CUSTOMERS, MARKETS AND TECHNOLOGY MODS 1-8

CUSTOMERS, MARKETS AND TECHNOLOGY

MODS 1-7 WRITE 2 PAGES EACH. MOD 8 3PAGES

MOD 1

Start by reading and following these instructions:

1. Quickly skim the questions or assignment below and the assignment rubric to help you focus.

2. Read the required chapter(s) of the textbook and any additional recommended resources. Some answers may require you to do additional research on the Internet or in other reference sources. Choose your sources carefully.

3. Consider the course discussions so far and any insights gained from it.

4. Create your Assignment submission and be sure to cite your sources if needed, use APA style as required, and check your spelling.

5. Do not just answer the questions. This is a graduate course and you should be able to explain the logic behind your answer and point to a credible source to support your position, even if it is just the textbook. You are expected to spend at least 5 hours studying the problems, finding and studying good sources, and understanding the nature of the potential solutions and at least an additional 5 hours answering these questions and polishing your writing so the answers are compelling. Invest your time wisely, giving more time to the complex answers in order to ensure that you demonstrate that you truly understand the answer.

Problems:

1. Consider some new technology or process you have been involved with in the last two or three years. What issues affected you as an individual? What factors enabled you to be successful in adapting to the new process?

2. Use your favorite Internet search engine to find different definitions of technology and innovation. How would you characterize these definitions? How are they the same and how do they differ from the ones in the text? Why are there so many variations?

3. Find a large company in which you are interested. Once you have identified the company, find its industry and its major competitors. Then find the following:

1. Where the focal company ranks in responsibility toward its various stakeholders?

2. How does the firm’s level of social responsible actions affect its bottom line?

3. What innovative actions have been taken in the industry/organizations to improve its reputation?

All of this information should be available online. What would you say about the technology and innovation responsibilities of the focus company and its managers in its environment? Explain your answer with information from your analysis.

MOD 2

Start by reading and following these instructions:

1. Quickly skim the questions or assignment below and the assignment rubric to help you focus.

3. Consider the discussion and the any insights you gained from it.

4. Create your Assignment submission and be sure to cite your sources, use APA style as required, check your spelling.

Problems:

1. Use your favorite Internet search engine and find an example of a successful innovation and one that was not so successful. (Finding failures is difficult.) What were the reasons given for success? For failure? Which of these reasons relate to poor planning? What does this tell you about the keys to success in innovation?

2. Do you believe creativity can be learned? Find an article or website that is devoted to capturing creativity in the work environment. What does the author say about individual creativity and group creativity?

3. Find an article or website that provides guidelines for developing an innovative organization. What do you think of the advice given?

4. In developing an organizational climate that supports innovation, management often overlooks critical issues. This is true especially when setting up and nurturing communication networks. Many good ideas are lost because the right person is not available at the right place at the right time to bring the innovation to fruition. What issues do you believe are critical in planning for the integration and sharing of information in an innovative firm? How do these issues differ for product and process innovations?

MOD3

Start by reading and following these instructions:

1. Quickly skim the questions or assignment below and the assignment rubric to help you focus.

3. Consider the discussions and the any insights gained from it.

4. Create your Assignment submission and be sure to cite your sources, use APA style as required, check your spelling.

Problems:

1. Use your favorite job listing Internet site. Look for postings for e-commerce managers. Find at least 10 and summarize the qualifications listed. How does this list compare to the one you developed in Relating to Your World exercise 1? What does this tell you about what we believe we need in personnel and what we seek when looking for employees?

2. Choose a company you believe is innovative. Go to its website and find how it describes the innovative processes in its organization. How does what you learned in this module align with what the company does?

3. Find an article or website that provides guidelines for implementing innovation in organizations. What do you think of the advice given?

4. When you made a radical change in your life leaving home, getting married, moving to a new city what kinds of emotions and feelings did you experience? Was there stress associated with the change? As you reflect on that change, what lessons did you learn that you can use to help others who are facing changes in the workplace from the implementation of new technologies? What did you learn about yourself and your reaction to innovation and change implementation?

MOD 4

Start by reading and following these instructions:

1. Quickly skim the questions or assignment below and the assignment rubric to help you focus.

3. Consider the discussions and any insights gained from it.

4. Create your Assignment submission and be sure to cite your sources, use APA style as required, check your spelling.

Problems:

1. Use your favorite Internet search engine and find an example of a successful evaluation and control process in an R&D firm. What attributes are described as contributing to the success of the evaluation and control process? What factors impact the choices the organization makes in designing its evaluation process? What factors help it to be successful? What do you think about the long-term viability of the process the firm uses?

2. Find a site that discusses the Balanced Scorecard approach to evaluation and control. This method is considered a relatively new technology or approach to evaluating organizational performance. In addition, some control processes are embedded in it. What do you think of the measurements suggested, the process itself, and the potential outcomes? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Balanced Scorecard method?

3. Find an article or website that provides guidelines for the evaluation and control of an innovative strategy. What do you think of the advice given?

