Wharton - Chapter 18

Dr. Jason McDonald told our marketing class something that I will never forget: "Today's employees are more concerned with lifetime employ-ability rather than lifetime employment". This is the central theme of this final chapter of the Wharton book. This chapter explains that a steady paycheck and a promise of future employment are not what today's minds are looking for in a job. People are looking for a job that will accommodate their lifestyle and allow them to have input and a voice in company decisions. Today's successful company must create an adaptable workplace where they not only provide the hygiene factors of employment such as salary, benefits, and an enjoyable environment, but employers must also provide the motivators of employment that people seek out that will give them true satisfaction in the position. Some people will value on-site daycare or flexible working hours, and these "outside the norm" factors may be imperative to recruiting the best minds for the job. Company's must also realize that employees are going to come and go, and the lifetime commitment to an employer that their father's had no longer exists in today's competitive workforce. Human capital is the most valuable asset a company can have, and can be the hardest to replace. The successful companies of tomorrow will recognize this and find ways to extract the most benefit from it.

Wharton - Chapter 17

Chapter 17 is all about the six new forms of organization, instead of the old hierarchical style. Although the lines between these types of organizations are not definite and these are not mutually exclusive, they can be broken into the following forms: Virtual, Network, Spin-out, Ambidextrous, Front-Back, and Sense-and-Respond.
Virtual Organizations are those that utilize technology to bring together geographically dispersed people, suppliers, employee, etc. Network Organizations are built of modular internal or external autonomous or semi-autonomous business units that basically are free to operate as they need to to meet company goals, with little supervision. The Spin-Out organization is a business unit that is its own identity from the large parent unit, that breaks away to become its own organization, with the parent unit primarily just being a financier or offering operating guidance. The Ambidextrous Organization allows an emerging technology to break out of the "innovator's dilemma" and it to be fostered and embarked upon, without the company abandoning its core business in the process. A Front-Back Organization is focuses first on satisfying the customer, then the organization works inward from there. Also focusing on customer needs, the Sense-and-Respond Organization is flexible to adjust and adapt to ever-changing customer needs.

Wharton - Chapter 15

Chapter 15, when combined with chapter 11, is a complete contradiction. Chapter 11 explains how to keep your knowledge a secret and secure it, then Chapter 15 talks of the extreme importance of sharing knowledge. The important key word in mending these ideas is in the title of Chapter 15: "Managing Dynamic Knowledge Networks". Using a horrible aviation example as the initial base (its abundant number of acronyms can make the nodes and arcs confusing", the message behind this chapter is abundantly clear: Creating a knowledge Network and establishing degree centrality and betweenness centrality usually is a good indicator of a firms' success. Whether it be from alliances, engineers in chat rooms and forums, or industry conferences, a solid interconnect of knowledge sharing can have a very significant impact on the company.In looking for further information about knowledge networks, I ran across many examples of a matter I know as "Knowledge Management" and using Ernst and Young as an example, but I found the idea of knowledge sharing best described in an article by Peter Cukor and Lee McKnight of MIT, "Knowledge Networks, Development, and the Internet": ..."Knowledge Networks, in general..., are expected, by their purpose and nature, to shift organizational culture towards collaborative activities within and among institutions."(Mcknight, Cukor, pg6, 2001). The article can be found at: http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/120 McKnight, Knowledge Networks.pdf

Wharton - Chapter 11

This chapter explores the four main components a company should use, in compliment to each other, in order to appropriate the gains on their technology. First Patent protection is defined. Patents are good to protect the use of an invention (in a utility patent)for a period of twenty years from the date of application. What the author do not mention is that from the date the patent is applied for and the date the patent is granted can be up to three years (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/35/154.html), and that would be more than enough time to be infringed upon in the IT world. Although the product by the competitor would have to be off the market by the time the patent issued, they would still have plenty of time to copy the invention, and invent around it to avoid infringing on any important claims in the original patent. But patents are good to have, especially for a pharmaceutical company where inventing around is significantly difficult. Second protection discussed is secrets. Secrets are good in that if no knowledge is published (a patent is published 18 months after application)and if the company clearly identifies and acts accordingly to keep something a secret,(http://library.findlaw.com/2000/May/1/130451.html) then this type of protection can be even better than a patent. Coke's formula for Coca-Cola is a humongous trade secret, and they obviously do not want to patent it, because then the formula would be published. Secrecy can get compromised, though, by espionage or spies, and the complexity can become very out-of-reach if the process or invention is very complex.
Complementary Assets is the third protection, and Starbucks was used as an example here. Anybody can sell coffee, so Starbucks knew there had to be something identifiably theirs if they were going to attract and retain customers. Starbucks sells an experience along with their coffee. It is the expertise of the baristas and the decor of the Starbucks stores that compliment their coffee, and those kinds of things are extremely difficult to duplicate. Lastly, and given the highest priority by both the Yale and the CMU study, was Lead Time. Being first to market does not guarantee success, and moving too quickly could compromise quality or service support, but combining first to market with the protection of a patent or first with a product nobody has ever thought about before can be a huge advantage to gaining customer loyalty, relationships, and visibility.

