Hewlett Packard: Case Study
2. What do you think of the way the team set out to find a market for the Kittyhawk? What correct turns and what wrong turns did they make?
When setting out to find a market for Kittyhawk, there were several correct and incorrect decisions that the DMD division made that greatly affected their product and its future effectiveness. They initially went about it the right way by researching the electronics industry and the several companies within the industry that might want their new product. They also spent time analyzing HP’s future product plans and how they aligned with that of Kittyhawk’s. They looked into businesses where their innovative and disruptive product may have a greater demand and be better able to quickly incorporate their product, such as the mobile and gaming markets.
The DMD division made the mistake of not waiting for the market to develop before mass producing their product. Existing customers tend to be hesitant when moving away from products that they have already invested in and move towards a disruptive technology. Many customers may not even have the resources or capabilities to use HP’s new product. DMD should have given time for customers to become aware of their innovative product before jumping to conclusions of future demand trends. One way to initially see how customers would react to Kittyhawk would have been to do beta and end user testing before establishing a permanent market. Also, the company hired a market research firm specializing in high-tech markets to help them segment the market, but since Kittyhawk was so innovative, the research was almost useless because there were no reliable leads or demands from customers.
At the Computer Electronics Show, HP did not capitalize on the immediate market need set forth by Nintendo, who wanted their product for $50. This went against DMD’s original purpose of the project which was to create a cheap, small disk drive, which was exactly what Nintendo wanted. Instead, they
When setting out to find a market for Kittyhawk, there were several correct and incorrect decisions that the DMD division made that greatly affected their product and its future effectiveness. They initially went about it the right way by researching the electronics industry and the several companies within the industry that might want their new product. They also spent time analyzing HP’s future product plans and how they aligned with that of Kittyhawk’s. They looked into businesses where their innovative and disruptive product may have a greater demand and be better able to quickly incorporate their product, such as the mobile and gaming markets.
The DMD division made the mistake of not waiting for the market to develop before mass producing their product. Existing customers tend to be hesitant when moving away from products that they have already invested in and move towards a disruptive technology. Many customers may not even have the resources or capabilities to use HP’s new product. DMD should have given time for customers to become aware of their innovative product before jumping to conclusions of future demand trends. One way to initially see how customers would react to Kittyhawk would have been to do beta and end user testing before establishing a permanent market. Also, the company hired a market research firm specializing in high-tech markets to help them segment the market, but since Kittyhawk was so innovative, the research was almost useless because there were no reliable leads or demands from customers.
At the Computer Electronics Show, HP did not capitalize on the immediate market need set forth by Nintendo, who wanted their product for $50. This went against DMD’s original purpose of the project which was to create a cheap, small disk drive, which was exactly what Nintendo wanted. Instead, they