I chose discontinuous innovation for Milestone One. d My strategy was to introduce a radical and
new technology that more than satisfied consumer’s desires, and allowed our company to stay at
the forefront in the luxury vehicle market. d I chose this path as our company had limited IoT
connected offerings and we were on a path to losing market share and relevance within the
industry.
The stage-gate process to manage innovation as it seemed well suited for our goals. d It enabled
cross functional teamwork, had measurable goals at each stage, limited costs, and had a definable
timeline. d I quickly decided that it would be wise to switch to the lean method as necessary as it
would allow innovation to occur at a more rapid pace. The desired timeframe for discontinuous
product launch was shortened due to our competitor releasing a prototype earlier than expected.
To implement an organizational structure like Lockheed’s Skunk Works. d Our current organizational
structure stifled creativity and innovation and therefore would not be ideal to reach our goal of
discontinuous innovation. d A permanent cross functional team with a degree of autonomy would
allow creative ideas to flow more freely and would ideally lead to more and better innovation.
My recommendation favoured a Discontinuous for various reasons. The Company had a 10-year
projected market share of 1.98%, the lowest market share projection in the industry; the CAGR is
also the lowest (Comparative Growth Data, n.d.). The current path would not benefit from
incremental innovation at a paced required to create a significant traction to fight for
competiveness since our competitors are already ahead in the industry.
The Discontinuous approach will muster resources and create a viable business plan for new
technologies which will also incrementally assist the fleet until the new vehicle is launched (CTO
brief, n.d.). The Stage Gate process will ease the process to allow the teams to push ideas into a
final product to be launched and pull, grab, and add incremental ideas that can be added to the
fleet until a new autonomous model is delivered and remain competitive in the industry.
The Company also has a rigid tall-structure, a format capable of slowing the innovation process or
stall it while it waits for approvals. As a mitigation, my recommendation of a lean team with cross
functional approach bringing the decision makers as close as possible to team level will expedite
the process and eliminate communication silos and fast track the innovation approach. My
recommendation is intended to foster communication and ideas that encourage the teams to push
their ideas through the stage gate process rather than discouragement as a result of latent
processes.
