Description
Task 1 – (55 marks) “In today’s world, every successful company is a tech company. It’s become impossible to separate business strategy from technological innovation, so everyone from retailers to health care professionals are investing heavily in tech solutions to help them market, improve offerings and drive business. We’re also living and working in the age of industry overhaul, where tech companies like Yelp, Netflix and Lyft have essentially obliterated longstanding giants like Zagat, Blockbuster and traditional taxis.”
This is an extract from the article titled “Innovation case studies: How companies use technology to solidify a competitive advantage” by Adam Rogers published by www.forbes.com (2018) and can be retrieved from: –
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/04/13/innovation-case-studies-how-companies-use-technology-to-solidify-a-competitive-advantage/#67998dfd1410 In the context of this recent Forbes article, learners are required to choose an organisation (ideally, a relevant fortune 500 organisation which delivers engineering products or services) and prepare a report to answer the following questions: –
a) Executive summary (5 marks)
b) Introduction to the chosen organisation (7 marks)
c) With reference to any two innovation strategies which help firms build innovation capabilities, explain how the chosen organisation embraces innovation and discuss the different factors affecting the diffusion of innovation for the organisation. (8 marks)
d) Describe how the research and development processes are managed and organised in the chosen organisation and examine the relevance of intellectual property rights and key patent indicators in research and development of engineering products and services. (15 marks)
e) Explain how the global technology management strategies adopted by your chosen organisation helps in delivering engineering products and services and analyse the role of technology audits and technology transfers in identifying bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement in engineering products or services.(15 marks)
f) Conclusion and recommendations(5 marks)
Task 2 – (25 marks) For the chosen organisation in Task 2, learners are asked to make a short presentation to analyse the role of decision making, risk and uncertainty appraisals in delivering engineering products and services. You should satisfy these objectives while making the presentation: – ·
Analyse the various risk and uncertainty management techniques which can be used to alleviate risk while delivering the chosen organisations engineering products or services. ·
From your analysis, determine if your chosen organisation is able to find the right balance between risk, reward and decision making.
