Week 7

Question 1: What would you think are the most important things that a manager needs to

understand to build organizational capabilities?

To successfully build organizational capabilities, a manager first needs to first ensure that

the technology and innovation initiative are parallel to the comprehensive vision and strategies of

the organization in its entirety. This means making a full evaluation of business goals and asking

what each objective is intended to accomplish—whether it may be cost reduction, product

development, or expanding market share. This kind of evaluation should include involving key

stakeholders such as executive board members, management from select departments, and

perhaps even certain consumers.

Once these goals have been ascertained, proper prioritization of resources should be

solidified by determining which projects are feasible with acceptable ROI metrics that are in

appropriate alignment with the strategic goals of the organization long-term. As I have learned

from courses that focus on software development life cycles, agility is also a pressing issue, as

technology environments are malleable from external factors—requiring managers to be adaptive

to new opportunities, threats, or changes as they arise. Identifying bottlenecks, optimizing

workflows, and automating repetitive tasks are also important in this stage. As these projects are

in progress, it is important to maintain robust KPI metrics to ensure that they remain in alignment

with business objectives, solidifying success and avoiding failure that consume precious

resources while failing to produce desired results.

Acquiring talent and enhancing skills of existing members of the organization is another

important element to building stronger organizational capabilities. This means recruiting from
reputable sources that full evaluate the skills and capabilities of job candidates that extend

beyond simply learned and/or acquired technical skills, but also social skills such as effective

communications, teamwork, and environment adaptability. It is further important to pave the path

for success for each team member by communicating the company’s vision and goals and

properly training each employee to work according to the company’s expectations and guidelines.

In fact, I have personally spoken with a few employers who have said that they do not hire

candidates who are already licensed for or have worked an excessive number of years in a

specific skill, as these brands of candidates tend to pose significant difficulties in training to adapt

to the new environment and protocols of the company they are interested in joining. Those that

have been chosen as members should be provided the opportunity to expand their skills and given

a tangible vision for growth and advancement in a viable career path—ensuring loyal employees

as opposed to individuals who are simply looking for a source of income and are therefore bound

to migrate to some other opportunity as they see desirable.

Question 2: Are there differences in the capabilities needed between an innovative firm that

employs entrepreneurial activities and a firm that relies on alliances or makes acquisitions for

technological advances?

In my observations, I believe that entrepreneurial business and business that are primarily

based on alliances and/or acquisitions do in fact have capabilities that vary from each other for

several reasons. Focusing on entrepreneurial businesses, a necessary capability would be—as

previously mentioned—agility and adaptability, especially within the volatile field of technology.

As technology changes, it is crucial to have hired talent that are skilled in quickly identifying

problems and implementing an adequate solution. Entrepreneurial businesses also need to be

adept at appropriate resource allocation, particularly with projects and internal research and

development. It is important to be able to determine which projects should have a significant

number of resources invested in them and if it makes economic sense for them to begin or

otherwise continue at all. Building on the previous capability mentioned, it is also important to

employ skilled workforce who are not only motivated to give projects their best efforts, but are

also creative and risk taking, willing to provide new ideas to the research and development of

projects.

Firms that rely on alliances and/or acquisitions have different capabilities due to the

nature of their operations. This requires strong skills negotiating with partners as will as building

new relationships with new business entities, senior management skills in maintaining this

relationship by exercising guidelines in matters such as conflict resolution and proper contract

adherence, and robust merging capabilities with integrating with culture and technology once an
acquisition has been completed. It should come as no surprise that being financially secure is

absolutely critical, as a large amount of capital to complete acquisitions and alliances is required.
Question 4: If your organization were to enact new technology, what actions would you

suggest in order to ensure your firm would get the results it hopes for?

Using technology new to a company is significant endeavor that should not be taken

lightly—proper planning, systems engineering, guidelines, and policies need to be implemented

first before any execution is finalized. This means evaluating all risks, thinking of all worst case

scenarios, and drafting rescue maneuvers in the event of a system failure or catastrophic event is

absolutely mandatory.

Prior to implementing the use of the new technology, a feasibility study needs to be

commenced to assess the reason the technology should be implemented in the first place and how

it would align with the company’s mission, goals, and business strategy. In a previous class I took

concerning information management, I learned about tactic called the “SWOT Analysis”. SWOT

is an acronym for “strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.”

A SWOT analysis in this context would allow the company to identify any competitive

advantages the company could leverage through the implementation of the new technology and

pre-emptively plan for proper resource allocation and streamlined change management that

promotes a culture receptive to the technological advancements. Weaknesses can identify

potential risks that need to be further analyzed and assessed, such as a lack of expertise in the said

new technology or unexpected costs that can occur. The Denver International Airport baggage

system project that completely failed back in 2003 is a prime example of this. The new baggage

system was intended to be the newest cutting edge in technology that would automatically sort

and direct bags between the ticket counters, airliners, and destination baggage claims—all

entirely without human intervention. The project implemented a new engineering system that
turned out to be far too complex and far too expensive that what was originally planned. It was

budgeted for $230 million and planned to be fully implemented by 1995. However rushed

deadlines, last minute changes, volatile project scopes, and glitches that would constantly

misroute or even destroy baggage plagued the project relentlessly. It was in 2003, after $640

million had been spent it a futile attempt to get the system to work properly that the project was

ultimately declared an absolute failure. It ranks as the most prominent failure of automation in

engineering history. It would not be fair to say that a proper SWOT analysis had not been done in

this case (Humans are not perfect, after all, and not all failures are foreseeable), but this case

shows just how important thorough risk and weakness assessments in implementing new

technology.

