Give an answer to this peers’ statements.

Student 1: Sravani

Research and development projects are the important assets of any company in this modern world. From the past 20 years the list of top 500 companies is not stable, more than half of them are coming out from the list. This is because the companies are not doing any research for innovations. That is these companies should innovate in  each and every aspect, so that they can withstand the competition. Every company has a different degree of sophistication by which they can complete a task. In this chapter we have seen a four stage model which is evolutionary to perform this task. First every company has their own planning system for finance, with reduced finance and meets the goal within the budget. Second, companies should increase their financial planning in the long future. Third, they should study and understand about the change that they want to implement with this research, which will find the opportunities to lead the market in that specific change. Fourth, the management should be involved in the enterprise thoughts and development commitment to the corporate plan.

For any new product development, it is a risky step for any company or organization, because before stating any research project, we can not know whether the project is going to be successful or not. In this chapter I have seen eight assessment criteria which will help any organization to make a decision whether we should launch the new/change into the market. First, the benefits that the new product or the change brings to the customers or the end users, if we have good benefits when compared to the existing product, then we can go on with the project. Second is marketing, even if we have a most innovative product built we should be able to sell it, so we should consider marketing as a criteria for taking that decision. Third, is scale up the product, we consider the scale of the product so that is can develop the whole product with this as foundation. Fourth is the leadership team, we should have a dedicated team for this innovation. Fifth is the intellectual property of the innovation, this should be confidential and also not a property of others. Sixth is ROI of the innovation that is, we should look or estimate the return on the investment for the innovation. Seventh is the corporate social responsibility, we should do this also before the project is going into the market. The last criteria is that we should check whether the innovation is fitting within the organizational strategy. 

The US industry that I pick is the automobile industry, the lapses in technology and innovation in this industry are majorly with the cost effective outputs when compared with the foreign competition. If we look at the cost effective products from the european and asian automobile companies are capturing the major market.

In the 1980’s the general motors $5 billion project to introduce robotics in manufacturing couldn’t be beneficial to the company because of many reasons. First they didn’t correctly estimate the return on investment for the new innovation. Second , the intellectual property of the innovation had confusions while building the robotics, which resulted in multiple iterations of the product.

Student 2: Nimesh 

“What do I feel are the most important aspects of my learning in the chapters this week? What about this learning was really worthy of my time and understanding?”

The reading[1] this week involved mostly about the research and development of the projects. The initial stages of technical planning process involve information gathering and consolidation of the information. The information gathering is critical because without enough information, you could potentially be making a significant mistake in any project. Once you have consolidated enough information- the next stage begins which is strategy formulation. This involves developing different strategies to approach a project as well as evaluating the cost impact of the project. The next three phases are more towards the implementation of the project. Once the project is selected, implementation phase is next which is basically execution of the project as it was conceptualized. This may involve modifications to initial concept as well. The last phase is the review phase. This was worthy to understand these stages of the project.

Pick a major U.S. industry, such as automobiles or computers, and discuss the lapses in technology and innovation on the domestic front that permitted foreign competitors to get a foothold and, in some cases, a dominant share of the market. Who or what do you think was to blame for this situation?

There are different industries like automobile or computer in which the lapses in technology and innovation have allowed the foreign countries to get a foothold in. I would like to discuss automobile industry in particular. The United States of America is famous for all the technologies and automobile is no different. With brands like Ford, Lincoln, Dodge etc., the USA really has some strong competitive brands to compete across the world. But over the years, the business models, the quality of technology has fallen significantly behind the foreign market. Companies like Honda, Toyota in Japan, or BMW, Audi, Mercedes from Germany have superior technology as compared to most of the American brands. Because of the business model for the automobile industry, the life cycle of an American car is usually shorter than the foreign competitors. This is the first aspect of this situation which needs to change. It is also important that the American brands focus on the technology that involves improving the engine life and performance, the trim packages, and the electronics of the car. Falling behind in technology was one more reason why the other countries were able to get a foothold.
 

In the mid-1980s, General Motors undertook a $5 billion program to introduce robotics and computer-integrated manufacturing techniques into many of its assembly plants. The results were disappointing, to say the least. Enormous technical problems dogged the program from the beginning, and the ultimate gains in productivity were decidedly modest. What do you think went wrong? Why? From the long-term perspective, was the automation program a good idea?

The General Motors, pioneers of the industry, have been looking at the creative technologies to improve the efficiency of the projects and the manufacturing plants. The idea of introducing robotics and computer-integrated manufacturing technologies was a great seller at the time when they introduced it. The whole plan was to reduce human effort for manufacturing and robotics was a huge part of it. But the big problem was that they never really planned the project in a way that could lead to success in long run. A lot of technological issues followed as there was not enough quality control during the steps of the development of this process. They spent enough time and resources in order to fix the automation which was impacting them financially until they finally decided to stop this project. There was also an issue of people not getting enough jobs because of the automation idea. I think that the automation program was a good idea with a lack of serious leadership and execution strategies.