Fortu Powercell GmbH Case
Fortu Powercell GmbH Case
Introduction
Nowadays, it is critical for the companies of many industries to pay a lot of attention and efforts on the management of technology and innovation. Indeed, the development of new technologies is a potential source of competitive advantage and the ability of the companies to innovate and/or to respond to competitors’ innovation determine their survival in a long-term basis. This ability is more or less developed in companies, regarding their maturity and their structure. Most of the start-ups, which usually function as adhocracies, have a good ability to innovate but struggle to bring these innovations to the market. fortu Powercell GmbH represents a typical example of a start-up with a promising technology offering a lot of possibilities, a new type of battery, but which does not know what strategic direction to take in order to achieve long-term profitability. Studying its situation would the occasion for us to present several concepts that managers in fields where technology and innovation matter need to embrace if they want to take relevant strategic decisions. We are going to start our analysis with a quick reminder of the case, what are the critical points to keep in mind before to present some considerations relative to the work of several experts, researchers in the management of technology and innovation. Finally, we will conclude with some suggestions for the executive team of fortu Powercell.
I. Context of fortu Powercell GmbH
In this part, we just want to summarize what we think are the relevant data of this case: -Competing technologies in the battery industry Technology | Lead-acid | NiCd | NiMH | Li-ion | Li-pol | Fortu Powercell | Voltage per cell | Medium | Low | Low | High | High | High | Energy density(volume/weight) | Bad | Bad | Correct | Good | Very good | Very good | Price per Wh | Very low | Medium | Medium | High | High | ? | Main Inconvenient(s) | Heavy and large | Pollution
Introduction
Nowadays, it is critical for the companies of many industries to pay a lot of attention and efforts on the management of technology and innovation. Indeed, the development of new technologies is a potential source of competitive advantage and the ability of the companies to innovate and/or to respond to competitors’ innovation determine their survival in a long-term basis. This ability is more or less developed in companies, regarding their maturity and their structure. Most of the start-ups, which usually function as adhocracies, have a good ability to innovate but struggle to bring these innovations to the market. fortu Powercell GmbH represents a typical example of a start-up with a promising technology offering a lot of possibilities, a new type of battery, but which does not know what strategic direction to take in order to achieve long-term profitability. Studying its situation would the occasion for us to present several concepts that managers in fields where technology and innovation matter need to embrace if they want to take relevant strategic decisions. We are going to start our analysis with a quick reminder of the case, what are the critical points to keep in mind before to present some considerations relative to the work of several experts, researchers in the management of technology and innovation. Finally, we will conclude with some suggestions for the executive team of fortu Powercell.
I. Context of fortu Powercell GmbH
In this part, we just want to summarize what we think are the relevant data of this case: -Competing technologies in the battery industry Technology | Lead-acid | NiCd | NiMH | Li-ion | Li-pol | Fortu Powercell | Voltage per cell | Medium | Low | Low | High | High | High | Energy density(volume/weight) | Bad | Bad | Correct | Good | Very good | Very good | Price per Wh | Very low | Medium | Medium | High | High | ? | Main Inconvenient(s) | Heavy and large | Pollution