Reference no: EM132229388
Assignment: This week's discussion focus is technology innovation, through the use of examples that we research and share. Before we begin this discussion, please review an example of a company who used strategies to exploit a new era of digitalization and benefited from it, "Lowering the Cost of Ultrasound Equipment through Digitalization."
This example shows how a company reached a previously untapped market niche by digitalizing a product, which also allows the firm to reduce expenses. Thus, digitalizing can support a firm that is pursuing a simultaneous advantage in differentiation and cost leadership.
Managing Innovation Example
The ultrasound unit is an important diagnostic tool, producing images of organs. The technology is very valuable, but the equipment is bulky, heavy, and expensive, so it is used primarily in dedicated hospital facilities. ATL, a leading ultrasound company, decided to reduce the size of an ultrasound set-up to about the size and weight of a laptop computer. This would be accomplished by replacing many of the machine's solid circuits with software (in a process called "digitalizing"), reducing size and costs. The researchers reasoned that a portable and inexpensive ultrasound unit would find market opportunities in totally new niches. Smaller size and lower cost would allow the units to be placed on ambulances or into physician's offices - market niches that were impossible to reach with the technology of the day. The researchers later became part of a project team within ATL, and thereafter became an entirely new company, SonoSite. Late in 1999, SonoSite introduced its first unit, which weighed just 6 pounds and cost about $25,000. SonoSite targeted niches that full-sized ultrasound products could not reach: ambulatory care and foreign markets that could not afford the more expensive equipment. In 2010, the company sold over $275 million of product.
Now it's your turn, research a company that has managed an innovation and provide the story. Include, The company, the technology, the impact made with the innovation and short history of the industry and need for the innovation.
Along with providing your example, please answer the following question:
• How are companies coming up with strategies to exploit and benefit from the new era of digitalization?
Explain economic principles and applications in real world
: Explain economic principles and their applications in the real world. Summarize the different types of market structures and the role of government in economics
|
Summarize the reading under a summary subtitle
: Please remember that a reflection paper is not a summary. However, many students find a brief summary before they begin their reflections to be helpful.
|
Define disadvantages of each of the measures of location
: What are the characteristics, uses, advantages, and disadvantages of each of the measures of location and measures of dispersion? Discuss them with examples.
|
What effect will this change in price expectations
: What effect will this change in price expectations for next year have on the price of existing homes this year? Explain.
|
How are companies coming up with strategies
: Along with providing your example, please answer the following question: How are companies coming up with strategies to exploit and benefit from the new era.
|
What do you predict will happen to the equilibrium price
: Suppose this market is initially in equilibrium and then the price of lemons, a key ingredient in lemonade, increases. What do you predict will happen.
|
Explaining the concepts of marginal analysis
: Pay attention to your audience. Remember that you are explaining the concepts of marginal analysis and opportunity cost to someone who may have no previous.
|
Graph the changes to the supply and demand curves
: Using the drawing tools in PowerPoint, graph the changes to the supply and demand curves in response to the following events.
|
Evaluate the marginal cost of producing the pipeline
: As a cost analyst at your firm, you are asked to evaluate the marginal cost of producing the pipeline per 1,000-mile stretch as well as the average total cost.
|