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Thursday, March 17, 2005
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Lecture-4. Business Case on Creativity
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Posted by ramon prat. March 4th. 8:30
BUSINESS CASE TEAMS. E INK. (MARCH 3TH)
TEAM 1
George Areshidze
Charlotte Meiers
Cecilia Icaza
Mariuxi Viteri
Daniela Archundia
TEAM 2
Elena Kouprina
Nora Solomon
Julian Jochum
Moritz Hartl
TEAM 3
Skage Groenneberg
Juan manuel Ruiz
Asta Ramberg
Juan Carande
TEAM 4
Erik Jehn
Gerard Gademann
TEAM 5
Laura Lamertz
Jørgen Jarbø
Catharina Caldas
Gordon Plattes
Ronaldino
=================
Posted March 7th.
Case E Ink
By Erik Jehn and Gerard Gademann
Facts:
. The company aimed to revolutionize print communication through display technology.
· Wacky place to work, being there frees your mind. You’re not afraid to have something crazy come out of your mouth.
· Projection in the future:
Radio paper (2003)
Portable Displays (2001)
Retail Signs (1999)
· Although fun was a distinct part of the culture, so was hard work
· “E Ink has an environment of constant learning. Everyone has opinions but nobody’s figured it out.”
· E Ink has a flat organizational Structure
· “ The young people, the ones just out of school, are definitely the dominant culture group here… or at least the loudest one”
· “We are pulling together a bunch of different technologies to create a new industry”
· The high potential of the company and its products, the revolutionary technology, the interdisciplinary nature of the work, and the small-company mentality.
Problems and short description
E Ink is at the moment still evolving. It is developing new methods to get to their final goal of creating the Radio Paper. In order to achieve this they have to get experts and experienced employees. Since they have not yet achieved technology perfection and success to create radio paper but are on the best path towards it.
The company faces the problem at the moment that they have to act! “We can’t get by any longer by just looking cool.” This is the point where the problems within the company start. We have two main problems:
1. The expanding of the company:
Employees felt that the companies culture was getting lost due to the fact that new employees were hired. It was becoming more impersonal and was less fun. They also were loosing the feeling that made them different “ they could see a product to market in a short period of time.” In big companies projects took years, possibly decades to develop and there was guarantee that it would be commercialized. One of the best statements is found in the text which shows this fact “ Keeping the fun is really hard as you grow”
2. Its time to act !!!
The main problem here is that they have to start getting results, production has to start. Two problems result here as we see that they have to scale up production. They had to ensure a product that was stable and reliable. E Ink signs had to last at least 3 years and the problem that microcapsules burst had to be solved. They had to manage expectations and relationships with sponsors, collaborators and potential customers to decide which pieces of the work could be outsourced.
Recommendation and Conclusions
At the moment their products are protected by patents but they have to start acting soon because possible competitors could emerge. Even though the company is growing and they are getting more policies and is more of a big company feel, their staff is very excited. They realize that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. ”So let’s not mess it up”
To maintain a good company culture they can apply some techniques and/or tools to foster the creativity (Brainstorming, analogies, metaphors)
=================
Business Case E-Inkby Laura Lamertz, Catarina Caldas, Jörgen Jarbö, Gordon Plattes
In this report we will analyse the case E- Ink. First of all the main key facts are discussed in a list of bullet points. Moreover, we will analyse the main problems and causes in the case. The problems will be listed up in the fundamental, operating and non real problems. Finally, the third step is to give our personal recommendations. These recommendations will be supported by theory and our intuition.
Step 1
* Electronic Ink was an ink solution , tiny paint particles, activated by electric charge
* Applications of this technology were limited by peoples imagination and could affect all levels of communication
* All possible applications were possible, clothing that changes colour etc
* Albert & Paul agreed that the final goal was something called radio paper
* Radio paper would be a high resolution display that looked like ordinary paper but behaved as electronic display
* E Ink sets for itself a technical path that included two intermediate steps (retail signs, portable displays) to achieve the goal of radio paper.
* Coming up with some interim markets before jumping to magic book, allows the company to generate revenue, must keep while taking necessary steps toward ultimate goal
* E Ink signs, compliance would be broader faster, smarter. E Ink believed this would make signs very attractive to large retailers. E Ink signs had cost advantages.
* The signage market was an appealing starting point
* E Inks most visible aspect was its youth
.
Step 2Fundamental Problem
1. E Ink is dealing with a fundamental organizational concern: How to retain E Ink's creativity, drive, and sense of fun while focusing the company on growth and the demands of a first product introduction. . Juliano is afraid that these big changes would make the company less active and less innovative
Operational Problems1. How to effectively manage people within the organization through rapid growth and the pressures of commercialization.( Balance Change)
2. How to successfully build on a technological breakthrough
3. Translating a technological breakthrough into a prototype, move from prototype to full-scale manufacturing, and maintain market excitement about the company
4. Manage expectations and relationships with sponsors, collaborators, and potential customers
It is obvious that the causes of these fundamental and operational concerns are based upon the immense pressure and growth that the organisation was faced with. In order to meet the demands of manufacturing and technical development, the company had to grow rapidly. Tripled current workforce from 35 to 90
Non real Problems
1. Solving the problem that the microcapsules occasionally burst
2. Ensuring at least a 98% chance that an E ink would last three years at least
3. Decide on which pieces of the work could be outsourced
Recommendations
Through out the whole case it is shown that the organisation has a culture that you mostly find within small organisations. E Ink was used to informal and flat organisational structure and the daily operations were related to affection and fun. Although fun was a distinct part of the culture so was hard work. Growing so fast and maintaining this unique corporate culture is almost impossible. Therefore changes within the company have to be made. These changes have to be made in order to maintain successful in the future. These changes are inevitable.
