...launched a technical innovation, the Kittyhawk, the smallest hard drive in the world at the time. The Kittyhawk development project had leadership support, decentralized project structure, and the financial/technical backing on HP. Despite these strengths the Kittyhawk had marginal success in the market with sales below estimated targets. The challenges the Kittyhawk development team had to overcome included difficulty identifying the correct market and an ambitious project deadline. The accumulation of missed opportunities within the Kittyhawk development project led to a revolutionary product with a much higher price point than many customers were willing to pay. The key strengths in structure of the Kittyhawk development team can be traced to two major elements: senior leadership team support and financial/technical backing of HP in addition to a decentralized project structure. Two very senior and well-respected leaders within HP, Bruce Spenner and Dick Hackborn as well as the CEO, Lew Platt, supported the Kittyhawk project. Their support made Kittyhawk a priority and the project was therefore able to obtain valuable needed resources, including the most exceptional employees from the Disk Memory Division (DMD) as well as other divisions within HP. Throughout the entire development phase of the Kittyhawk project, its importance was reinforced with regular visits from Lew Platt. To complement senior leadership’s support the Kittyhawk project also financial/technical backing...
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...Hewlett Packard – Kittyhawk Project Case Study Assignment #1 Read and write an analysis of Case II-9, “Hewlett-Packard: The Flight of the Kittyhawk” from the textbook. Select one partner to work with and prepare an analysis of the case. In your analysis, include answers to the following questions: a. What would you rate as the strengths and weaknesses of the way Hewlett Packard structured and supported the Kittyhawk development team? b. What do you think of the way the team set out to find a market for the Kittyhawk? c. What correct turns and what wrong turns did they make? d. What do you think are the root causes of the failure of the Kittyhawk program? e. Is there any way HP could have avoided its fate by addressing these root causes? In June 1992, Hewlett-Packard (referred to HP hereafter) introduced smallest hard disk drive in the world named as the Kittyhawk. It was the first ever commercially produced hard drive in a 1.3 inch form factor. The idea was conceptualized in early 1991 by HP’s management when it was eagerly trying to explore strategies for transforming their Disk Memory Division (DMD) as a market leader. Kittyhawk project team was led by Rick Seymour under the supervision of Bruce Spenner. From the inception of Kittyhawk, Spenner had been keen that the new technologies that had an enormous potential to cause new-market disruptions. He intended to create a disk drive feasible with any product that had microprocessor. Kittyhawk offered a smaller...
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...A Hawk 87A-3 (Kittyhawk Mk IA) serial number AK987, in a USAAF 23d Fighter Group (the former "Flying Tigers") paint scheme, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. The P-40 Warhawk was not the best American fighter when the United States entered the World War II, but if it was the most numerous type available in large-scale production. The P-40 was among the most ubiquitous fighter plane. It was the third most-produced American fighter, after the P-51 and P-47. The P-40 was easy to build and maintain and it offered the additional advantage of low cost, which kept it in production as a ground-attack aircraft long after it was obsolete as a fighter. The P-40 saw combat in many war theaters, in wide variety of climatic conditions...
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...1992, Hewlett-Packard introduced the Kittyhawk, which was the smallest hard disk drive in the world at the time at 1.3” in diameter. The initial product held 20 megabytes of storage and could withstand a three-foot drop without losing any data. For HP, the possibilities of such a product seemed endless. As a result, the company launched the project with a rather ambitious goal; that is; for the project to succeed, it would have to meet the following requirements, as specified by Bruce Spenner, HP’s Disk Memory Division (DMD) General Manager: it would have to be ready for market in 12-months, generate $100-million in revenue within 18-months after launch, and make the break-even point within 36-months. However, by June 1994, after only two years of effort, the project’s sales failed to meet the projected forecast and Rick Seymour, the project leader, was left having to make some big decisions. Why did Kittyhawk fail? By applying course concepts, some of the reasons become clear. The Disk Memory Division was essentially an OEM supplier in high-performance markets and had technical competencies in sustaining technology improvements in disk drives. Under Spenner’s leadership, the Division was to become a major player in the growing disk drive market. Spenner’s “big-business fast” strategy is ultimately what caused the project to fail. Since HP was a company that specialized in sustaining technological enhancements, it managed the Kittyhawk project as though it was a sustaining...
