Managing the new product development teams

Reading the twelfth chapter I found a term that it’s becoming very common in the modern practices by the companies. I am talking about cross-functional teams, which the author describes as a group of members drawn from more than one functional area. Managers believe they can ensure different perspectives and bases of expertise with cross-functional teams in order to solve problems.
I would like to share a video provided by a company called InSiteOne where their CFO Henry Schaffer talks about the benefits of creating cross-functional teams. This video it’s a great example of success when implementing this type of strategy, in the way they illustrate how the company increased productivity, started to solve problem quickly, and evolving with the new technologies. Despite the positive results it is also notable the employees satisfaction sharing knowledge with co-workers from different areas.

Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPp8S_wlnyE

Managing the new product development process

Managing the new product development process is the title of this week chapter. When I start reading about this topic I was more concern in the way companies are managing their internal resources in the development process. The author mentions many types of strategies in the development process in the book, but one particularly caught my attention – Involving Customers and Suppliers in Development Process.
Assuming that the majority of the companies aims customer satisfaction as one of the primary objectives, involving them in the development process seems to be an easy way to guarantee they will further acquire a product/service when the company launches it on the market. Although this type of procedure requires much more attention by the R&D.
Doing some research on involving customers while developing products I found this article that highlights important points to be considered and how to avoid frequent mistakes made by organizations.

Link:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:k-2zLkk_ZnoJ:i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bnet/Involving_Customers_in_Product_Development.pdf+Involving+Customers+in+Product+Development&hl=pt-BR&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjwnAwj-c0k8HWjyK4o7RV_ZcQ3VazfNx7m-d-nkfx12VSiPopn3Cby86_pgu4AFmRHgnXcT24USDXvvJvlX7ZwIAAe4ImZVgpjBvgCAgvyH5YZm_fTqOml6I3RsplcUMsFr8fM&sig=AHIEtbRWUUlkT5YiwZmwcAc1KrMKzUfJtQ

Organizing Innovation

Innovation is a word that we have been hearing many times associated with business in the last decade. It is very difficult to talk about any type of innovation without mentioning change, and my concern is if the organizations/leaders are preparing or organizing their organizational environment before starting to change. Organizing for innovation is the point discussed in the 10th chapter of the book, where we can identify different types of structures in organizations.

When we decide to innovate, we are looking for new forms of work that can be organized and conducted within an organization to encourage and promote competitive advantage. I found a video on youtube where the author tries to open our eyes and make us rethink the way we do business, the way we organize and the way we lead. It also covers how organizations and individuals, manage work processes in areas such as customer relationship management, performance and employee retention and knowledge management.

Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xHFfLTgjJI

Music Industry

With the high competitiveness and globalization, all products and services are going into a process of commodification. Companies are offering products and services in a very similar price range in a market that they need to find ways of seduction or mobilization of their audiences. I am not talking just about lower prices, promotions, establish loyalty programs, invest resources in research & innovation and other strategies they been using , they need to make the consumers feel delighted with the new invention/innovation in order to mobilize them.

Given the example of the digital music industry distribution, we saw that the record labels were left beyond. Now we can say they have two major challenges: be frequently updated with the market evolution and be capable to attract consumers in order to facilitate access and customer demands of music. The other one is their battle against piracy, most common ones are illegal downloads and file sharing.

While doing a more deeply research in the music industry I found this article titled “Piracy continues to cripple music industry as sales fall 10%” written in January of 2010. The author gives us some interesting and recent data about the music industry around the world. Another controversial topic covered in this article is the reason why the sales are falling during the last decade, with the record labels blaming the piracy and in the other hand the critics accusing them of failing to keep up with changing consumer demands also arguing that new services such as download stores, streaming sites and subscription offers were responsible for these numbers.

The link;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/21/music-industry-piracy-hits-sales