Innovation/Entrepreneurial Change Annotated Bibliography
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Innovation/Entrepreneurial Mishaps
Mike Avila, Cameron Hazelrig, Caleb J Hefti, & Tony Lawson
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Running head: INNOVATION/ENTREPRENEURIAL MISHAPS |
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INNOVATION/ENTREPRENEURIAL MISHAPS |
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Innovation/Entrepreneurial Mishaps
With the advent of Smartphone, some companies emerged as key market players with Blackberry pioneering far ahead of others. For a considerable time, the company remained at the top of a market designed to provide business readiness in the palm of your hand. Blackberry was the leader for Smartphone products and technology. However, the need for change necessitated by the advancement in technology and innovation demanded that the business change and Blackberry was behind the curve. New leaders such as Android, and iOS emerged and were receptive to change with new technology pushing their organizations into the future.
Failed Strategy of Blackberry
As recent as 2009, Blackberry was considered the number one phone and fastest growing company in the world according to Fortune magazine (Gustin, 2013). Almost every corporation involved with Wall Street or working at Capitol Hill had a Blackberry and there was nothing that could stop this tech giant from growing. However, Apple started to introduce the touch screen phone and Blackberry felt as though the full keyboard was the best way to go for corporations and businesses since that was the main focus of their business (Gustin, 2013). Blackberry did not realize that it would be the everyday consumer, not the business consumer that would drive the phone industry (Gustin, 2013). Consumers preferred the touch screen for viewing videos and navigating the phone through the touch screen features (Gustin, 2013). Blackberry failed to see beyond a phone that could be used as more than a communication device where as Apple and Google saw the phones as full-fledged miniature computers (Gustin, 2013).
First Recovery Strategy Option
SMS 2.0 was a plan devised in troubled times with the idea of helping the company regains its lost glory as a master in innovation. The idea was to have it as a revenue generator. However, the idea countered the same rigidity in approval as in the invention of touch screen Smartphone (Cope, 2011). In the mobile phone industry, competition can only manage through the production of products that are well received in the market. Known for its big branded phones, Blackberry inaugurated the Blackberry 10. Though its impact may be slow, it has the potential to overhaul the company’s revenues to a new livelihood. Through an intense marketing campaign, the company can make a rebound.
Second Recovery Strategy Option
Merger or acquisition: with vast resources, Blackberry is well positioned to buy out a smaller company introduce its strong brand to the new business trending ideas. Blackberry could take up a smaller company and use its resources to develop a more versatile brand. Additionally, Blackberry could look at merging with other leading brands such as Samsung also providing the same versatility in its product line up.
Diversification: It is the companies that invest in diversification rarely need to compete with market changes because they assure of returns on investment. Different businesses in the mobile devices industry specialize in various products. From this perspective, Blackberry can change its strategy to production of a part or parts including operating systems. Such a deviation would ensure that it remains in business despite deviating from the original line of business (Sarasvathy, Menon, and Kuechle, 2013).
Conclusion
Blackberry’s example shows that the organization failed to adapt to the market. Either poor strategy or poor analysis of data could have directly contributed to this failure. The lesson learned in this case is that organization if they value success should always conduct market research and be aware of trends. Lack of fully understanding the market will always result in a loss, whether temporary or long term. In this case, we can gather it was long term as Android and iOS rule the technological push and Blackberry is on the verge of extinction. Growth in business is sought from the understanding that no company is ever safe. Had blackberry understood this, it may have been what Android is today.
References
Chandra, Y., & Yang, S. J. S. (2011). Managing disruptive innovation: Entrepreneurial strategies
and tournaments for corporate longevity. Journal of General Management, Forthcoming.
Cope, J. (2011). Entrepreneurial learning from failure: An interpretative phenomenological
analysis. Journal of business venturing, 26(6), 604-623.
Gustin, S. (2013). The Fatal Mistake That Doomed BlackBerry. Retrieved from http://business.time.com/2013/09/24/the-fatal-mistake-that-doomed-blackberry/
Sarasvathy, S. D., Menon, A. R., & Kuechle, G. (2013). Failing firms and successful
entrepreneurs: Serial entrepreneurship as a temporal portfolio. Small business economics, 40(2), 417-434.
