Case 1: Appliance maker
The challenge
Senior executives at a large, low-cost manufacturer of appliances and white goods were concerned about the sluggish performance of the company’s household fan business. It had long been among the top leading players in the company’s home country—an emerging market—but was now losing domestic share in two important, and fiercely competitive, product categories.
The company’s leaders suspected that a stagnant product portfolio was partly to blame; they had been focusing a considerable amount of attention on operations and had neglected to revisit fan designs for a couple of years. Meanwhile, an innovative upstart, also from an emerging market, had begun competing with the manufacturer, both at home and in developed markets. The threat served as a wake-up call: establishing a stronger platform for growth, the executives realized, would require the company to step up its product-development capabilities while maintaining—or even improving upon—its low-cost edge.
Case 2: Medical-capital-equipment maker
The challenge
A large manufacturer of medical devices and capital equipment was losing market share to an Asian-based entrant offering lower prices for a key product. The manufacturer’s R&D team was perplexed. By its estimates, the competitor’s costs to make the product should be about 20 to 25 percent higher than the company’s costs for its own product. A head-to-head comparison of product characteristics clearly indicated that the attacker’s was inferior on many dimensions, including quality. The consensus of the R&D group was to stay the course—the competitor, they grumbled, was selling below cost to grab market share and would eventually have to raise its prices.
Skeptical company leaders decided to investigate further. Many of the R&D team’s key personnel were longtime company veterans who had been instrumental