Changes within the company have to communicated to all parts of the organisation in order to make them feel part of this change in direction. Moreover, change has to be done slowly and not abruptly. If change is implemented like this part of the culture can be maintained. But realistically not all the culture can be maintained.
* A planned process of change;
* A process that is participative and empowering;
* Clear and on-going communication
In order for the company to be successful the company has to do adapt some growth management, organisational development and human resource management.
In order to keep the past environment at the company, maybe managers should be more focused on motivating their employees and keeping the good mood and the innovative thinking at the company. In order to accomplish this, they could stimulate the innovative thinking by for example providing more free hours just for creative thinking or special creative programs. Also they could have a small human resources department with counsellors that could hear the employees and even give them advices about the job life and also about their personal life, since sometimes are pressure by other issues besides the professional ones and this could reduce their creativity.
Also, if all these actions were taken the company would gain a good image that would give stability and would ensure the relationship with the sponsors, collaborators, potential customers and also the press.
10:33 AM
=================
Business case E-Ink by
Skage Grønneberg
Asta Ramberg
Juan Carande
Juan Manuel Ruiz
Tech. Prod. and Change Management
BBA3
E INK
Culture is very important to me. I want everyone to believe in the technology and each other. I want to keep E Ink an interesting, fun, exciting company where great people want to work. No matter what we do, we need to make the technology as good as possible. I can’t imagine anything other than the technology driving us in the lab. As scientists and engineers, I don’t want us to get distracted with politics and loose sights of making the ink as good as possible. Comiskey
Facts:
• In 1996 Joe Jacobson, joined by two undergraduate students from MIT, founded E Ink with the purpose of creating an electronic display device based on electronic ink.
• Electronic ink (e-ink) was an ink solution, composed of tiny paint particles and dye, which could be activated by an electric charge. Two types of displays were devised, the electrophoretic and the microencapsulation.
• From 1996 to 1999 the work force of the company has grown from 3 to 90 persons involved.
• Russ Wilcox, a graduate from Harvard Business School, joined the company in 1997 taking care of the financial and managerial aspects of E Ink.
• E Ink has an informal and flat organisational structure.
• The company has decided to pursue the big retail sign industry.
• The E Ink signs, compliance will be “broader, faster and smarter” and will serve the customers with a cost advantage due to inexpensive raw materials and requiring very little power to update.
• Company environment has been characterized by informality and creativity, producing a fun environment where everybody is constantly learning about the targeted technology.
Goals and Objectives:
• The market focus must keep the company on its technical path towards radio-paper.
• The company must produce revenue by 1999.
• The company must be able to grow that business to $20 million in three years.
• To maintain the company culture as it grows.
Problems:
• Diminishing atmosphere for creativity and innovation, due to increase in workforce.
• Pressure from clients and investors to obtain positive results, creating a stressful environment.
Recommendations:
• Create a blog to allow employees to have a space where they can share and express their own opinions, dissatisfactions and interests, both at a company and personal level.
• Maintain high value status of each employee.
• Arrange social events involving company employees to integrate the personnel amongst each other like tournaments, speeches, dinners, honouring distinguished employees, free speech forums in general meetings for all employees, etc.
• Create a position that looks out for the benefit and personal condition of the employees, such as a Social Coordinator or Committee.
• Post up pictures and the names of the employees in certain parts of the company’s headquarters.
12:23 PM
=================
At 1:04 PM, MoMo said...
Facts
* Founded in 1997 by Joe Jacobsen
* Product
o New kind of ink based on dye and tiny paint particles settled within microcapsules which can be loaded electronically
o Further possibilities in the future, might even lead to electronic paper, being able to be controlled wirless.
* The goals the product might achieve were basically split up in the following three steps:
1. Retail signs featuring the e-ink technology, to prove the feasibility of the know-how.
2. Portable display devices
3. Electronic newspaper
* The company culture could be considered to be...
o Youthful
o Influenced by an enthusiastic "start-up spirit"
o Flat organisational structured
* 1999 E Ink is at the stage to implement organisational changes (recruiting, inter-divisional communication, manufacturing) to cope with the change and growth the company is facing.
Problems and Causes
Generally speaking, E Ink is at the stage of changing from a start-up company being based in a small research laboratory, to a well organised organisation having to implement production facilities, adequate and skilled managing, however still combined with the so essential free start-up spirit being so vital for their development so far.
This becomes obvious, in the fact that the company so far has not delivered any products to concrete customers, basically due lacking business focus and a high concentration on the scientific development of E Ink. The company is in the situation of having to prove its cool image and free spirit with a product that really works and generates income.
This step is considered to be essential for the future success of the company. However, this also requires structural changes, likely affecting the established youthful "start-up-spirit", accounting for many new ideas and product innovations.
A feasible application of the technology, for example as a first step in retail signs, has to implemented in a fast and successful manner, maybe being ignored for too long time by the enthusiastic and overhyped laboratory atmosphere.
Recommendations
The essential challenge E Ink is facing at the moment, is changing the corporate structure without limitating the open-minded culture and modifying the free spirit, one could actually breathe by entering their small lab.
