Ronds: A Pioneer in a Blue Ocean (A)

Ronds Science & Technology Incorporated Company (Ronds) was a leading smart solutions provider in China’s machine condition monitoring market. Since its establishment, 10 years earlier, the high-tech company’s monitoring and diagnostic solutions have been implemented across various industries, with the strongest foothold in the wind energy industry. However, the co-founder and chairman of Ronds observed that most Chinese industrial enterprises were slow in adopting technology in the area of maintenance and repair, and long sales cycles had led to Ronds missing its 2016 sales target. News of the Chinese central government’s plans to redistribute wind energy projects across China to new provinces also followed. Given Ronds’s weak profitability performance and the recent change in government policies, the company had to consider whether it should focus on further penetrating the wind energy market or expand to other industries. As either approach had its own challenges, the cofounder and his senior management looked to identify the best growth strategy for Ronds to remain competitive in the industry 4.0 era.

These cases are best suited for higher-level undergraduate as well as postgraduate courses on marketing, technology, the Internet of things, and strategy.<br><br>By working through the cases and assignments questions, students will have the opportunity to do<ul><li>understand the business environment in China with regard to the importance of government policies;</li><li>realize the importance of target market identification;</li><li>apply key models in marketing (i.e., SWOT [strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats] analysis, Ansoff matrix);</li><li>understand the challenges of marketing a product early in the product life cycle, and examine resource requirements to meet market conditions;and</li><li>learn about strategy for hardware companies transforming into software providers.</li></ul>

• marketing, technology, Internet of Thing