My recommendation favored 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 also 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.