Solutions for solving this challenge, definitely have to be taken under the circumstance to protect the free company spirit.
The production division, general management and research have to be linked closely together. This can be achieved in physically allocating the different parts of the company in one building and by keeping the flat organisational structure.
The new and vital ideas, being implemented by a number of fresh thinking university graduates, definitely have to be kept ensured in the future. This can be achieved by an ongoing cooperation and knowledge transaction with the universities surrounding the E Ink headquarters.
Concluding it has to be pointed out, that the main task the executives have to implement, is a structured company profile, which is inventively to implement a concrete project, like the retail signs for example, without losing their free and innovative corporate culture.
E Ink Team 2
=================
Charlotte Meiers
Daniela Archundia
Cecilia Icaza
Mariuxi Viteri
George Areshidze
E Ink
Facts:
Jim Iuliano, President and CEO of E Ink
E Ink was founded in 1997, the company aimed to revolutionize print communication through display technology.
E Ink is composed of tiny paint particles and dye that could be activated by an electric charge in order to display images or letters to innovate the levels of communication
They focus the company’s effort on large retail store signs for the first application of electronic ink.
Electronic ink had several advantages: easier to see at almost any angle, requires little power, once particles were in place no energy required to keep them there.
E Ink was named one of Fortune magazine’s “Cool Companies” of 1998.
The company’s goal was to make electronic ink replace all forms of paper base communication, which would be called “radio paper”
The first step on technical path was to pursue retail signage as a first market.
The most visible aspect of E Ink’s culture was its youth
The team was marked by competency, good will, and intelligence.
Another prominent feature of E Ink was the informal, flat organization structure nevertheless there was hard work
Initially the founders of E Ink hired generalists who had a variety of experiences in the field
The company needed experts in the two major components of electronic ink: display technology and ink.
The first two experienced technical hires were Paul Drzaic and Ian Morrison.
Recruited candidates were interested in E Ink for the high potential of the company and its products, the revolutionary technology, the interdisciplinary nature of their work, and the mentality of the company
The company possessed an opportunity in the market because there were no competitors at that moment
E Ink turned its ink manufacturing from hand to mechanical process.
E Ink moved from the exploratory Edisonian approach of the Media Lab to a more methodical scientific process.
As the company grew, they noticed growing pains in the culture
The three major groups at E Ink (management, manufacturing, and engineers and scientists) had been located in three different buildings
Keeping the company’s culture was one of the most important aspects of the company.
Problems:
The main problem is about strategic Decisions; the market they decided to start with was not really consistent with the company main long-term goal of targeting the radio paper. Despite the fact that this market was chosen to gain some experience and improve products technical features and quality; two years spent on producing signage products would affect organizational culture and employees’ attitude. They were now putting all their resources in the signage market, which in fact is not what they were really looking for. However, the fact of having youth and fresh people working on this inexpensive product made sense.
From this strategic decision, other problems derived;
Culture: Due the rapid growth that the Company is having during the last year, their “flexible” and “cool” environment is getting hurt, taking in account the Company has not being managed by business people.
Operational Problem: An immediately challenge that E Ink is facing is the stability and reliability of their products due to some production flaws that happened before.
Organization Problems: This flat organizational structure (creative-open) doesn’t match the new market there are coming in. They would need t to change the structure without affecting their autonomy, so they can maintain innovation and competitiveness.
Decision Making: The Company doesn’t know exactly which parts of the Company they should outsource. After upscaling the production process many decisions have to be made concerning stakeholders of the Company (customers, investors, sponsors, suppliers etc)
Rapid Growth and change: The main focus of growth was to immediately launch a stable and reliable product, to catch the window of opportunity before someone gets in to the market. Their philosophy was “We need to execute before the winds shits”. The Company was expected to increase their staff to nearly 90, three times as many people as the Company had one year earlier. Therefore, this mass of people coming in was bringing a mundane environment to E Ink. On the other hand, with growth the goal was to maintain the lowest flaw rate.
Investing and Financing: The Company had a lot of pressure of launching a product and getting sponsors and investors a rapid investment return.
Recommended Solutions
Occupy the workforce with most possible innovative and creative tasks instead of routinized and mundane activities. This will be efficient for productivity and corporate culture, which unfortunately contradicts the current strategy direction and is part of the core problems that were mentioned above.
Company should follow policies that pursuits their flat organizational structure, which implies more innovative, creative and informal environment. Decision must be decentralized and greater reliability to the youth.
E Ink must concentrate in their core activities, which has outsourcing implications as well.
=================
=================
At 1:01 PM, MoMo said...
Facts
* Founded in 1997 by Joe Jacobsen
* Product
o New kind of ink based on dye and tiny paint particles settled within microcapsules which can be loaded electronically
o Further possibilities in the future, might even lead to electronic paper, being able to be controlled wirless.
* The goals the product might achieve were basically split up in the following three steps:
1. Retail signs featuring the e-ink technology, to prove the feasibility of the know-how.
2. Portable display devices
3. Electronic newspaper
* The company culture could be considered to be...
o Youthful
o Influenced by an enthusiastic "start-up spirit"
o Flat organisational structured
* 1999 E Ink is at the stage to implement organisational changes (recruiting, inter-divisional communication, manufacturing) to cope with the change and growth the company is facing.
