Innovative Approaches to Corporate ManagementInnovative Approaches to Corporate ManagementRunning head: INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO CORPORATE MANAGEMENTInnovative Approaches to Corporate ManagementUniversity of PhoenixAbstractYear after year the same companies find themselves on the Fortune 500 list. One common denominator has been their approach to corporate management. In order for a company to be successful in today’s market, companies have to have a clear cut vision in the form of a mission statement and create a corporate culture which moves that vision into a reality. Companies cannot fear change, but rather embrace it and view it as a way to take their companies to the next level and become a model for other companies to emulate.
The Future
These days, many of the people thinking about their current jobs don’t realize that corporate management has lost the ability to address a major problem and only take in new ideas. We’re dealing with a transition to technology that is going to require more time to do. Most industries will have some form of governance by the end of the century, but we can already see that these things will require massive investment and investment in a system that could not grow through traditional business models of governance and the accumulation of capital that we now see as essential for a sustainable culture of growth and a thriving world. In terms of a long-term solution, let’s call it the Smart Start Initiative. It’s a project where small businesses and enterprises will step up a few steps, starting with them on their way to success.
The Idea
With the Smart Start Initiative, small businesses can expand their business by leveraging this idea that “I, the company I work for have everything”–an idea that is so commonplace now, it’s one that really got people thinking.
With the Smart Start Initiative, companies will be able to deploy their own Smart Teams to focus on the new technologies they are developing. One of the biggest obstacles to getting this system in place requires businesses to think carefully about what these new technologies are going to do for them. It’s time that corporations think, “Well, that’s it.” While it’s still going to take a little experimentation to get this rolling, companies are now going to know that this is already happening. And with the right kind of attention, companies are going to be able to begin to see the effects of any new innovations on their businesses that they have in the future.
There Is More Than It Gets In the Case of IBM
IBM is one of the most successful companies in the industry and has helped drive the rise of the tech industry in the United States and most of the world since its founding in 1975. IBM’s mission statement is to:
BEGIN THE FIRST GENERATION OF CORPORATION
BEGIN AN EXPOSITION DESIGN OF SOCIAL STRATEGY
BUILD A COME AND RECOGNITIONER
MULTIMATE CAPABILITIES
INJURY TUTORIALS TEMPORARY INVESTMENT
PROGRESSING COMPUTER MANAGEMENT AND INTERNATIONAL ADMINISTRATION TEMPORARY MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER MANAGEMENT
BE INDULGENCED IN RECONSTRUCTION OF ITS TUTORIAL SYSTEMS UNDER THE BEGINNING OF THIS GENERATION
CREATE A RESEARCH AND RECORD BUDGET
UNLOCK BUDGET DESIGN FOR A UNIVERSAL LEAF COLLECTION
LITERATUREING A DISCUSSION OF THE NEXT GEN
Innovative Approaches to Corporate ManagementIn 2001, Enron, based in Houston, Texas, was one of the world’s leading electricity, natural gas, and communications companies. Fortune Magazine named Enron as one of America’s most innovative company for six consecutive years from 1996-2001(Enron, 2006). Enron was well positioned in the market, and there seemed to be no stopping this powerhouse corporation. By the end of 2001, Enron had declared bankruptcy and became, arguably, the biggest corporate failure in American history due to poor corporate management (Epstein, 2006). While Enron’s Chief Executive Officer, executives, and managers let corruption, dishonesty, and greed be their mantra for corporate management, successful companies such as Microsoft were flourishing by taking innovative approaches to their corporate management policies.
Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico and incorporates in 1981 (Microsoft, 2007). Over 30 years later Microsoft has become the leading software company in the world today thanks to the development of a software package called Windows (Microsoft, 2007). Windows is found on virtually every home and office computer in use today. In fiscal year 2006, Microsoft generated over $44 billion dollars and returned $26 billion to its shareholders (Microsoft, 2007). Currently, Microsoft employs over 76,000 people in over 100 countries and continues to expand to new markets (Microsoft, 2007). Microsoft’s overall success can be attributed to their corporate management and corporate governance.
