Product and Evolutionary & Revolutionary Innovations Essay

Product and Evolutionary & Revolutionary Innovations - Essay Example They defined market orientation as the mix of customer orientation & competitor orientation. However Slater and Narver (1998. pp1000-1005) argued that customer orientation and market orientation should not be mixed. Customer orientation often results in short term myopic innovations whereby it is assumed that customers know very well what they want and hence following their wish list will automatically result in improved competitive advantages of the organizations. They further argued that customers grossly lack foresight of what they need and hence the organization will end up getting defocused from what they need and hence their products sell till the time the customers change their choices by realizing that this was not they needed. Market orientation appears similar to customer orientation but there is a fundamental difference - market orientation is focused on customer needs and not their desires. Market orientation needs serious inter-functional orientation because the market s tudy needs to be translated into long term goals and corresponding product innovations. An organization can get the best out of market orientation when they have sufficient skills to develop products that are not easy for competitors to imitate thus achieving an overall enhancements in competitive advantages. Olson & Walker et al. (1995. pp. ... on for new product innovations with help of market orientation - Bureaucratic Control, Individual Liaisons, Temporary Task Forces, Integrating Managers, Matrix Structures, Design Teams and Design Centers. On the other hand, innovations for customer orientation may not require such in-depth inter-functional coordination. Hence, the author concludes that both market orientation and inter-functional orientation of an organization are important and their effective integration results in newness of the products. "Evolutionary" and "Revolutionary" innovations Veryzer (1998. pp. 304-321) defined two fundamental types of innovations - evolutionary or continuous innovations and revolutionary or discontinuous innovations. The evolutionary innovations are targeted to evolve incremental innovations of the existing products thus allowing them to continue with improved features. The revolutionary innovations are radical in nature that takes the world by surprise through some kind of breakthrough that forces the corresponding existing products to obsolescence. The author observed that the definitions of the two types of innovations explained by the researchers are from the perspective of the innovators that are carrying out technological changes in the existing products. But these two aspects should also be seen from the perspective of end users as well. From an end user perspective, something is radical only when it completely changes the way they have been seeing the product. The author hereby presents an example of VCR versus CD/DVD players. Fr om the perspective of the innovators, both are completely different technologies and hence CD/DVD players are revolutionary innovations. But the end users may argue that their primary objective was to see video on their television sets

Plato's Republic and His Theories About Philosopher Rulers Essay

Plato's Republic and His Theories About Philosopher Rulers - Essay Example In this book, Plato claims that the best way to avoid abuses of power, and thereby avoid some of the worst problems of political life, is to concentrate power in the hands of the wise - philosopher-rulers. There are several reasons that make Plato think that concentrating power in the hands of philosopher-rulers will eliminate abuse of power. In this book, Plato ignores the power of justice and makes philosophy the subject of inquiry. He thinks that the power of a state should be concentrated on philosopher-rulers because of the nature of philosophers. He mentions the gifts of a true philosopher as courage, good memory and quickness. Such people have natural reasonableness or inherent goodness which other people can use to get good things even as they grow old (IDPH 354). According to Plato, the minds of philosophers always love the type of knowledge that reveals to them the external nature that does not differ from corruption and generation (IDPH344). This means philosopher-rulers a re in a position to make a quick detection of corrupt deals and corrupt individuals. Plato further explains that philosophers are lovers of all true being and therefore truthfulness is part of them. They are not willing to renounce others whether they are great or small, more honorable or less honorable. This means that philosopher-rulers stand for the truth in everything. This includes those issues that benefit them personally and those that may not benefit them directly or at all. This also includes truth in the smallest matters which many rulers tend to cover up. Even though such actions may not affect the citizens directly, the truth remains that it is abuse of power. They are therefore more likely to demand for openness and transparency in all actions that affect the larger population just to ensure that the highest levels of truth are maintained. Plato explains that because of their truthfulness, philosopher-rulers detest falsehood and will never receive in their mind falsehoo d intentionally. He goes further to describe truthfulness as the object of affection of philosophers. This is seen where he argues that truthfulness must be affirmed by philosophers. He says of them, â€Å"must be affirmed: for he whose nature is amorous of anything cannot help loving all that belongs or is akin to the object of his affections† (IDPH 344). To make it more convincing, Plato argues that there is nothing that is akin to wisdom as truth. His fellow philosopher Glaucon confirms the same as he states that someone cannot be a lover of wisdom and at the same time, a lover of falsehood. This is to say, wise people are lovers of truth and therefore, they are never lovers of falsehood. These are evident in philosopher-rulers. They would be the best watchdogs, condemners and stoppers of actions that that find their roots in falsehood like corruption and related actions like stealing. Plato ascribes the quality of being ambitious and loving ambitions to philosophers. Havi ng rulers who love ambition can mean nothing better than elimination of every action and person who kills fruits of ambition in the national. Generally, philosopher-rulers have zero tolerance to self-centered leaders who are after heaping part of the national resources for themselves. according to Plato, philosophers are lovers of learning. Plato explains that a true lover of learning must desire the truth right from their earliest youth (IDPH