Problems and Causes
Generally speaking, E Ink is at the stage of changing from a start-up company being based in a small research laboratory, to a well organised organisation having to implement production facilities, adequate and skilled managing, however still combined with the so essential free start-up spirit being so vital for their development so far.
This becomes obvious, in the fact that the company so far has not delivered any products to concrete customers, basically due lacking business focus and a high concentration on the scientific development of E Ink. The company is in the situation of having to prove its cool image and free spirit with a product that really works and generates income.
This step is considered to be essential for the future success of the company. However, this also requires structural changes, likely affecting the established youthful "start-up-spirit", accounting for many new ideas and product innovations.
A feasible application of the technology, for example as a first step in retail signs, has to implemented in a fast and successful manner, maybe being ignored for too long time by the enthusiastic and overhyped laboratory atmosphere.
Recommendations
The essential challenge E Ink is facing at the moment, is changing the corporate structure without limitating the open-minded culture and modifying the free spirit, one could actually breathe by entering their small lab.
Solutions for solving this challenge, definitely have to be taken under the circumstance to protect the free company spirit.
The production division, general management and research have to be linked closely together. This can be achieved in physically allocating the different parts of the company in one building and by keeping the flat organisational structure.
The new and vital ideas, being implemented by a number of fresh thinking university graduates, definitely have to be kept ensured in the future. This can be achieved by an ongoing cooperation and knowledge transaction with the universities surrounding the E Ink headquarters.
Concluding it has to be pointed out, that the main task the executives have to implement, is a structured company profile, which is inventively to implement a concrete project, like the retail signs for example, without losing their free and innovative corporate culture.
E Ink Team 2
REVIEW AND GRADES
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Posted by ramon prat. March 4th. 8:30
BUSINESS CASE TEAMS. E INK. (MARCH 3TH)
TEAM 1
George Areshidze
Charlotte Meiers
Cecilia Icaza
Mariuxi Viteri
Daniela Archundia
TEAM 2
Elena Kouprina
Nora Solomon
Julian Jochum
Moritz Hartl
TEAM 3
Skage Groenneberg
Juan manuel Ruiz
Asta Ramberg
Juan Carande
TEAM 4
Erik Jehn
Gerard Gademann
TEAM 5
Laura Lamertz
Jørgen Jarbø
Catharina Caldas
Gordon Plattes
Ronaldino
=================
Posted March 7th.
Case E Ink
By Erik Jehn and Gerard Gademann
Facts:
. The company aimed to revolutionize print communication through display technology.
· Wacky place to work, being there frees your mind. You’re not afraid to have something crazy come out of your mouth.
· Projection in the future:
Radio paper (2003)
Portable Displays (2001)
Retail Signs (1999)
· Although fun was a distinct part of the culture, so was hard work
· “E Ink has an environment of constant learning. Everyone has opinions but nobody’s figured it out.”
· E Ink has a flat organizational Structure
· “ The young people, the ones just out of school, are definitely the dominant culture group here… or at least the loudest one”
· “We are pulling together a bunch of different technologies to create a new industry”
· The high potential of the company and its products, the revolutionary technology, the interdisciplinary nature of the work, and the small-company mentality.
Problems and short description
E Ink is at the moment still evolving. It is developing new methods to get to their final goal of creating the Radio Paper. In order to achieve this they have to get experts and experienced employees. Since they have not yet achieved technology perfection and success to create radio paper but are on the best path towards it.
The company faces the problem at the moment that they have to act! “We can’t get by any longer by just looking cool.” This is the point where the problems within the company start. We have two main problems:
1. The expanding of the company:
Employees felt that the companies culture was getting lost due to the fact that new employees were hired. It was becoming more impersonal and was less fun. They also were loosing the feeling that made them different “ they could see a product to market in a short period of time.” In big companies projects took years, possibly decades to develop and there was guarantee that it would be commercialized. One of the best statements is found in the text which shows this fact “ Keeping the fun is really hard as you grow”
2. Its time to act !!!
The main problem here is that they have to start getting results, production has to start. Two problems result here as we see that they have to scale up production. They had to ensure a product that was stable and reliable. E Ink signs had to last at least 3 years and the problem that microcapsules burst had to be solved. They had to manage expectations and relationships with sponsors, collaborators and potential customers to decide which pieces of the work could be outsourced.
Recommendation and Conclusions
At the moment their products are protected by patents but they have to start acting soon because possible competitors could emerge. Even though the company is growing and they are getting more policies and is more of a big company feel, their staff is very excited. They realize that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. ”So let’s not mess it up”
To maintain a good company culture they can apply some techniques and/or tools to foster the creativity (Brainstorming, analogies, metaphors)
=================
Business Case E-Inkby Laura Lamertz, Catarina Caldas, Jörgen Jarbö, Gordon Plattes
In this report we will analyse the case E- Ink. First of all the main key facts are discussed in a list of bullet points. Moreover, we will analyse the main problems and causes in the case. The problems will be listed up in the fundamental, operating and non real problems. Finally, the third step is to give our personal recommendations. These recommendations will be supported by theory and our intuition.
Step 1
* Electronic Ink was an ink solution , tiny paint particles, activated by electric charge
* Applications of this technology were limited by peoples imagination and could affect all levels of communication
* All possible applications were possible, clothing that changes colour etc
* Albert & Paul agreed that the final goal was something called radio paper
* Radio paper would be a high resolution display that looked like ordinary paper but behaved as electronic display
* E Ink sets for itself a technical path that included two intermediate steps (retail signs, portable displays) to achieve the goal of radio paper.