Finding the right stakeholders is also crucial in the preliminary steps. Most people might

believe that stakeholders are the consumers of the end product, but in reality, they are both

internal and external entities. They can be vendors, various departments who will be using the

technology to complete their assigned tasks, and governing bodies such as IT experts or security

teams who need to implement proper protocols and regulations on the usage of the new

technology. All stakeholders need to be ranked in accordance with levels relating to interest and

degrees of influence. This determines if the stakeholder in concern has high authority and thus

will be allowed to supersede the interests of the other stakeholders in the projects, and it

determines if they have an appropriate amount of interest in the project and technology so as to

prioritize their needs and concerns appropriately.

While implementing the technology actually commences, it is important that all parties

directly involved with the technology are appropriately trained to use the technology efficiently.

When integrating the technology, it needs to be done in a smooth process if it is intended to

replace current technology being used. I can give a personal example of how important this stage

is: In my pre-college days, I was employed at a fast food restaurant as a cashier. One day without

any warning whatsoever, the upper management decided to upgrade the registers with a

completely different operating system that had an interface none of us had ever seen previously.

The user interface—when utilized correctly—was intended to streamline the order process and

reduce service time by 40%. The glaring issue was that none of us had been trained at all to use

the interface. This resulted in all of the cashiers taking 3 times longer to complete a simple order,

resulting in seriously congested lines and very angry customers flooding the main office with

complaints. Ultimately, the registers were reverted back to the previous operating system, and

only one register was left with the new operating system that they would train on by practicing

sample orders. As seen in this example, suddenly switching technology and failing to train staff

spells disaster in all cases.

Finally, monitoring the performance of the technology is crucial so that it is ascertained

that instituted metrics are being met and that feedback from end users and stakeholders are

considered for further improvement.

Question 5: Hyper-competition and the speed of change in turnaround are both related to

quickness in the management of technology and innovation. Discuss the most important

reasons managers should be concerned with speed. In addition, what are the disadvantages of

being too fast?

I have always been averse to speed in terms of product development, and this is for

several reasons. Rushing to stay ahead in competition leads to releasing products that have lower

quality but most importantly have not been thoroughly tested for all safety protocols or result in

project failure when unforeseen issues that were overlooked arise. I can name several instances in

which a concern for speed and staying ahead of competition yielded catastrophic results. In one

well known instance, Microsoft rushed the release of the operating system Windows Vista in

2007 in an attempt to match Apple’s new operating system that had been newly released. Because

the OS had not been properly tested and thoroughly evaluated, it was quickly founded to be

riddled with bugs and was saddled with compatibility issue as well as serious performance

latency problems. It ranked as the worst product ever released by Microsoft, costing them a

significant market share, tarnishing their reputation, and causing a mass exodus of users to

migrate to Linux and Mac as their primary selection for an OS.

Boeing is also an example of the results of rushing products to stay ahead of competition.

In a well known instance, they rushed the production of the 737 Max 8 in a rush to compete with

Airbus’s new A320neo. However, the autopiloting software had not been thoroughly tested,

resulting in two catastrophic crashes that collectively claimed the lives of 346 people and lead to

the grounding of the model of that aircraft worldwide for over a year. The fiasco would cost

Boeing more than $20 billion and causing their market stock value to plummet 24%.
 Even startup companies have felt the consequential sting of prioritizing speed over quality

to stay ahead of competition. When Kickstarter became a craze in the early 2010’s to allow

unheard of entrepreneurs to publicize their project idea in hopes of obtaining a financial backing

from the public to make their venture a reality, one entrepreneur proposed the idea the product

“Coolest Cooler”—a portable cooler that combined an ordinary cooler with a blender and

Bluetooth speaker. In a rush to compete with other entrepreneurs that were releasing very

successful products from the Kickstarter platform, he made outlandish promises with an

extensive list of features the product was supposed to have along with a guaranteed deadline.

However, once he obtained his backing, he discovered the complexity of creating such a

product and further encountered unforeseen delays such as manufacturing setbacks and cost

overruns. As a result, many financial backers had to wait over a year for their product—and some

never received anything at all. Ultimately, the Oregon Department of Justice was called to

intervene on grounds of consumer fraud, and his company was ordered to either deliver the

promised products or offer refunds. By this point, the company’s finances were critically strained,

and they were forced into bankruptcy. It was an ugly lesson to be learned—had the entrepreneur

taken the time to research the feasibility of his idea, formulated a solid project plan that included

phases and backup plans, completed proper cost calculations, and been more realistic with his

deadlines, he would have been able to successfully launch a popular product that would have

made him wealthy.

References:

Coolman, Ashley “Lessons Learn for Project Failure at Denver International Airport: Why

Checking Bags is still a pain” (2021), https://www.wrike.com/blog/lessons-learned-from-project-

failure-at-denver-international-airport-why-checking-bags-is-still-a-pain/

Schlosser, Kurt, “Coolest Cooler shuts down after 5 year saga, leaving 20,000 backers without

Kickstarter Reward” (2019), https://www.geekwire.com/2019/coolest-cooler-shuts-5-year-saga-

leaving-20000-backers-without-kickstarter-reward/

Kenton, William, “SWOT Analysis: How To With Table and Example” (2023),

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/swot.asp

Krishnaraj, Nithil, “Windows Vista: Why did it Fail?” (2020),

https://medium.com/techtalkers/windows-vista-why-did-it-fail-b3ba4bd08a74

Hiner, Jason, “The top five reasons why Windows Vista failed”, (2008),

https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-top-five-reasons-why-windows-vista-failed/

Langewiesche, William, “What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max?” New York Times

Magazine, issue Sept 22, 2019, page 37