Learning Journals

Session 9 and session 10 were the last classes that we had for this term so we started the class with the group presentation by Roman and Filippo. Then Chanakan, Awal, Milana and I did the second group presentation. The professor asked and answered many meaningful questions before we move on to the review for the final exam—which is always nice to know what will come out.  Then, we moved on to understandingg the role at which Human Resource Management plays in a companies innovation and the strategy development process. To understand it better, the professor asked us to do a case study about Swisscom and let us try to relate it to the concepts and theories that we have learned so far in class. As the case study was more about the internal discussions and methods of the top management, it was difficult to try and relate it to the theories. I had to do the disruptive innovation process to which I answered:  Swisscom became to innovate while their core business was still strong o...

In the beginning of the first session, we started with a review of the previous class and went over the sources of disruption such as regulation, technology, customer and competition. With the current political climate, we can see that there are practical risk with the regulations, there can be a decrease of customers and markets and competitions with new sanctions and less competitions. The patterns of disruption can come from a competitor outpacing a market, new substitutes attracting new competitors, the rules of the games changing, sinking in competitive options, vanishing resources/competitor and market fit, and consolidation of value chains.  In the case of BMW, when tesla was disrupting the electric car industry with its innovative cars and consolidated value chains, BMW were also engaginng in electric mobility but were appraoching these trends carefully as it is one of the many segments they have. They took actions to address the ongoing increase of consolidations along the...

In the second session, we looked over again the sources of disruption. The German long-distance bus was affected by the regulatory environment and the Deutsche Bahn. The bus has quite high frequency but so does the train. It focuses on the existing routes at lower prices with flexibly adaptable. Then, we did a case study on Tesla and whether the company will be disrupted by its competitor in China. While there are many opinions about whether that would be a good or a bad outcome if Tesla would be disrupted, there are challenges and risks such as none of the major domestic EV start-ups have made any profits if they are not selling gasoline-powered cars, but so did Tesla until 2020, so it will take a while for the adaptation. On the one hand, the U.S. high performance chip maker Nvidia is being contracted by many Chinese EV makers to produce software-driven features following the footstep of Tesla. On the other hand, Nvidia has to navigate through the U.S-China tension, whilst following ...

In today's first session, we were told that we would be doing 3 case studies that are interesting disruptive examples. The models of the 4 dimensions that may individually or collectively disrupt business models were brought up again as it influences many aspects of different industries. Customers change their behaviors, competitors emerging, existing competitors changing their business models and evolving and the advancement of technological innovations are the dimensions simply put.  The insta-fashion brands are basically brands that are created by the micro-influencers who have garnered enough followers and created a persona likeable enough that they know their followers would buy their products and support their cause or just their styles alone. They are somewhat democratizing fashion by making fashion available for everyone, simply speaking, it is like fashion for the people, quite different from haute coutour and high fashion.  And how these fast fashion companies are di...

In the second session for today, we learned about the disruptions that can be triggered by trend. As customer needs are always changing, we learned about the dimensions that can trigger a disruption. There is the regulative environment, technology, customer behavior and competition/new players, which all have an influence on a business model. These dimensions can individually or collectively affect established business models. Market trends and technological innovations can also affect the dimensions. Market trends can be economic, human behavior and technologically-related. It is also differing with different countries and is globally relevant. For the individual assignments, the professor wants us to incorporate the five innovation platforms to our assignments as a framework. We then worked on connecting the platforms with our previous case studies. We assumed that AI can be a prominent part of Starbucks and Kodak in the future. Batteries can also be a factor in Starbucks as they pro...

In today's first session, we started with a review of the previous classes with the different innovation strategies: the sustaining innovation, the disruptive innovation and the new market innovation. We learn that disruptive innovation is an opportunity before it becomes a threat so companies must continuously begin to innovate when their business is still strong. Profits and revenues from the core businesss should be invested into new technologies. Companies that do not predict change accordingly and adapt are more likely to fail. Then we built upon on our previous case studies and applied the structural inertia and the dynamic capabilities. Structural inertia is basically the resistance of organizations to deviate from the status quo and is one of the reason why organizations are slow to adapt to radical change. On the other hand, dynamic capabilities enable organizations to change and adapt to rapidly changing environments. They sense and actively research into new opportunitie...

The second session started with a review of the previous class, with regard to the Kodak case study where Fuji was a discruptive innovation where they are offering the same products with a lower quality but also cheaper price of film. New market innovation are canon, nikon and sony who are selling digital cameras. Generally the new entrance wins if we focus on new market innovations. If one wants to compete on the sustaining innovation, the incumbents have more resoures, capital, cutomer base and technological advancements, therefore it is not giving one much chance to win. But as Fuji enters the market from below to focus on over-served and non-served customers become succesful, the incumbents do not see this disruption as a theat as they are only losing the least profitable customers. This means the average customer portfolio is going to increase. With the incompetency of the management to detect threats, they often recognize this too late before they start to do something about it. ...