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...OPRE 6379: Team Assignment CASES CASE 1: Hewlett-Packard: The Flight of the Kittyhawk, Clayton M. Christensen, 9-697060, March 2003 CASE 2: Creating Project Plans to Focus Product Development, Steven C. Wheelwright and Kim B. Clark, Reprint number 92210, HBR March-April 1992 CASE 3: Innovation Versus Complexity: What is Too Much of a Good Thing, Mark Gottfredson and Keith Aspinall, Reprint R0511C, HBR November 2005 CASE 4: Microsoft Office 2000, Alan MacCormack and Kerry Harman, 9-600-097, June 2000. CASE 5: Product Development at Dell CorporationCorporation, Stefan Thomke and Vish Krishnan, 9-699-010, January 1999 Case Presentations Nov 3 – Nov 10 – Nov 17 Nov 24 Dec 1 – Case 1 Case 2 Case 3, Case 4 Fall Break Case 5 Case Assignment Team 1-Case 4 Team 2-Case 3 Team 3-Case 4 Team 4-Case 1 Team 5-Case 2 Team 6-Case 5 Team 7-Case 5 Team 8-Case 3 Team 9-Case 1 Team 10-Case 2 Team 11-Case 5 Each team to read all case studies and prepare a 25-30 minute class presentation on power point on ONLY the case study assigned to the team - addressing the questions listed below. You may turn in the ppt presentation with the speaker notes or a word document answering the questions. The questions are guidelines for the team to address in the presentation. Each team should have a few overview slides on the case to introduce the case to the class. All the students are expected to have read all the cases. All the ppt from the teams will be available to all the teams...
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...MGT 550B MANAGING THE INNOVATION PROCESS Course Introduction Managing the Innovation Process Panos Kouvelis Emerson Distinguished Professor of Operations & Manufacturing Management INSTRUCTOR BACKGROUND INFORMATION Managing the Innovation Process Panos Kouvelis Emerson Distinguished Professor of Operations & Manufacturing Management PANOS KOUVELIS Emerson Distinguished Professor of Operations and Manufacturing Management Director of Boeing Center on Technology, Information & Manufacturing Sr. Associate Dean & Director of Executive Programs Has Always Been a Good Student !! (avoided “real life” as much as possible) B.S., Mechanical Engineering, NTUA M.S., Industrial & Systems Eng., USC MBA, USC Ph.D., Operations Management, Stanford Loves to Teach 4 years, Business School, UT Austin 5 years, Fuqua School of Business, Duke 14 years, Olin School of Business, Wash.U. (My wife has decorated my home office walls with nicely framed teaching awards, “most popular professor at Olin, ***Bus. Week ranking”) Managing the Innovation Process Panos Kouvelis Emerson Distinguished Professor of Operations & Manufacturing Management PANOS KOUVELIS (cont’d.) Consults Frequently (to any firm having money & troubles to spare) Recent “victims”: Solutia, Duke Hospital, IBM, Aerofil Tech., Express Scripts, LHB Ind., Reckitt & Beckinser, Boeing, Ingram Micro, MEMC, Spartech, MECS, Maxim, Bunge, Smurfit Stone, and Emerson. Writes a lot (“publish or perish”)...
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...| | |GENERAL MANAGEMENT & STRATEGY | |Fall Semester, 2010 | |[pic] | |MANAGEMENT 374 (Unique No: 04570) | |Class Times: Monday and Wednesday, 08:00-09:30 am | |Location: UTC 1.118 | Instructor: David Chandler E-mail: david.chandler@phd.mccombs.utexas.edu Office: CBA 3.332K Tel: (512) 471-2548 Office hours: Monday, 10:00-11:00 am Wednesday, 10:00-11:00 am Immediately after class and at other times by appointment. REQUIRED COURSE MATERIALS (Available at the University Co-op) 1. Course reading packet: Selection of Harvard Business School case-studies, Harvard Business...
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...1 The Innovator’s Dilemma When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail CLAYTON M. CHRISTENSEN Harvard Business School Press Boston, Massachusetts 2 Copyright © 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition of this title as follows: Christensen, Clayton M. The innovator’s dilemma : when new technologies cause great firms to fail / Clayton M. Christensen. p. cm. — (The management of innovation and change series) Includes index. ISBN 0-87584-585-1 (alk. paper) 1. Creative ability in business. 2. Industrial management. 3. Customer services. 4. Success in business. I. Title. II. Series. HD53.C49 1997 658—DC20 96-10894 CIP ISBN 0-87584-585-1 (Microsoft Reader edition) 3 Contents In Gratitude Introduction PART ONE: WHY GREAT COMPANIES CAN FAIL 1 How Can Great Firms Fail? Insights from the Hard Disk Drive Industry 2 Value Networks and the Impetus to Innovate 3 Disruptive Technological Change in the Mechanical Excavator Industry 4 What Goes Up, Can’t Go Down PART TWO: MANAGING DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE 5 Give Responsibility for Disruptive Technologies to Organizations Whose Customers Need Them 6 Match the Size of the Organization to the Size of the Market 7 Discovering New and Emerging Markets 8 How to Appraise Your Organization’s Capabilities and Disabilities 9 Performance Provided, Market Demand, and the Product Life Cycle ...
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