Wharton - Chapter 10

Chapter 10 is the longest chapter yet, but the author set to explain was certainly an out-of-the-box way of thinking. Typically, I think companies focus on contingency planning, a whole "if this happens, then we will do this", but this chapter shed light on a manner of planning that I had never heard of: Scenario Planning. Using the print industry and Knight-Ridder as examples, the authors walk through the components necessary to construct successful scenario planning.
Purely an imaginative thought process, an organization would put together a matrix and constructing cells out of any wealth of possibilities they may face. Certain attributes would be reliant upon other attributes, such as "may sink in the water" would only relate to "put on a sea vessel", and some are just impossible, such as their example of Full Employment to an economic firm. This matrix would be divided into cells, and these cells provide the basis of uncertainty for the firm to plan upon. This was all completed using a ten step process, and if there are problems, then feel free to start over.
For scenario planning to be successful, it is important to gain the support of top management, get diverse inputs when constructing the matrix, and stimulate new strategic options. Nobody can predict the future, but this mechanism can help an incumbent firm be prepared for it, and not "stick their head in a hole" (Ostrich example) and hope it will just go away. Hodgson (2004) suggests that without explorations of the future, (as opposed to a direct plan with little scrutiny) to deal with possible uncertainties, strategic planning "creates a default scenario: ‘a future that validates the plan and this view of the future dominates … decision making’." Traditional thinking about the future works well in a relatively stable environment, and has proven successful in the past due to the incremental nature of industry changes. Today's innovation-centric businesses and the availability of vast amounts of information available so quickly to so many people has changed the way businesses develop must their strategy, and scenario planning skews away from the traditional to a new arena to accommodate for this fast-paced change.
If anyone is interested, there is a great article on Scenario Planning titled: "Scenario Planning: An Innovative Approach to Strategy Development" by M. Conway of the Swinburne University of Technology. You can find it here: http://www.aair.org.au/jir/2004Papers/CONWAY.pdf

Wharton Chapter 9

Continuing where chapter eight left off on the development of strategy, chapter nine explains why a company needs to use "disciplined imagination" to develop their strategy. Developing a strategy is an art, not a science, and because of that "trends in strategy appear to alternate emphasis between discipline and imagination" from decade to decade. Both components have inherent strengths and weaknesses, and in come cases the strengths can become instant weaknesses if some extraneous circumstance happens to occur. In this chapter a good example was General Instrument. They were extremely good at disciplined strategy creation, but once the cable business became regulated, they were at a substantial disadvantage.

Discipline is consistent and methodical, and although it does not require a formal planning process, it is easier to identify and correct issues relating to the execution or planning of the strategy. It does have its pitfalls, though, as it is based more on analysis that synthesis.

Imagination is more creative, and should should be the first part used when combining discipline and imagination. This idea has more of a focus on synthesis. Create lots of options initially use diversity to examine and define the problem, as this will include more of a vision of the future, and not a reproduction of the past. Also not perfect, the imagination direction can bring upon chaos, dilution of individual creativity, and slow down the strategy-creation process.

These reasons are why it is best to foster a balance of discipline and imagination when creating a strategy. The way to do this is to generate imaginative options and evaluate the options consistently. "Strategy making can be an art, but in situations of uncertainty, strategy making must be an art."

In Paul Schoemaker's article "Disciplined Imagination: From Scenarios to Strategic Options", he suggests using a core capabilities matrix to integrate three steps:
1.Scenarios will be used to examine the external environment, specifically those trends and key uncertainties that affect all players.
2. Industry analysis and strategic segmentation will help define the battlefield in terms of competitors, barriers, and profit potential.
3. Core capabilities analysis provides the basis for developing a strategic vision for the future.

Use these three steps to derive a vision, and then use that vision to create strategic options.

Wharton Chapter 8

This chapter was a very short one, but also very important. It focuses on commercialization strategies for companies that emabrk upon developing and marketing emerging technologies. It uses half the chapter using Mergenthaler and typesetting evolution examples, and th eother half uses photography to rationalizes the author's rationale. Essentially, the chapter explains how sometimes having a superior technology does not guarantee success in the market place. It also explains how sometimes an incumbent company can have inferior technology, yet still become the survivor in the market. This is accomplished by recognizing four changing components to change their overall strategy: Change in Customers, Change in Competetors, Change in Complementary Assets, and Change in Technology. These components establish the facts that a successful comapny must realize the value in creating customer realtionships and giving customers what they want. There was also a significant focus on the value of complementary assetss. If a firm wants to get a foothold on a market, they may be able to do so with inferior technology if they offer other components to that technology to give it added value. Would iTunes be the number one online music retailer if the iPod did not exist? Or would the iPod be so popular if iTunes never existed? These two technologies face still competition from such powerhouses as Wal-Mart and Microsoft, yet still emerge successful because of the relationship they have with each other. The end of the chapter recognizes the entirely new market segments that have to be explored when introducing new technology, and what technology these new segemtns may replace. The increasing popularity of the digital camera reduced the need for film, and these digital camera users typically had different requirements that did the traditional camera user. Even Polaroid, who started instant film in 1937, will finally retire this technology in 2008 due to the market transition to digital photography.

Sources:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/02/16/POLAROID.ART_ART_02-16-08_A1_AH9CHQJ.html?sid=101
and
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/04/03/itunes-now-number-one-music-retailer-in-us-npd-numbers/