Stephen Sarnocinski

I believe abundance drives innovation. Once an abundant product has been launched and replicated by competitors for years the allure certainly dies off. However, this triggers an innovative thought process to develop a new market for abundance. I believe that’s what drives markets today. I think scarcity very rarely is disruptive due to the fact…[Read more]

After working with an e-commerce account for the last year, and now being exposed to many different scenarios within this course I would definitely self publish and work to establish an online distribution network. Obviously you need capital in order to bring the book to life, stock, and distribute in a brick and mortar space, however with the…[Read more]

Thanks for the insight Paul. I was going to discuss “silos” in my post so I’ll just piggyback on your post. Coming from a company that has silos and an excess amount of “tribal knowledge” I would have to say that is definitely a metric I would implement to measure success. Information sharing within companies that have extreme silos can be…[Read more]

Duke I could not agree more. The fact that there was no measurable or deliverable to show the impact of the “open innovation” theory is hard to grasp. Everything we do is now measured by some metric. I guess one could argue the measurable was the participation within the contests, but what about work time lost with the time committed to these…[Read more]

Digital media lessens the need for a distribution network for CDs. They no longer have the overhead costs of mass producing CDs in order to supply the demand to their distributors i.e. manufacturing, shipping, etc. I believe the labels were so resistant because it was a complete market shift where they could no longer monopolize the sale of…[Read more]

The implementation of the IT infrastructure assisted in the globalization, and it would not have been possible without it. I still think that prior to their decision to roll out the IT initiative, they were a very decentralized company. This is why they needed to adjust their strategy in certain parts of the world to a more “regionalization”…[Read more]

I agree with you Kristin, and maybe call me old school but I have not been converted or convinced yet. I do not save any data on the cloud whether its work or personal information. I can imagine in your line of work the confidentiality piece would be extremely important. While they say the cloud is secure, you repeatedly see news of hackers…[Read more]

The company that I work for does not support the BYOD concept. I was not really sure why until I recently changed positions into a different business unit. Once I transferred, the IT department allowed me access to certain parts of our network I never knew existed. I was awarded additional access through my company issued laptop and IPhone. I am…[Read more]

Information technology has definitely enabled the emergence of global brands. Google, Amazon and other websites that can monetize information and advertising have helped brands become more globally recognized. Companies such as Microsoft, SAP, salesforce.com are solution providers that are strategically placed to help companies and brands that are…[Read more]

Jonathan, great points above. I was going to write a very similar post but figured I would piggyback on your discussion post. I recently worked with a company that utilized Amazon services in order to run their e-commerce website. They were able to run very lean on personnel due to the functionality and cost savings provided by their services.…[Read more]

Duke, I think a scenario that epitomizes what you summarized above is that in some scenarios they decided to call it “regionalization” rather than “globalization” in order to gain additional buy in from the international businesses. I think this is similar to last weeks article as there needs to be a consistent message from the corporate office on…[Read more]

The role of IT was to develop structure in a decentralized company. They lacked consistency in reporting and compiled very little data from all of their different businesses in order to run a “global” organization. The article addresses one of the fundamental challenges that Wyeth had in formulating this strategy. Wyeth was a holding company that…[Read more]

Thanks everyone for the responses. We do have an effort to grow our social media platform to help drive awareness to new product launches. I would definitely say we are little behind in that category but a big piece of that is our selling strategy. We do not sell direct to customers. All sales are through distribution, so in order to stay as…[Read more]

Right now our company has been growing significantly over the last 5+ years. We’ve gone from $500M to $1.7B since I’ve been with the company. Not until this year did we invest in an updated ERP system. We currently use JD Edwards and Lotus notes. This is an early 1990’s state of the art system. We have been so focused on funding the sales,…[Read more]

Customer Relationships
For the past 6 years I have been an Account Manager for Milwaukee Electric Tool. The company prides itself on its customer relationships. The CEO believes in allocating additional funding into the sales team in order to garner that face to face interaction with our customers. On multiple occasions I have heard our CEO says…[Read more]

Paul,

I think the biggest problem they could face is when the “mothership” mandates that they must fund the the global supply chain initiative due to long term growth strategies of Volkswagen as a global company. Local projects are always a priority, and the fact that Matulovic went through this process and prioritization of funding without…[Read more]

I would be very direct with the members looking for preferential treatment. I would advise them that the committee will take into account all projects and weight them accordingly. In the end, they approved the new process for prioritizing the projects. The most difficult aspect of Matulovic’s endeavor will be adequately portraying and presenting…[Read more]

Bruce,

I definitely agree with your assessment. The ELT definitely needed to be more involved in the prioritization of the objectives. Each member of the ELT has their own objectives, however they are more likely to align the projects in accordance with the overall corporate strategic objectives. This would ensure they are in line with the…[Read more]

I believe bringing some structure to the process was a definite improvement. The team had a monumental task ahead of them since for the last decade or so a majority of the funding and prioritization went to sales & marketing. They needed a process to streamline and prioritize the projects in order to decide where the funding was going. However, I…[Read more]

Sam,

I have to agree with you on your last statement. As I read the article, the process seemed great in theory, but in practice seemed very bureaucratic and confusing. I like the idea of forcing people into a room to make a decision based on full input and analysis. However, the strategic objectives needed to be aligned by the leadership at…[Read more]