights can offer helping advice.  The system was started up by the chief information office in the beginning of 2012 and already has over one hundred thousand users.  Emphasis has been on getting power users to try out the system and make value added feedback to the developers on what functionality they would find most useful.  Idea here is that if the power users actually take hold of the new system and refer there associates, then they system will take hold and be of value.  Evidently this concept is working great because GE reports they adding on the order of a thousand users ever few days.

Finding innovative ways to get the most out of your human capital is a key to sustained competitive advantage.  Leveraging technology such as social media to bring your people together who have common interests and complimentary experience is such an example.  Unleashing the creativity that comes along with such diveristy will yield great returns.

Citations:

1.      Robert Berkman and Ron Utterbeck, November 7, 2012.  GE’s Coab Brings Good Things to the Company. MIT Sloan Management Review. Accessed at http://sloanreview.mit.edu/feature/ges-colab-brings-good-things-to-the-company/ on November 12, 2012.

2.      Paul Wolf, November 12, 2012. Harnessing The Power of Thousands of Brinas.  Reinventing Government.  Accessed at http://reinventinggov.org/2012/11/12/harnessing-the-power-of-thousands-of-brains/ on November 13, 2012

3.      Karen Goulart, August 7, 2012. GE Brings Social Collaboration to Live with Colab. SearchCIO.  Accesseed at http://searchcio.techtarget.com/feature/GE-brings-social-collaboration-to-life-with-GE-Colab   on November 13, 2012.

Innovation of Robotic Lawn Mowers

 

Many American families have been using iRobot Corp.'s Roomba vacuum cleaner for many years. Now the technology has spread to lawn mowers. Robert Bosch, an auto parts giant,  began to sell robotic lawn mower last month. The well known auto company Honda Motor also released its robotic lawn mower product named Miimo, which looks similar to iRobot Roomba,   in Europe in August 2012. The robotic lawn mower is a combination of sensors and GPS technology. Not only can the robotic lawn mowers cut turf in random patterns or distinct lines, they can also reverse directions to avoid obstacles such as trees or lawn chairs. This is an important event that represents the regular mower's innovation. The robotic lawn mower is changing human life and becoming a part of our life.

 

The first model of robotic lawnmower was invented in 1995 by Husqvarnal Corporation, Europe's biggest high quality lawn mower and related products maker. This company currently dominates the robotic lawn mower market and its technology in robotics lawnmower is the best in the world. Other two companies Deere (DE) and Global Garden Products Italy also have launched commercial products in 2012. The most likely outcome is that traditional lawnmower will be substituted by Robot lawnmower if the price is competitive. It may become the fastest-growing outdoor garden tool in some markets, especially in Europe luxury end market. The total revenue of the robotic lawn mower in 2012 is $170 million, increased 30% compared to 2011. If the retail price can decrease from  €2,000 to €1,000, "the market will become mainstream."  

 

Although it is a niche market and robotic mower's total market share cannot compete with the conventional mowers now , there are a lot of opportunities for those followers. Practicing managers should be ready to seize this opportunity to develop new robotic mowers. For the traditional lawn mower manufacturers, they should be aware of the threat from robotic lawn mowers.

The early robotic mower market entrants should establish entry barriers such as core technology and patent to increase innovation lead time. If they have enough lead time, they will be able to shape consumer preferences and build consumer brand loyalties to earn more market share and more profit.

 

Citation

1.Honda launches robotic lawn mower

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-08-21/honda-robot-mower/57185858/1

2. Rise of the Lawn-Cutting Machines

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-25/rise-of-the-lawn-cutting-machines

3. Lawn mowing robots bid for a share of a growing market , By Zoe Kleinman, 31 October 2012

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20102090