MA121-Chapter 15

Development Project

A focused organizational effort to create a new product or process via technological advances

Disruptive Innovation

A process by which a product, service, or business model takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then moves "up market," eventually displacing established competitors.

Force-Field Analysis

An approach to implementing Lewin's unfreezing/moving/refreezing model by identifying the forces that prevent people from changing and those that will drive people toward change.

Base Technology

Are commonplace in the industry; everyone must have them. They provide little competitive advantage, but managers have to invest to ensure their organization's continued competence in the technology.

Adapters

Companies that take the current industry structure and its evolution as givens, and choose where to compete.

Shapers

Companies that try to change the structure of their industries, creating a future competitive landscape of their own design

Environmental Scanning

Focuses on what can be done and what is being developed. It emphasizes identifying and monitoring the sources of new technologies for an industry. It also may include reading cutting-edge research journals and attending conferences and seminars. Organizations that operate closer to the cutting edge of technology rely more on scanning.

Key Technologies

Have proved effective but offer a strategic advantage because not everyone uses them. Eventually, alternatives can emerge. But until then, they can give organizations a significant competitive edge and make it harder for new entrants to threaten the organization.

Moving

Instituting the change

Unfreezing

Realizing that current practices are inappropriate and that new behavior is necessary

Refreezing

Strengthening the new behaviors that support the change

Differentiation

The advantage comes from offering a unique good or service for which customers are willing to pay a premium price.

Performance Gap

The difference between actual performance and desired performance.

Benchmarking

The process of comparing an organization's practices and technologies with those of other companies

Make or Buy Decisions

The question an organization asks itself about whether to acquire new technology from an outside source or develop it itself

Organizational Development

The systemwide application of behavioral science knowledge to develop, improve, and reinforce the strategies, structures, and processes that lead to organizational effectiveness