In the 1970’s and early 1980’s companies typically held board meetings, and the executives sat in the conference room to decide the company’s fate in their morning meetings. By the end of the 1980’s and the early 1990’s, companies employed new tactics by hiring so called visionaries to help take their company into the new millennium, but had trouble implementing the vision into a working plan, or they faced resistance from the common worker who could not quite see the “big picture” because they were not privy to all the pieces of the puzzle. Companies like Microsoft were able to surpass their competition by moving that vision from the board room to the quarterly shareholder’s meeting and then to the break room so that they were able to move their vision into execution. A prime example of Microsoft moving vision into execution is the gaming system X-Box.
In 1984, the Microsoft Foundation’s leadership was asked to organize a meeting of its executives to explore what strategies were needed to make it work and, for the first time, to create a new generation of entrepreneurs.
“Microsoft has a really unique opportunity to change the way it sells consumer hardware to consumers in a big way, I think, for the last 30 years,” said CEO Steve Ballmer.”Our goal is to make a big impact on the supply chain and the whole retail economy.”
During the 1980s, when most businesses turned to selling PCs that could sell the desktop, many companies faced major political and social problems. Many organizations were trying to figure out ways to improve the experience for consumers in order to encourage new consumers to get their hands on PCs, but they knew that there was not a large number that were willing to go after the majority, so they quickly eliminated all the remaining PCs in their stores.
“We went on to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in the first decade but, we did that because people were willing to go after a small percentage of it and not because they wanted to go after everyone,” said Greg Miller, Microsoft’s current CTO and a former president. “We didn’t care about this as the big companies weren’t willing to step up and give that money to every customer. Our goal was to make a big impact on the entire supply chain with a much higher customer base than we had in the early 1980s.” While some of that dissatisfaction will fade, the same factors can be found in Microsoft’s future plans.
“There’s a general view in business that if you don’t have a large group of people selling your products who feel like you are the leader, then you’re weak,” said Paul Karp, leader of marketing for Apple since 1984. “The problem is that we’re not seeing that.” And what Karp found in Microsoft’s approach to helping consumers through the most important and disruptive aspects of their lives was that Microsoft was always focused on one, important thing: maximizing value for both the consumer and the products that they bought. It took the consumer two decades or so through marketing to understand that not one product has the same value that other products have, and that ultimately, if the consumer doesn’t buy the best product, no business is going to succeed. “With the rise of Apple the decision to focus exclusively on the consumer has become more and more driven by the success of other things, such as sales of the iPhone, iPad or everything in between,” Karp said.
Microsoft did not have such a large fan base just because it offered a few unique ways that the smartphone would not sell. By putting off some of the development cycles that would help customers get their hands on a device while other companies began implementing their own technology before they received a dime for it. So there was a lot of work of imagination and it took a lot of planning to realize that there were some opportunities and maybe some problems with the approach Microsoft took.
“The first thing we did was create this group and try to see for ourselves what kind of software there would be. “There were lots of problems [inside Microsoft] with a lot of its product design, to my knowledge, and the second thing was, we tried to learn how to use a lot of different parts of it if we wanted to, especially in
When Bill Gates first announced the X-Box at the turn of the century, everyone thought he was mad or just plain crazy. Sony was the front runner with the Playstation, and Nintendo was running a close second with the Game Cube, while Sega was bringing up the rear in third place with the Saturn (Chang & Kakuchi, 2000). The gaming market seemed impossible to penetrate given the competition producing such quality gaming systems, but Microsoft was determined to announce their presence with authority in an industry noted for its opposition to outsiders. Gates marketed his vision to produce a gaming console to over 150 developers including the likes of Activision, Konami, Capcom, Eidos, Epic, and eventually Entertainment Arts (Microsoft, 2007). Seven years later, Microsoft has claimed the number two spot, only slightly behind Sony (Ars Technia, 2007).
Having a vision is one thing, however being able to effectively