Innovation and Competitive Advantage: Changing Environments

Innovation and Competitive Advantage: Changing Environments
Juan A Colon
University of Phoenix

May 8, 2017

Innovation and Competitive Advantage: Changing Environments

            Most companies around the world are facing a problem to build and sustain their products in the ever-growing competition in the business environment. Thus, it is essential for these businesses to adjust with the changing factors in work force preference and demographics. In addition, they should invest in modern technologies for them to globalize their operations to cope up with competitors (Khanna & Bullock, 2015). For instance, Samsung which is a top leading organization in electronics, digital appliances, memory, system integration and smartphones opted to make use of competitive advantage and the six processes to maintain innovation.

            Samsung is meeting the concepts of competitive advantage by using various approaches. The company first focuses on the internal running of the organization. This is achieved by each employee making changes, in Samsung group performance is measured using qualitative analysis rather than quantitative. In addition, to cope up with international competition the company is achieving it through integration of multifaceted facilities by developing a global information systems. Globalization has provided the company access to new clients in over 100 countries they are based. This enables the company to be able to learn about new cultures thus developing new ideas (Song & Yi, 2014).

Subsequently, the company is developing alliances with other leading companies in the technology sector to expand and share its vision through gathering more knowledge and experience. The company has cooperated with organizations such as Microsoft and AOL Time warner in technology and marketing. Also, to improve on standardization of its technology innovation products the company has collaborated with Intel, Qualcomm and Sony (Song & Yi, 2014). Another approach the company is using is through enhancing its human resource department. This enables the company to recruit personnel with high quality experience in the technology innovation.

Samsung organizational leadership philosophy on innovation aims at enabling the company to engage in stiff competition with other technology companies in the global business environment. The company has over 1,600 innovators leading from designers, engineers and marketers. They facilitate research on carrying out unmet needs to users by other competitors through identifying cultural practices, technological needs and economic trends. In addition, the company is shifting from practices that are efficient-focused management to a new culture that is innovation-focused and still maintaining its engineering edge of products. Thus, the company has been able to adopt the culture of risk-averse by learning to accommodate experiments on new products and occasional failure associated with it.

Samsung is actively engaging in activities that are enabling it to sustain competitive advantage within the technology products industry. For instance, the transformation of its products to models that are more advanced (Song & Yi, 2014). In this strategy, the company explores its product design, strategic planning and innovations to change the competitive landscape in the industry. This has been achieved through developing products using R&D design making it to dominate its market position and brand perception. In addition, the company is designing products to outsource its consumer electronics products.