4. If you are part of an organization that has an innovative strategy, what are the key inputs from the environment that you need to implement the strategy? What steps will you take to be sure the inputs exceed minimum acceptable levels? What will you do to ensure your output to the environment is acceptable? How are these two periods of evaluation and control the same and how are they different?

MOD 5

Start by reading and following these instructions:

1. Quickly skim the questions or assignment below and the assignment rubric to help you focus.

3. Consider the discussions and any insights gained from it.

4. Create your Assignment submission and be sure to cite your sources, use APA style as required, check your spelling.

5. Your submission should be roughly 2,000 words, total. Please use your time wisely and invest effort on your answers according to their complexity. If a concise answer truly answers the question, is compelling, and provide solid rationale and supporting evidence, then that is the right answer.

Problems:

1. Use your favorite Internet search engine and find an example of a successful alliance that has led to a technological breakthrough and an alliance that was not successful. What attributes were described as contributing to the success of the alliance? What were the reasons given for the failure? How are these related to each other? What does this tell you about keys to success in planning an alliance?

2. Find a firm that has been very active in growing through acquisition of technology. Did the company have a clear plan for how it wanted to approach alliance formation? Has the company been successful in achieving its goals?

3. If an alliance is in the future of the organization you are working for, what are some of the issues each level of the organization should be concerned with? In other words, what are the issues that top management should address? Middle management? Supervisors? Non-management personnel? What are the potential advantages of an alliance for each of the levels?

4. Find an article or website that provides guidelines for the planning of acquisition of technology. What do you think of the advice given?

MOD 6

Start by reading and following these instructions:

1. Quickly skim the questions or assignment below and the assignment rubric to help you focus.

3. Consider the discussions and any insights gained from it.

4. Create your Assignment submission and be sure to cite your sources, use APA style as required, check your spelling.

Problems:

1. Use your favorite search engine on the Internet and look for postings of technology-driven mergers and acquisitions. What are the reasons given for the mergers and acquisitions? What is described as coming from each of the organizations? Are there sound reasons given for the merger and acquisition that are likely to lead to success? What might be missing?

2. Not all mergers and acquisitions are successful. Find an example of a merger or acquisition where technology contributed to its failure to produce desired outcomes. What reasons were given for the failure? What actions might have helped ensure success? Hint: Many mergers and acquisitions fail because needed information is not processed. Integrating information systems and accounting systems is often difficult.

3. Find an article or website that provides guidelines for integrating and blending people and/or systems in an alliance where technology is a motivating factor. What do you think of the advice given?

4. What advice would you give a manager who was chosen to lead a technology-based joint venture project between two organizations of relatively the same size? Remember, in joint ventures, two or more firms combine equity and form a new third entity. Joint ventures commonly have very detailed agreements covering what each party is to provide and expect and how they are to operate within the joint venture. What do you believe are the key integration issues that must be addressed? What would be easier in the joint venture than in a merger? What would be more difficult? Why?

MOD 7

Start by reading and following these instructions:

1. Quickly skim the questions or assignment below and the assignment rubric to help you focus.

3. Consider the discussions and any insights gained from it.

4. Create your Assignment submission and be sure to cite your sources, use APA style as required, check your spelling.

Problems:

1. Identify a well-documented merger/acquisition that was motivated by technology acquisition. Find the goals for the merger/acquisition and then find how well the organization met those goals. What evaluation issues are identified in articles or comments about the merger?

2. Find a website that illustrates an evaluation process for merger/acquisition activities. How does this process compare to the issues identified in this chapter? How important is technology blending in the evaluation process? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the process that you find?

3. Find an article or website that provides guidelines for the evaluation and control of technology-based acquisitions and mergers. What do you think of the advice?

4. What advice would you give a manager who is charged with the responsibility of blending IT systems after the acquisition of a smaller competitor? What do you believe are the key integration issues that must be addressed? Would it be easier in a joint venture than in an acquisition? What would be more difficult? Why?

MOD 8

Start by reading and following these instructions:

1. Quickly skim the questions or assignment below and the assignment rubric to help you focus.

3. Consider the discussions and any insights gained from it.

4. Create your Assignment submission and be sure to cite your sources, use APA style as required, check your spelling.

Signature Assignment

This is a signature assignment for the School of Information Technology MSIM Master’s Program students.

Problems:

1. Use your favorite search engine on the Internet and look for postings of technology-driven retrenchment. What are the reasons given for the mergers and acquisitions? What is described as coming from each of the organizations? Given what you know about turnaround strategy, are the reasons given for the retrenchment reasonable and likely to lead to success? What might be missing?

2. Find an example of an organization with multiple strategic business units. How does the organization define its corporate goals? The strategies of the SBUs? Are the strategies seeking innovation and technology enhancement internally or externally? Why do you classify the SBUs as you do?

3. Identify a knowledge-system design process used by a company or organization. What were the goals of the system? What problems did the company encounter? What were the goals and benefits of developing the knowledge system? Did it help the organization’s performance? How?

4. Organizational learning has been discussed a great deal in the management literature. Find a website that discusses the process of managing organizational learning and knowledge systems. Does this process seem doable? If so, why do organizations struggle with such development ?if not what advise would you give

CUSTOMERS, MARKETS AND TECHNOLOGY MODS 1-8

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