* Coming up with some interim markets before jumping to magic book, allows the company to generate revenue, must keep while taking necessary steps toward ultimate goal
* E Ink signs, compliance would be broader faster, smarter. E Ink believed this would make signs very attractive to large retailers. E Ink signs had cost advantages.
* The signage market was an appealing starting point
* E Inks most visible aspect was its youth
.
Step 2Fundamental Problem
1. E Ink is dealing with a fundamental organizational concern: How to retain E Ink's creativity, drive, and sense of fun while focusing the company on growth and the demands of a first product introduction. . Juliano is afraid that these big changes would make the company less active and less innovative
Operational Problems1. How to effectively manage people within the organization through rapid growth and the pressures of commercialization.( Balance Change)
2. How to successfully build on a technological breakthrough
3. Translating a technological breakthrough into a prototype, move from prototype to full-scale manufacturing, and maintain market excitement about the company
4. Manage expectations and relationships with sponsors, collaborators, and potential customers
It is obvious that the causes of these fundamental and operational concerns are based upon the immense pressure and growth that the organisation was faced with. In order to meet the demands of manufacturing and technical development, the company had to grow rapidly. Tripled current workforce from 35 to 90
Non real Problems
1. Solving the problem that the microcapsules occasionally burst
2. Ensuring at least a 98% chance that an E ink would last three years at least
3. Decide on which pieces of the work could be outsourced
Recommendations
Through out the whole case it is shown that the organisation has a culture that you mostly find within small organisations. E Ink was used to informal and flat organisational structure and the daily operations were related to affection and fun. Although fun was a distinct part of the culture so was hard work. Growing so fast and maintaining this unique corporate culture is almost impossible. Therefore changes within the company have to be made. These changes have to be made in order to maintain successful in the future. These changes are inevitable.
Changes within the company have to communicated to all parts of the organisation in order to make them feel part of this change in direction. Moreover, change has to be done slowly and not abruptly. If change is implemented like this part of the culture can be maintained. But realistically not all the culture can be maintained.
* A planned process of change;
* A process that is participative and empowering;
* Clear and on-going communication
In order for the company to be successful the company has to do adapt some growth management, organisational development and human resource management.
In order to keep the past environment at the company, maybe managers should be more focused on motivating their employees and keeping the good mood and the innovative thinking at the company. In order to accomplish this, they could stimulate the innovative thinking by for example providing more free hours just for creative thinking or special creative programs. Also they could have a small human resources department with counsellors that could hear the employees and even give them advices about the job life and also about their personal life, since sometimes are pressure by other issues besides the professional ones and this could reduce their creativity.
Also, if all these actions were taken the company would gain a good image that would give stability and would ensure the relationship with the sponsors, collaborators, potential customers and also the press.
10:33 AM
=================
Business case E-Ink by
Skage Grønneberg
Asta Ramberg
Juan Carande
Juan Manuel Ruiz
Tech. Prod. and Change Management
BBA3
E INK
Culture is very important to me. I want everyone to believe in the technology and each other. I want to keep E Ink an interesting, fun, exciting company where great people want to work. No matter what we do, we need to make the technology as good as possible. I can’t imagine anything other than the technology driving us in the lab. As scientists and engineers, I don’t want us to get distracted with politics and loose sights of making the ink as good as possible. Comiskey
Facts:
• In 1996 Joe Jacobson, joined by two undergraduate students from MIT, founded E Ink with the purpose of creating an electronic display device based on electronic ink.
• Electronic ink (e-ink) was an ink solution, composed of tiny paint particles and dye, which could be activated by an electric charge. Two types of displays were devised, the electrophoretic and the microencapsulation.
• From 1996 to 1999 the work force of the company has grown from 3 to 90 persons involved.
• Russ Wilcox, a graduate from Harvard Business School, joined the company in 1997 taking care of the financial and managerial aspects of E Ink.
• E Ink has an informal and flat organisational structure.
• The company has decided to pursue the big retail sign industry.
• The E Ink signs, compliance will be “broader, faster and smarter” and will serve the customers with a cost advantage due to inexpensive raw materials and requiring very little power to update.
• Company environment has been characterized by informality and creativity, producing a fun environment where everybody is constantly learning about the targeted technology.
Goals and Objectives:
• The market focus must keep the company on its technical path towards radio-paper.
• The company must produce revenue by 1999.
• The company must be able to grow that business to $20 million in three years.
• To maintain the company culture as it grows.
Problems:
• Diminishing atmosphere for creativity and innovation, due to increase in workforce.
• Pressure from clients and investors to obtain positive results, creating a stressful environment.
Recommendations:
• Create a blog to allow employees to have a space where they can share and express their own opinions, dissatisfactions and interests, both at a company and personal level.
• Maintain high value status of each employee.
• Arrange social events involving company employees to integrate the personnel amongst each other like tournaments, speeches, dinners, honouring distinguished employees, free speech forums in general meetings for all employees, etc.
• Create a position that looks out for the benefit and personal condition of the employees, such as a Social Coordinator or Committee.
• Post up pictures and the names of the employees in certain parts of the company’s headquarters.
12:23 PM
=================
At 1:04 PM, MoMo said...
Facts
* Founded in 1997 by Joe Jacobsen
* Product
o New kind of ink based on dye and tiny paint particles settled within microcapsules which can be loaded electronically
o Further possibilities in the future, might even lead to electronic paper, being able to be controlled wirless.
