Assignment

1. If your boss asked you to assess your company's capacity to produce innovative change, what three aspects of your company would be the focus of your investigation? Explain your answer.

2. Explain the circumstances that caused the creation of telecommunications "bubble" between 1998 and 2000. What caused it to "pop" in 2001 and 2002?

3. Would you agree or disagree with the idea that in a given industry, most "breakthrough" technological developments are introduced from outside that industry? Explain your answer?

4. J. A. Schumpeter distinguished between entrepreneurial and managerial types of economic activity. What is the primary role of the Schumperterianentrepreneur?

5 In the Xerox case study discussed in your reading assignment, why did Xerox have so much trouble translating its first rate research into money-making products?

6 Our text describes the two basic approaches to strategy formulation as being technology push and need pull. Describe the limitations of each approach.

7 Components are devices fabricated from materials that are the building blocks of intermediate or end-use products. Components embody the fundamental technological concepts upon which products are based. In this context, explain what is meant by the "architecture" of products and components.

8 Psychologists tells us that prior knowledge enhances learning because memory, or the storage of knowledge, is developed by associative learning in which events are recorded into memory be establishing linkages with preexisting concepts. Explain how this finding is related to a firm trying to implement a radically new technology.

9 Various combinations of administrative and operational linkages produce different design alternatives to facilitate corporate entrepreneurialship. If you were Michael Dell, CEO of the Dell Corporation, identify three alternative design alternatives for corporate entrepreneurialship and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each with respect to your company.