Consider W.L. Gore’s competitive strategy. Assess the fitness of the firm’s organizational structure and controls to help the company achieve its strategic objectives. Can you identify any problem areas that may develop as the company faces oncoming competitive forces?
Competitive Strategy. W.L. Gore has a competitive strategy to form quality, high-value, and differentiated products. Gore’s unique diversification strategy allows the company to use four divisions to serve entirely different industries. This will also help to protect against any botches in any one industry and allows multiple investment avenues for W.L. Gore. However, the distinct level of diversification allows for the core competencies and organizational boundaries to be
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Gore’s flat lattice structure, cross-functional product development teams, and shared values support internal innovation and product differentiation. W.L. Gore achieves effective integration of these functions involved in internal innovation efforts without formal structural elements. Resource allocation, activity coordination, and communication throughout the organization adopt creating and strategic behavior. Continuously distributing knowledge capital and promoting internal innovations takes W.L. Gore into new markets and creates new value for the firm. The level of self-rule, innovativeness, and risk-taking within the firm suggest that the company sustains an entrepreneurial mindset as another source of internal innovation and growth. The company’s collaborative, cross-functional product development teams maintain powerful new product development processes that will adapt to its unique core competencies and to the needs of the market and easily commercialize new products. One of the company’s guiding principles is for its associates to make and keep their own commitments as If they were taking an oath. Along with this combination of freedom (dabble time) and resources (raw materials) produces viable new products. Allows for innovation to be an effective growth strategy and for a continuous flow of knowledge and technology that is required. And the analysis above offers evidence of W.L. Gore’s knowledge-sharing
An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary film in which basis are put long-term researches of changes of climate, level of carbonic gas in the atmosphere, and conditions of polar ices. In this film, El Gore, a presidential candidate of 2000 and former vice president of the United States, explains the scientific and political view of global warming and its serious consequences that we already observe on Earth, and other more tragic consequences that are still to come in the near future if we do not reduce emissions of exhaust gas in the atmosphere. Nothing especially new about the global warning is presented in the film, but what made this film effective is, firs of all, the fact that El Gore, a public and well known figure in the United States, is the main protagonist of the film. Another effective point in the film is that El Gore put all the scientific work together and showed that the problem is real, it is not a myth, and it should not be ignored any longer.
...resent diversity within the labor force and “each of them will also have networks of professional associates whose knowledge they can tap in order to solve problems and accomplish tasks. Needless-to-say, diverse people will have diverse networks and provide your company with a vast and diverse meta-network at your disposal” (p.1). In short, in supporting of creativity, innovators essentially need the backing from top leaders, and without that support, many initiatives may break down or die on the vine (Harvard). For any idea to be successful, it is vital that it is aligned with company strategy; there is more likely to occur naturally when top executives involve and take the lead with a idea or creativity initiative and this is a main reason why management commitment is a key factor in the accomplishment of any idea or innovation process (Baumgarther, 2010).
Competitive strategy is a long-term action plan that is devised to help a company gains the competitive advantages over its competitors. There are Four Porter’s Competitive Strategy which including cost leadership, differentiation, cost-focused and focused-differentiation.
Sharing of knowledge, technology, and capital that are brought to the company by the partner.
Kelley,T. (2005, Oct.). The 10 faces of innovation. Fast Company, 74-77. Retrieved 6th March’ 2014 from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=9&sid=1d6a17b7-c5f7-4f00-bea4 db1d84cbef55%40sessionmgr10&hid=28&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=bth&AN=18386009
Hansen M., Nohria N., and Tierney T. (1999), “What’s your Strategy for Managing Knowledge?,” Harvard Business Review (March 1999), 106–16.
WL Gore has done a great job of creating a profitable, innovative company. As a flat organization they have higher participation using an organic model (555) with cross-functional teams that have wide spans of control. This includes the free-flow of information, low formalization, and decentralization that provides for faster decisions from cross-hierarchal teams. The team/matrix structure combines functionality and product resources. This also creates generalists rather than specialists to share product resources and allows for timely completion of products closer to budget with less duplication of activities. Decentralization creates a chain of command from the team directly to the final decision maker with a lower span of control. In addition, their innovation strategy promotes unique, meaningful innovations that empower employees to introduce new products to their teams for possible manufacturing.
The skill abilities of team members within IDEO reflect the company’s doctrine of open innovation and the benefit of assembling those diverse teams. From their clients IDEO assimilates best practices and then integrates these practices back into their own business and proces...
II. Company Description 3M, internationally established in 1951, is a $16 billion multinational company with its headquarters in Minnesota, U.S.A., with operations in more than 60 countries, and products sold in nearly 200 countries. (About 3M and MIS Quarterly) 3M offers products and services to the transportation, graphics and safety, healthcare, industrial, consumer and office, electro and communications, and specialty markets. (IBM Case Study on 3M) 3M, a company known for its innovation, constantly encourages employees to create new products. Thirty percent of sales must come, each year, from products less than 4 years old and scientists must spend 15% of their time trying to develop new ideas of their own. In 2001, 3M spent over $1 billion dollars alone on research and development (3M 2001 annual report). 3M's corporate culture revolves around creativity, initiative, innovation, and entrepreneurship. This unique and innovative culture is largely responsible for 3M's success. (MIS Quarterly) In accordance with having a strong need to stimulate innovation and creativity, 3M has a very decentralized corporate structure. It maintains over 40 business units that develop and market various 3M products and services. Each department operates as an individual company with its own processes systems and brands. This structure has afforded the different divisions the autonomy to conduct jobs in their own way using their initiative in a responsible manner. (Harvard Business Review and MIS Quarterly) III. The Problem Although 3Ms decentralized structure was good for innovation, it was an obstacle for the customers. Customers were seeing the 3M business units as a set of individual business instead of one unified company. Each business unit recorded its sales and product and customer information in its own database.
1. What is it about the Gore organizational culture that keeps it a leader in innovation and creativity?
Olsen, E. (n.d.). Strategic planning: Diversification. Strategic planning kit for dummies, 2nd edition. Retrieved from http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/strategic-planning-diversification.html
“Logic will get you from A to B, but imagination will take you everywhere,” a thought share by one of the great minds of innovationist, Albert Einstein. These sentiments capture the essence of what it means to be innovative as expressed by 3 M development director. “Innovation is an idea that leads to the next level of a previous conceived idea or ingenious new knowledge implied or based in a new object or service propelling new technologies connection, stirring up new creativity and passion that inspires to the next level (3M,2 013). “Like 3m, AT&T and Southwest Airlines are examples of organizations that has portrayed capitalizing on innovation ideals as a part of its culture. From a small airline in its inception, Southwest become a reckoning phenomenal as a company, while AT&T is now breaking grounds to forge international working relationships.
Effective knowledge transfer through a conversion of tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge can build a sustainable capacity to innovate within an organization and gain an external competitive advantage.
Access to resource - One of the reasons to collaborate is to take advantage of resources. For example, an inter-company collaborates to place a product in the market where one compa...
Additionally, understood the strategy implementation, actions made by firms that carry out the formulated strategy, including strategic controls, organizational design, and leadership. environmental