The case chosen is IBM at the Crossroads, published by McGraw Hill Education.
3 key Issues and Recommendations
A rather mind capturing case, talks about the growth story of IBM. The three key issues and future challenges in IBM’s way are:
• Slow Reaction to Change:
The past trends followed in IBM, show that it lacks responsiveness to change in market trends and revolutions. Not able to estimate the potential and size of change coming its way, has stagnated the company in the long run. Referring to the era of mainframes being hit by Apple, it was indeed foreseeable that the mainframes were at a decline stage in their life cycle (Exhibit 1) making them a ‘Dog’ product as per the BCG matrix analysis (Exhibit 2). IBM had enough time and resources
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This is achievable when a company shares a dynamic perspective. The key factors here are enhancement of dynamic capabilities to accommodate market trends, and extrapolations, where IBM could foresee major changes in the future. To succeed in dynamism, IBM must take the route of democratized innovations instead of the traditional innovation model. Though, it may take a while to curb the commoditization but it definitely will lead to a greater degree of differentiation. Once, the company starts analyzing the trends in customer future needs, the dynamic capabilities will automatically set in place, paving a smooth transition path for new products and innovations to be developed with a first mover …show more content…
IBM has had a variety of leaderships, however, going forward it could put a policy into place whether to let an IBMer handle the company, or an outsider. Hiring an outsider, like Louis Gerstner, does not seem like a bad option at the moment, as the company will benefit from an outsider’s point of view about the situation. Moreover, when the positions in the top management are taken up, IBM should keep the old CEOs as the consultants to the new team. Not only will this help the new management, but also will streamline or keep the coordination between the earlier strategies and the new plans of