...The Kittyhawk team developed a 1.3 inch disk drive: a disruptive technology in every sense. From a project management point of view, HP did everything right. They had set up an autonomous project team, and gave the project heavy senior management support. The team focused on the emerging personal digital assistant (PDA) market, which in the early 1990’s was believed to have explosive growth potential. As a consequence the team created a product that had incredible shock resistance and low power consumption, and weighed less than an ounce. In terms of field failure it was the most reliable product ever introduced in the disk drive industry. HP created a remarkable new technology, but its targeted market never blossomed. Just at the end of the case as the clock was running out on the Kittyhawk team, Nintendo approached HP with its Nintendo 64 system with a slot for a 1.3” disk drive, and projections that it would sell several million units per day during the upcoming Christmas season. The problem was that they needed the drive for $49.95, and HP had designed the Kittyhawk for a different market at a cost of $250 per unit. The 1.3 drive was a potentially disruptive technology which could have been designed to a $49.95 price point, but HP had positioned it as a sustaining technology, as nearly as possible. Whether a new technology is sustaining or disruptive is often a strategic variable rather than something inherent in the technology itself. HP took the market’s structure and...
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...Hewlett-Packard: The Flight of the Kittyhawk (A) Company Overview: Hewlett-Packard Corporation is a very prevalent brand name recognized globally. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, the company is one of the world's largest information technology companies that specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, networking hardware, designing software and delivering services. Major product lines include personal computing devices, enterprise, industry standard servers, related storage devices, networking products, software, printers, and a diverse range of imaging products. With many divisions that specialize in certain manufacturing products, such as data storage or networking software development, Hewlett-Packard strives to produce quality products at an affordable price targeted for household consumers and other businesses. In June of 1992, Hewlett-Packard invested a portion of capital into developing the world’s smallest and quality hard disk drive at that time for other businesses to adopt. They desired to take advantage of the market’s first-mover position by introducing their infamous Kittyhawk drive. Rick Seymour, the Kittyhawk project leader, addressed goals and timelines for the implementation of the hard disk drive. Aiming to be a market mover, they only gave the Disk Memory Storage Division (DMD) a twelve month time to finalize the product. Rigid hard disk drives are basically “magnetic information storage and retrieval devices used...
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...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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...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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...Digital Distribution and the Music Industry in 2001: a Case Study of Napster By Julius Danjuma IS650: Telecommunications Management Summer 2012 Overview: Shawn Fanning created Napster in his dorm room at Northeastern. It was the fastest-growing application in the history of the Internet which changed the world but failed to achieve business success. Napster started out as a free download tool but the goal was to make it into a real business in partnership with the record labels. The goal at Napster was to be the online distribution channel for the record labels, much like iTunes for example. There were several offers made to the labels that would have given them the vast majority of all of the revenue. The numbers were staggering. There were over 50 million users, many of whom were willing to pay $5 per month or $1 per download for digital music. That translates to about $250M a month or $3B per year. Even if Napster kept just 10% of the revenue that would be $300M per year against expenses of less than $10M. At the stock market multiples of the day that would have been a $15B IPO. The economics of the record industry are puzzling and their accounting methods are very creative. At the time CD’s were sold for about $17 at retail. The retailer and distributor took more than half of the price as their mark-up. The manufacturing costs took another couple bucks. The promotional costs of advertising, music video, payola to radio stations, and other PR typically...
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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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...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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...Things to be learned from kittyhawk From 1991-1995, the kittyhawk project has undergone a lot, including the optimistic plan at the initial stage, difficulties in developing and marketing, finally the close of the project. The project appeared to be very promising at that time, ending up with an unexpected failure. Though it was not a commercially successful project, the merits and faults lied in the case are very valuable. Talent Using the right talent for the right position is always critical in administration. Spenner, who was put in charge of that project, is a very aggressive and thoughtful person. The strategy he took, never take a fortified hill, helped this project keep itself away from bloody competition. He chose not to compete with existing companies, choose to be distinguished by making 1.3’’ storage. Besides, he was very good at executing the plan, managing his team and stimulating his team. He is a main reason the project was executed that beautifully. And that’s also a reason why all the team members missed the project so much even after the project was close. Cease the loss In a project which is an unsuccessful one, ceasing the loss on time is crucial for a company’s survival. HP did a good job of ceasing the loss. At the beginning, the storage was to be used by personal digital assistants, sub-notebook, printers, copiers, , it turned out to be used by word processors, digital cameras and cash registers, and the actual production was about one-sixth of...
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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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...was not approached in the right way. The questions people ask today include, why did John Curtin, who was the Prime Minister at the time, hide all this information from Australia? How did the government react to the Bombing of Darwin? Why did the Japanese bomb Darwin? And how today do we view the Bombing of Darwin? The bombing of Darwin took place on the 19th of February at 1942, when the Japanese air raided Darwin at 9:58 in the morning. The first air raid lasted 40 minutes then the seconde raid happened 1 hour later attacking the RAAF for 20minutes. 2 warnings were sent out to the RAAF stating that large planes where flying over but these warning where discarded by the RAAF, because they believed that the planes where the 10 American Kittyhawks returning back to Australia. With these 2 warnings being rejected Darwin was little prepared for this ‘surprise’ attack meaning approximately 243 people where killed and between 300 to 400 people were wounded. The bombing of Darwin lasted until the 12th of November 1943. But none of the air raids where as bad as the first one that took place on February the 19th. After the first 2 air raids more than half of Darwin’s population fled south to the Adelaide River to seek safety. They call the bombing’s a surprise, but many trustworthy sources have stated before the fall of Singapore Japanese submarines and planes had been observing Darwin creating what we now suspect as a plan for the raid. With the government not reacting to these small...
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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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...------------------------------------------------- Case Analysis Guidelines & Checklist Overview: In many ways writing a short analysis paper (including recommendations and/or conclusions) is like writing an “action memo” or executive memo in business. The following sections go over how to organize and format your written work here in class and in the business world to be attractive to the reader and effective in getting your point across. Approach: * Read the entire case carefully before you actually begin to write the paper, and make careful notes (including your emotional reactions, which can be useful). Try to read the case once at least a few hours or a day earlier, and then again when you are writing the paper. This will give you time to reflect on the issues, and to think out effective recommendations before you actually have to articulate them. * Relate your analysis and recommendations as specifically as possible to concepts of the course as presented by the textbook, cases, materials on the course web site, articles, and the various guest speakers and class discussions This is where you show what you have learned and are able to apply. * Remember that you have to make careful selections of what is most important in a case, and then develop a coherent, logical way (including useful section titles) to present your arguments using the outline below. Although you may use the guidance questions to help call your attention to interesting phenomena...
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