Spring 1998, Vol. 39, No. 3

 

At the recent National Innovation Summit, held at MIT in mid-March and sponsored by the Council on Competitiveness, several speakers including Al Gore, Michael Porter, George G.C. Fisher, and Paul Allaire pointed out that to maintain current competitiveness and improve productivity, U.S. companies must promote innovation, ensure that every industry exploits high technology, and guarantee that future workers have necessary technological skills. All saw a need for fresh strategies and policies to stimulate innovation, not just for today's new product development, but for new ventures, new processes, and new definitions over the long term. The themes that ran through the discussions mesh with our editorial goal of providing managers with the best current research in corporate strategy, organizational change, and the management of technology and innovation. Those same themes course through many of the articles in this issue.

How can a company effectively exploit changing markets of technology and services? David F. Feeny and Leslie P. Willcocks provide a new map for evaluating core IS capabilities against technical, business, and interpersonal skills, time horizons, and motivating values to develop the best IT function for a particular company. By examining those capabilities in context, a company can refocus the IT organization on the task at hand.

Shorter product life cycles mean that old products may still be on the shelves when a new product is introduced. Corey Billington, Hau Lee, and Christopher Tang address the issue of product rollout and the best strategies for managing the risks encountered by having two or more similar products available in the market at the same time.

In a follow-on article to his Spring 1997 article in SMR, Constantinos Markides explores how an already successful company can reconceptualize itself and, essentially, play a different game in an existing business.

A company may find it difficult to break away when times are good, but Markides sees that as the right time for rejuvenation. He points to many companies that have done so and thrived, including Hewlett-Packard, 3M, Motorola, and Johnson & Johnson.

In a thorough study of 157 new franchise systems, Scott Shane and Chester Spell pinpoint the factors that make franchises most likely to survive — among them, rapid growth so the new franchise can compete with established firms, franchises that can be managed locally, and demonstrated trustworthiness on the part of the franchisor.

New business ventures initiated by subsidiaries are the subject of Julian Birkinshaw and Nick Fry's study of multinationals. They see two different tactics on the part of subsidiaries — one internal, in which the subsidiary takes on opportunities that already exist within the parent company, and the other externally based on customers' and suppliers' needs. When subsidiaries expand their responsibilities, subtle shifts in managerial roles will also occur, with HQ managers becoming more open to new ideas, and subsidiary managers becoming more entrepreneurial.

When negotiating a new deal, is any agreement better than no agreement? Would you walk away from a good deal just because it doesn't exactly match the company's stated position? In reporting on research she did while at Conflict Management Inc., Susan Doctoroff recommends aligning the internal discussions with external negotiations. To enhance results, negotiators should first fully explore anything within the organization that will have an impact on outside negotiations.

Changes in Japanese employment practices may not be as drastic as we've been expecting. Gregory Ornatowski used Japanese Ministry of Labor and other employment studies to conclude that gradual changes will occur. While most companies will retain the lifetime employment system, government policies and national attitudes will foster performance-based wage systems and a redesign of work processes. Any workforce changes that do occur will likely promote Japanese innovation and competitiveness.

— Jane Gebhart

 

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