* The goals the product might achieve were basically split up in the following three steps:
1. Retail signs featuring the e-ink technology, to prove the feasibility of the know-how.
2. Portable display devices
3. Electronic newspaper
* The company culture could be considered to be...
o Youthful
o Influenced by an enthusiastic "start-up spirit"
o Flat organisational structured
* 1999 E Ink is at the stage to implement organisational changes (recruiting, inter-divisional communication, manufacturing) to cope with the change and growth the company is facing.
Problems and Causes
Generally speaking, E Ink is at the stage of changing from a start-up company being based in a small research laboratory, to a well organised organisation having to implement production facilities, adequate and skilled managing, however still combined with the so essential free start-up spirit being so vital for their development so far.
This becomes obvious, in the fact that the company so far has not delivered any products to concrete customers, basically due lacking business focus and a high concentration on the scientific development of E Ink. The company is in the situation of having to prove its cool image and free spirit with a product that really works and generates income.
This step is considered to be essential for the future success of the company. However, this also requires structural changes, likely affecting the established youthful "start-up-spirit", accounting for many new ideas and product innovations.
A feasible application of the technology, for example as a first step in retail signs, has to implemented in a fast and successful manner, maybe being ignored for too long time by the enthusiastic and overhyped laboratory atmosphere.
Recommendations
The essential challenge E Ink is facing at the moment, is changing the corporate structure without limitating the open-minded culture and modifying the free spirit, one could actually breathe by entering their small lab.
Solutions for solving this challenge, definitely have to be taken under the circumstance to protect the free company spirit.
The production division, general management and research have to be linked closely together. This can be achieved in physically allocating the different parts of the company in one building and by keeping the flat organisational structure.
The new and vital ideas, being implemented by a number of fresh thinking university graduates, definitely have to be kept ensured in the future. This can be achieved by an ongoing cooperation and knowledge transaction with the universities surrounding the E Ink headquarters.
Concluding it has to be pointed out, that the main task the executives have to implement, is a structured company profile, which is inventively to implement a concrete project, like the retail signs for example, without losing their free and innovative corporate culture.
E Ink Team 2
=================
Charlotte Meiers
Daniela Archundia
Cecilia Icaza
Mariuxi Viteri
George Areshidze
E Ink
Facts:
Jim Iuliano, President and CEO of E Ink
E Ink was founded in 1997, the company aimed to revolutionize print communication through display technology.
E Ink is composed of tiny paint particles and dye that could be activated by an electric charge in order to display images or letters to innovate the levels of communication
They focus the company’s effort on large retail store signs for the first application of electronic ink.
Electronic ink had several advantages: easier to see at almost any angle, requires little power, once particles were in place no energy required to keep them there.
E Ink was named one of Fortune magazine’s “Cool Companies” of 1998.
The company’s goal was to make electronic ink replace all forms of paper base communication, which would be called “radio paper”
The first step on technical path was to pursue retail signage as a first market.
The most visible aspect of E Ink’s culture was its youth
The team was marked by competency, good will, and intelligence.
Another prominent feature of E Ink was the informal, flat organization structure nevertheless there was hard work
Initially the founders of E Ink hired generalists who had a variety of experiences in the field
The company needed experts in the two major components of electronic ink: display technology and ink.
The first two experienced technical hires were Paul Drzaic and Ian Morrison.
Recruited candidates were interested in E Ink for the high potential of the company and its products, the revolutionary technology, the interdisciplinary nature of their work, and the mentality of the company
The company possessed an opportunity in the market because there were no competitors at that moment
E Ink turned its ink manufacturing from hand to mechanical process.
E Ink moved from the exploratory Edisonian approach of the Media Lab to a more methodical scientific process.
As the company grew, they noticed growing pains in the culture
The three major groups at E Ink (management, manufacturing, and engineers and scientists) had been located in three different buildings
Keeping the company’s culture was one of the most important aspects of the company.
Problems:
The main problem is about strategic Decisions; the market they decided to start with was not really consistent with the company main long-term goal of targeting the radio paper. Despite the fact that this market was chosen to gain some experience and improve products technical features and quality; two years spent on producing signage products would affect organizational culture and employees’ attitude. They were now putting all their resources in the signage market, which in fact is not what they were really looking for. However, the fact of having youth and fresh people working on this inexpensive product made sense.
From this strategic decision, other problems derived;
Culture: Due the rapid growth that the Company is having during the last year, their “flexible” and “cool” environment is getting hurt, taking in account the Company has not being managed by business people.
Operational Problem: An immediately challenge that E Ink is facing is the stability and reliability of their products due to some production flaws that happened before.
Organization Problems: This flat organizational structure (creative-open) doesn’t match the new market there are coming in. They would need t to change the structure without affecting their autonomy, so they can maintain innovation and competitiveness.
Decision Making: The Company doesn’t know exactly which parts of the Company they should outsource. After upscaling the production process many decisions have to be made concerning stakeholders of the Company (customers, investors, sponsors, suppliers etc)
Rapid Growth and change: The main focus of growth was to immediately launch a stable and reliable product, to catch the window of opportunity before someone gets in to the market. Their philosophy was “We need to execute before the winds shits”. The Company was expected to increase their staff to nearly 90, three times as many people as the Company had one year earlier. Therefore, this mass of people coming in was bringing a mundane environment to E Ink. On the other hand, with growth the goal was to maintain the lowest flaw rate.
