Management Serendipity
Part1
Serendipity is the accidental discovery of an invention. It is the art of inventing something when one is not looking for it. Serendipity is a real concept in our lives as depicted by the article. The article records that about 50% of patents resulting from new inventions came to be in a serendipitous processes. Martin Chalfie for instance, accidentally invented the green fluorescent protein that won him a Nobel Prize. Serendipity is not a learnable skill. It is something that happens when we least expect it or when and experiment has gone wrong. Serendipity does not have a 20 or 10 step process that guides the art. Steve Hollinger for instance, when he invented the throw-able camera he was only playing with his camera and as it fell down it took a picture and from there he developed the idea.
Google’s attempt to grant employees some 20% time off their working hours was serendipitous in nature. The company wanted to bring the act and benefits of happy accidents home. Out of this set portion of time, Gmail and AdSense inventions were made. Today, google has lost that culture. Google has managed to shut down the 20% time effectively without actually ending the program. Engineers at Google have to acquire approval to be able to take part in something that was initially a free pass. Upper management in the company has strongly been discouraging managers from approving any 20% projects and has been judging the managers on the basis of the productivity of their teams. For this reason therefore, the managers cannot allow any wastage of time by their teams.
For Alphabet to be able to foster creativity and technological innovation it must enforce a fluid culture. A culture whereby the employees are encouraged to be part of diverse projects, or in some cases be encouraged to create new projects of their own. Alphabet should hire or be in possession of a sprawling human resource department. Alphabet should also concentrate more on its more speculative divisions and separate from non-core function of the old Google.
Part 2
Adobe exists in a highly technological and competitive market, a market whose competitors are the giants in information technology. For adobe therefore to be dominant in the market, it has to continually be innovative and be the first to adapt to market changes.Over the past years since its inception the company has been earning revenues from its PostScript. Constant upgrade of the Postscript and the invention of new products will go a long way in ensuring its market dominance. For example, the company has been named the leader in enterprise marketing software suites. Its marketing cloud offers marketers integrated solutions to marketing problems by enabling them to use large data to reach and engage customers effectively across devices and digital touch points.
I would advise adobe to not discriminate against the target market it serves. By doing this it would open the market to its competitors. What the company should do, is to segment its market to accommodate the different customer targets including e-Book consumer market, Professional, and Technical users. However, I would allocate more resources in e-Book consumer market. The world is simultaneously moving towards being digitalized. The future of businesses is information technology and companies and institutions including learning institutions and churches are using IT now more than ever. Digitalization means that the web will be the largest market in the future. Adobe therefore should lay out a foundation to be able to share in this market.
The revenue model for e-Book technology would include sales revenue whereby the company will get revenue from selling its products online, advertising revenue which involves the revenue from advertising made by other firms in adobe’s e-Book sites. The technology can also generate revenues through subscription fees from those users who are in need of more customized and personalized services. The problem with this model would majorly be the traditional and conservative users of adobe products. There are those professional and technical users who would prefer not going digital with adobe’s product, meaning that the company has to evaluate its options to deal with such a setback.
Works Cited
“Adobe Named A Leader In Enterprise Marketing Software Suites By Independent Research Firm”. Adobe Newsroom. n.p., 2016. Web. 9 July 2016.
Dougherty, Conor. “Alphabet Trying to Mix Heft with Start-Up Agility”. Bits Blog. N.p., 2016. Web. 9 July 2016.
Kennedy, Pagan. “How to Cultivate the Art of Serendipity”. Nytimes.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 9 July 2016.