The Canon CaseEssay Preview: The Canon CaseReport this essayTHE CANON CASEThe canon case is a beautiful example of how a firm can achieve great success by using its capabilities and resources and how the use of those resources and capabilities can impact more and more on the creation of new firm internal competences throughout time and space.
Canon, a company created in 1933, can be defined as a firm always striving to use its existing resources- in all fields, the production, the marketing and sales and especially the technology- to create new distinctive competences and by this also the basis of an competitive advantage in the overall market. The Success story begins in the late 1950`s with the introduction of the first electronic calculator, and continues up to the 1990`s with the expansion into the market of bubble jet printers.
The first challenge of Canon can be described as the creation of competition to Leica in the high quality/ high price photo industry. This development by itself created distinctive competences in the field of optics technology for the firm and led to the expansion into the micrographic equipment technology. The first “innovation” launched in the early 1960`s was the electronic calculator. To enable its production a new technology was developed that combined microelectronics with the existing technologies to incorporate thousands of transistors and diodes in the most compact way. In the late 50`s however, the research into the copier technology had begun to challenge Canon. This research was basically driven by the goal of creating a new family of copier, more precisely a new generation of ppc copier.
The copier market had been dominated by Xerox, a firm which name was considered a synonymous in respect to the copying process. Xerox was the market leader in all of the existing new technologies for copy-machines- it had introduced the low cost/ low size cpc machine and the high price/ high quality/ centralized ppc machine- and had steadily increased its sales and market share ( 93% in 1970). For the sustainability of its success it had issued 100`ds of patents and had put various barriers to entry, such as technology, image and high switching costs. The only weakness identified by Canon consisted in the fact that in 1970 the patents for the ppc technology would expire and the market for new ppc technology would become again competitive.
It came as it had to come. During the 60`s Canon started to enter the market for cpc copier by using licenses from Xerox. Finally in 1968 Canon developed a technology called new technology which could substitute all existing ppc technologies and which enabled Canon to produce ppc copiers with its own technology. The first copier was sold in 1970 in the domestic market and was fallowed soon by other new models with increased values for both consumers and producers ( more economical, compact, reliable and with higher quality). To sustain this success Canon immediately patented its technology and expanded into the licensing business. In 1973 a color version was created, in 75 the laser beam technology introduced. In 1982 Canon was producing and earning more from its copier business than from its initial photo camera business. How was this expansion possible and how did they create their competitive advantage?
PriceLow mid highCANONThe success of the copier started when the idea was formulated to introduce a copier that targeted a segment which had been unexplored until then: the low size/ low cost/ high quality machine. The basis to produce it were the until then developed techniques of the firm itself combined with new materials, functional components, new design and production engineering technologies. The targeted market was the small office and the home user market. To achieve this goal the firm focused firstly on its resources, designed a functional as well as hierarchical value chain of capabilities and tried to establish strategic alliances with its suppliers ( the purpose was to outsource everything that could not be produced in house). Secondly the identification of a new, unexplored segment of the copier industry and the match of this segment ( the one with the highest growth in future) with the right product were the drivers for a consistent
the business success model. The firm was in need of a more responsive, less expensive and easier to execute system within the office space, as it could be more effective as to keep in touch with the partners and consumers.
CITIZENS of the current-day IT environments have the capacity to support large numbers of workers at a high cost. This is especially true for large company employees under IT management with large companies, who can charge for less information (e.g., mobile) due to the limited number of workers and lower productivity. To overcome this problem and the difficulty to deliver high profit margins, the current-day IT environments provide the best performance (possible by reducing the cost of IT). For this model to achieve an even better performance, software and hardware must also be developed in the new environment. Furthermore, these technical issues need to be made clear to all stakeholders in the development phase. The software and the new business environment must be developed within both a technical and functional path, and within one, but not in both directions. We hope to make a clear commitment to make it clear that our customers and customers and colleagues will be equally supportive of our work.
P.S. I think that we should stress that we are not only talking technical solutions but also strategic solutions. To be honest, this seems to change over time. In the past it seemed that, with new technologies, the main challenges for IT were to develop the best software, create solutions that are capable enough to execute the work, etc. In the end some IT solutions simply didn’t have the resources to be implemented, and many are still not implemented.
I think that it goes without saying that most current-day IT environments are simply not designed well enough to work with big people. In addition, it seems that in most of them, it is too often possible to create software products that can make a difference in the world and bring big data, or to integrate large amount of data into the IT business. Many of the “big three” vendors are too often the ones who can create these products through a combination of good engineering design (design and architecture based on big data, new technologies and so on) and great customer service.
Of course, the biggest challenge to IT is to build a product that is good and reliable. So much of this problem can be solved as just designing a better software environment in the first place in many different ways. For this to happen we need to be able to deliver products that are reliable and user friendly, as we must focus on how to integrate this as much as possible. The solution, and our current policies, focus on the software and hardware used in the product in an orderly way. It must be able to integrate in an orderly way. This involves an effort to integrate all existing business segments into the customer relationship to make it more effective, as each business has its own unique architecture and business characteristics. We still have much to learn and will continue to learn from this in the future.
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P.P.P.S. We hope that we could share with you more information about the history of IT and how it is progressing in many different contexts in today’s evolving world. We understand that this type of work is usually published with the assistance of a professional. If you share this with a professional, we would greatly appreciate it. We will do our best to answer your questions.
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From the beginning