Investing and Financing: The Company had a lot of pressure of launching a product and getting sponsors and investors a rapid investment return.
Recommended Solutions
Occupy the workforce with most possible innovative and creative tasks instead of routinized and mundane activities. This will be efficient for productivity and corporate culture, which unfortunately contradicts the current strategy direction and is part of the core problems that were mentioned above.
Company should follow policies that pursuits their flat organizational structure, which implies more innovative, creative and informal environment. Decision must be decentralized and greater reliability to the youth.
E Ink must concentrate in their core activities, which has outsourcing implications as well.
=================
Charlotte Meiers Tech & Prod Mgmt
Daniela Archundia March 4, 2005
Cecilia Icaza
Mariuxi Viteri
George Areshidze
E Ink
Facts:
Jim Iuliano, President and CEO of E Ink
E Ink was founded in 1997, the company aimed to revolutionize print communication through display technology.
E Ink is composed of tiny paint particles and dye that could be activated by an electric charge in order to display images or letters to innovate the levels of communication
They focus the company’s effort on large retail store signs for the first application of electronic ink.
Electronic ink had several advantages: easier to see at almost any angle, requires little power, once particles were in place no energy required to keep them there.
E Ink was named one of Fortune magazine’s “Cool Companies” of 1998.
The company’s goal was to make electronic ink replace all forms of paper base communication, which would be called “radio paper”
The first step on technical path was to pursue retail signage as a first market.
The most visible aspect of E Ink’s culture was its youth
The team was marked by competency, good will, and intelligence.
Another prominent feature of E Ink was the informal, flat organization structure nevertheless there was hard work
Initially the founders of E Ink hired generalists who had a variety of experiences in the field
The company needed experts in the two major components of electronic ink: display technology and ink.
The first two experienced technical hires were Paul Drzaic and Ian Morrison.
Recruited candidates were interested in E Ink for the high potential of the company and its products, the revolutionary technology, the interdisciplinary nature of their work, and the mentality of the company
The company possessed an opportunity in the market because there were no competitors at that moment
E Ink turned its ink manufacturing from hand to mechanical process.
E Ink moved from the exploratory Edisonian approach of the Media Lab to a more methodical scientific process.
As the company grew, they noticed growing pains in the culture
The three major groups at E Ink (management, manufacturing, and engineers and scientists) had been located in three different buildings
Keeping the company’s culture was one of the most important aspects of the company.
Problems:
The main problem is about strategic Decisions; the market they decided to start with was not really consistent with the company main long-term goal of targeting the radio paper. Despite the fact that this market was chosen to gain some experience and improve products technical features and quality; two years spent on producing signage products would affect organizational culture and employees’ attitude. They were now putting all their resources in the signage market, which in fact is not what they were really looking for. However, the fact of having youth and fresh people working on this inexpensive product made sense.
From this strategic decision, other problems derived;
Culture: Due the rapid growth that the Company is having during the last year, their “flexible” and “cool” environment is getting hurt, taking in account the Company has not being managed by business people.
Operational Problem: An immediately challenge that E Ink is facing is the stability and reliability of their products due to some production flaws that happened before.
Organization Problems: This flat organizational structure (creative-open) doesn’t match the new market there are coming in. They would need t to change the structure without affecting their autonomy, so they can maintain innovation and competitiveness.
Decision Making: The Company doesn’t know exactly which parts of the Company they should outsource. After upscaling the production process many decisions have to be made concerning stakeholders of the Company (customers, investors, sponsors, suppliers etc)
Rapid Growth and change: The main focus of growth was to immediately launch a stable and reliable product, to catch the window of opportunity before someone gets in to the market. Their philosophy was “We need to execute before the winds shits”. The Company was expected to increase their staff to nearly 90, three times as many people as the Company had one year earlier. Therefore, this mass of people coming in was bringing a mundane environment to E Ink. On the other hand, with growth the goal was to maintain the lowest flaw rate.
Investing and Financing: The Company had a lot of pressure of launching a product and getting sponsors and investors a rapid investment return.
Recommended Solutions
Occupy the workforce with most possible innovative and creative tasks instead of routinized and mundane activities. This will be efficient for productivity and corporate culture, which unfortunately contradicts the current strategy direction and is part of the core problems that were mentioned above.
Company should follow policies that pursuits their flat organizational structure, which implies more innovative, creative and informal environment. Decision must be decentralized and greater reliability to the youth.
E Ink must concentrate in their core activities, which has outsourcing implications as well.
Daniela Archundia March 4, 2005
Cecilia Icaza
Mariuxi Viteri
George Areshidze
E Ink
Facts:
Jim Iuliano, President and CEO of E Ink
E Ink was founded in 1997, the company aimed to revolutionize print communication through display technology.
E Ink is composed of tiny paint particles and dye that could be activated by an electric charge in order to display images or letters to innovate the levels of communication
They focus the company’s effort on large retail store signs for the first application of electronic ink.
Electronic ink had several advantages: easier to see at almost any angle, requires little power, once particles were in place no energy required to keep them there.
E Ink was named one of Fortune magazine’s “Cool Companies” of 1998.
The company’s goal was to make electronic ink replace all forms of paper base communication, which would be called “radio paper”
The first step on technical path was to pursue retail signage as a first market.
The most visible aspect of E Ink’s culture was its youth
The team was marked by competency, good will, and intelligence.
