Venture capitalist Atul Kapadia was inclined to provide seed funding for Sujeet Kumar and Michael Sinkula to found Envia Systems, a lithium-ion battery company. Admittedly, Envia was little more than the founders' vision of an affordable electric vehicle and the potential of playing in a very large market. But for Kapadia, it was precisely these two key ingredients that made Envia attractive and akin to other early-stage investments he had made at Bay Partners.
Describes the procedures and processes used by Cisco Systems in its acquisition of high-technology firms. Its goal is to retain key engineering talent and to leverage existing product development efforts, but to quickly merge acquired companies its own systems and procedures. In addition to describing the general approach used by Cisco, this case describes some of the specifics involving its acquisition of Summa Four, a designer/manufacturer of a related product line, whose major activities are located in New England.
During the last decade, U.S. manufacturers have narrowed if not eliminated the competitive gap between themselves and such foreign rivals as the Japanese and the Germans. But how can they take the lead and retain it? What will it take to stay ahead? To answer those daunting questions, an ad hoc group of 27 academics and industry executives formed the Manufacturing Vision Group in 1988. They studies development projects at Chaparral Steel, Digital Equipment, Eastman Kodak, Ford Motor, and Hewlett-Packard. Development projects are microcosms of an organization. And when designed and managed well, they generate powerful, distinctive capabilities as well as winning products or processes. The most successful projects combine seven key elements, which, when applied comprehensively, optimize development, foster learning, and initiate change throughout an organization. Those elements are: core capabilities, guiding visions, organization and leadership, ownership and commitment, "pushing the envelope," prototypes, and integration.
To be a leader in global manufacturing in the 1990s, a company must excel in two seemingly contradictory ways. First, it must constantly build and refresh its individual areas of expertise so that it has the critical capabilities needed to stay ahead. And second, it must get its ever-changing mix of disciplines to work together in an ever-changing competitive environment. Most manufacturers, especially those companies that have reorganized themselves by cross-functional processes, have already discovered how difficult it is to integrate various disciplines and still maintain functional excellence. But development projects offer a solution. Development projects are the critical juncture where functional groups meet and are therefore the true test of an organization's integrative abilities. More important, they can be used as a tool for strengthening the relationship among functions, while still giving those functions the room they need to advance their own expertise. The Kodak FunSaver project illustrates how a company can encourage functions to work together effectively, enhance functional expertise, and create a winning product to boot.
Leadership is the key to developing great products--products that surprise and delight customers. To achieve that goal, all the technical elements of a product must work well together as a system. The manufacturing process must produce everything that the design requires and the product must be delivered to customers in an outstanding fashion. And if the development of a great product is not an isolated case--if one great product is followed by another and another--the result is a great enterprise. Leadership is the key to achieving that kind of consistency. Eastman Kodak's FunSaver camera and Hewlett-Packard's DeskJet printer are examples of development efforts that created great products. Each became the basis for a whole family of products that has created a significant business for its company. The Manufacturing Vision Group studies successful projects that had powerful guiding visions for business strategy, project, and product. Moreover, these three visions were mutually reinforcing, energizing the people on the teams, focusing attention and effort on the right things, and getting them done in the right way.