The Flight of the Kitty Hawk

Increase the frequency of purchases by your customers. No matter how poor your current product or service, you must have some customers or clients. One key strategic dimension that you should be thinking about is how to augment and reposition your product in order to sell more to this group.

One key element of Apple’s strategy in computers, personal media players, tablet computers, and smart phones is product innovation, diversification and development. Over the years Apple has been very successful in integrating software and hardware in new developing products. Despite the struggling economy in recent years, Apple has been able to grow their market share and stay ahead of the game.

In The Wall Street Journal, tech reporter Daisuke Wakabayashi (2014) describes how Apple is expanding its reach into the business market. “The iPhone has replaced the BlackBerry as the mobile phone of choice, as the iPad assumes tasks once reserved for PCs,” (Wakabayashi, 2014). Wakabayashi (2014) noted that “Apple is going mainstream” when it comes to the corporate world, and he profiles multiple large enterprises — including SAP, Nordstrom, and Cisco — that have rolled out iOS and other Apple devices to their

I will never see the day when there is not yet room for improvement. Through time, HP's focus on innovation had brought the world products such as the handheld calculator and the inkjet printer. In 1992, the company continued to invest heavily in technology, spending $1.6 billion or 10% of revenue on research and development. The high levels of investment have paid off. For three straight years, over half of HP's orders had been for products introduced within the last two years.

Hewlett Packard (HP) decided to produce 1.3-inch disk drives to become the market leader in a new market and increase HP’s revenue. Although the market for 1.3-inch disk drives was still unclear and still developing, HP decided to organize a special team to develop this new product. This group was multi-talented, with the best engineers from every department in the company. The group also had many priorities for the company. However, things didn’t develop as the Kittyhawk team expected. They failed to sell the new product to the customer they planned. Even though some new customers were interested in this

The team should do this by seeking to know the progress of their competitors. The trend of the competitors would help to understand the markets they are serving, the existing gaps, the planned products and pricing strategies. At this stage in the product life cycle, the company might consider to engage in expansion. Before making the decision to expand, it is critical to ensure that the company gets into something that will differentiate it from its competitors. Looking at competitors will help the team know some of the strategies they used when faced with similar situation and even avoid making mistakes. Any new product launched should build on what the previous product did better and bring about an improvement.

After identifying the sales targets, the strategies, tactics and actions to achieve them can be worked on. Gluck (2014), mentions that to identify underlying strategies and increase sales, a business can break into a new market segment by adapting an existing product or boosting the average sale per customer by using add-on sales or upselling premium features. When developing the sales strategies, the market segment, customers' motivations and expectations, and the capacity to meet customers' expectations should be considered.

HP, an expert in the hi-tech industry understands the fiercely competitive environment where technological and innovative advancements could create turbulent

However, change can be a risky process that can have negative, instead of positive, consequences for the company’s future. In fact, it has been estimated that only about half of the large scale interventions succeed. With the above in mind Bruch, Gerber and Maier (2005) aimed at identifying the characteristics of a successful strategic change program by using the case of German aviation Group Deutsche Lufthansa. Lufthansa succeeded several times in successfully implementing change, as a response to the turbulent aviation market conditions between 1991 and 2004. Lufthansa’s last, and most successful, strategic change program was the D-Check. Part of what made D-Check so successful was the fact that Lufthansa’s management made a distinction between leading decisions and managing decisions. Leading decision deals with conceiving a clear goal – in other words, what would be right. Managing decision deals with finding the way to achieve the goal – in other words, how do we do it right. Therefore, before implementing change a company should clearly and conclusively resolve the issue of what change would be right and how can be done right. Key questions are the following:

An example of an Innovator would be Google Self Driving Cars. Most people are very hesitant to put their lives into the hands of technology and it takes a tremendous amount of trust in the car to get you to your destination safely. Majority of people are not ready to put their loved ones lives in a self-driving car so quickly. However, there will be a select view that would jump the gun in order to own the first self-driving car. Those people would definitely be considered innovators. A great example of an Early Adopters product would be GoPro cameras. All it took was a couple of innovators to take a couple breathtaking and unbelievable shots with a GoPro and sales skyrocketed! Now you see GoPro images and videos all around us, especially for

In such a competent and market-leading organization, how did HP overlook these incorrect assumptions? Root cause analysis showed these reasons:

Back in the year 2001, the first iPod was released; it was not actually an inventive product. In fact MP3 players /Walkman were already been around for a few years. The first MP3 Players /Walkman were put on the market in the year 1998. Nevertheless the iPod was the first to be really an innovation. It was the very first to allow a thriving transition of “new ideas into tangible societal impact”. The combination of elements such as its visual design, its ease-of-use and the most significant was the iTunes software that allowed the user to manage and purchase music online.

The iPhone and iPad gained Apple serious ground in the technology battles that has been raged on in the past decade between Microsoft and itself. Microsoft has once countered with their own tablet with help from companies like Samsung. As technology continues to advance and more companies dive into the technology market, there will be more examples of new ideas that progress the business as whole. All I know is there are many interesting and fascinating ideas still on the rise for consumers and businesses alike.

Apple Inc. is known for their innovative products, combining user-friendly technology and elegant design, Apple’s bite of the consumer electronics market has been getting a little larger year by year. The Apple brand is fun, unique, and memorable because it is such a departure from brands that sound serious and corporate. Apple’s Macintosh computers has always stood out because it looks different from other personal computers and relies on software that even novices can learn. IPod backed by music-driven advertising, the player with the white ear buds immediately became the product of choice for many consumers. Newer models such as the iPod Nano and the iPod Touch have continued the

Patricia Dunn as the board chairman, made a decision that the board had to meet several times in a year, culminate in multi-day, off-site retreat that were held in January where the board was required to have review of the coming year plans and strategies. However, recently, the board had faced various issues related to turnover and turmoil. Some of the actions undertaken by the boards were to organize and assist the new technology committee to make some of the best recommendations towards the board’s scope, direction, quality, execution of HP strategies and investment levels.