Another prominent feature of E Ink was the informal, flat organization structure nevertheless there was hard work
Initially the founders of E Ink hired generalists who had a variety of experiences in the field
The company needed experts in the two major components of electronic ink: display technology and ink.
The first two experienced technical hires were Paul Drzaic and Ian Morrison.
Recruited candidates were interested in E Ink for the high potential of the company and its products, the revolutionary technology, the interdisciplinary nature of their work, and the mentality of the company
The company possessed an opportunity in the market because there were no competitors at that moment
E Ink turned its ink manufacturing from hand to mechanical process.
E Ink moved from the exploratory Edisonian approach of the Media Lab to a more methodical scientific process.
As the company grew, they noticed growing pains in the culture
The three major groups at E Ink (management, manufacturing, and engineers and scientists) had been located in three different buildings
Keeping the company’s culture was one of the most important aspects of the company.
Problems:
The main problem is about strategic Decisions; the market they decided to start with was not really consistent with the company main long-term goal of targeting the radio paper. Despite the fact that this market was chosen to gain some experience and improve products technical features and quality; two years spent on producing signage products would affect organizational culture and employees’ attitude. They were now putting all their resources in the signage market, which in fact is not what they were really looking for. However, the fact of having youth and fresh people working on this inexpensive product made sense.
From this strategic decision, other problems derived;
Culture: Due the rapid growth that the Company is having during the last year, their “flexible” and “cool” environment is getting hurt, taking in account the Company has not being managed by business people.
Operational Problem: An immediately challenge that E Ink is facing is the stability and reliability of their products due to some production flaws that happened before.
Organization Problems: This flat organizational structure (creative-open) doesn’t match the new market there are coming in. They would need t to change the structure without affecting their autonomy, so they can maintain innovation and competitiveness.
Decision Making: The Company doesn’t know exactly which parts of the Company they should outsource. After upscaling the production process many decisions have to be made concerning stakeholders of the Company (customers, investors, sponsors, suppliers etc)
Rapid Growth and change: The main focus of growth was to immediately launch a stable and reliable product, to catch the window of opportunity before someone gets in to the market. Their philosophy was “We need to execute before the winds shits”. The Company was expected to increase their staff to nearly 90, three times as many people as the Company had one year earlier. Therefore, this mass of people coming in was bringing a mundane environment to E Ink. On the other hand, with growth the goal was to maintain the lowest flaw rate.
Investing and Financing: The Company had a lot of pressure of launching a product and getting sponsors and investors a rapid investment return.
Recommended Solutions
Occupy the workforce with most possible innovative and creative tasks instead of routinized and mundane activities. This will be efficient for productivity and corporate culture, which unfortunately contradicts the current strategy direction and is part of the core problems that were mentioned above.
Company should follow policies that pursuits their flat organizational structure, which implies more innovative, creative and informal environment. Decision must be decentralized and greater reliability to the youth.
E Ink must concentrate in their core activities, which has outsourcing implications as well.
=================
At 1:01 PM, MoMo said...
Facts
* Founded in 1997 by Joe Jacobsen
* Product
o New kind of ink based on dye and tiny paint particles settled within microcapsules which can be loaded electronically
o Further possibilities in the future, might even lead to electronic paper, being able to be controlled wirless.
* The goals the product might achieve were basically split up in the following three steps:
1. Retail signs featuring the e-ink technology, to prove the feasibility of the know-how.
2. Portable display devices
3. Electronic newspaper
* The company culture could be considered to be...
o Youthful
o Influenced by an enthusiastic "start-up spirit"
o Flat organisational structured
* 1999 E Ink is at the stage to implement organisational changes (recruiting, inter-divisional communication, manufacturing) to cope with the change and growth the company is facing.
Problems and Causes
Generally speaking, E Ink is at the stage of changing from a start-up company being based in a small research laboratory, to a well organised organisation having to implement production facilities, adequate and skilled managing, however still combined with the so essential free start-up spirit being so vital for their development so far.
This becomes obvious, in the fact that the company so far has not delivered any products to concrete customers, basically due lacking business focus and a high concentration on the scientific development of E Ink. The company is in the situation of having to prove its cool image and free spirit with a product that really works and generates income.
This step is considered to be essential for the future success of the company. However, this also requires structural changes, likely affecting the established youthful "start-up-spirit", accounting for many new ideas and product innovations.
A feasible application of the technology, for example as a first step in retail signs, has to implemented in a fast and successful manner, maybe being ignored for too long time by the enthusiastic and overhyped laboratory atmosphere.
Recommendations
The essential challenge E Ink is facing at the moment, is changing the corporate structure without limitating the open-minded culture and modifying the free spirit, one could actually breathe by entering their small lab.
Solutions for solving this challenge, definitely have to be taken under the circumstance to protect the free company spirit.
The production division, general management and research have to be linked closely together. This can be achieved in physically allocating the different parts of the company in one building and by keeping the flat organisational structure.
The new and vital ideas, being implemented by a number of fresh thinking university graduates, definitely have to be kept ensured in the future. This can be achieved by an ongoing cooperation and knowledge transaction with the universities surrounding the E Ink headquarters.
Concluding it has to be pointed out, that the main task the executives have to implement, is a structured company profile, which is inventively to implement a concrete project, like the retail signs for example, without losing their free and innovative corporate culture.
E Ink Team 2
REVIEW AND GRADES
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