Blackberry:  A Failure to Innovate & Accept a Shift to New Technologies

During my Master of Business Administration (MBA) program, one of our capstone classes involved participating in an online program-wide, ten-week business simulation.  This simulation involved simulating many facets of running a technology business and making strategic decisions based on competing priorities and available cash flow.  Going into the last week of the class, a classmate and I were neck-and-neck to win the simulation and the program’s bragging rights.  I lost to this classmate in the last week due to a decision made in week four due to a capital allocation decision to invest in plant production capacity to capture current market share rather than investing in new technology development.  It’s a lesson I learned the hard way in graduate school, and some companies have learned through business failures.

 There are many examples of businesses that have failed to adapt to new and changing technologies.  One example of a company that failed to adapt to new technologies is the former cell phone manufacturer, Blackberry (Mol, 2020; Seth, 2020).  At one time, Blackberry was a darling of Wall Street as it held the largest market share of the U.S. smartphone market at 37.3%, with more than 41 million subscribers (Seth, 2020).  Like my business simulation in graduate school, Blackberry’s leaders ignored market trends and failed to invest in new and changing technologies, specifically touch screen technologies and apps (Mol, 2020; Seth, 2020).  As a result, Blackberry was caught behind the new technology curve, lost market share to Apple and Android, and was ultimately unable to recover (Mol, 2020; Seth, 2020).  Failures such as this are important and relevant, reminders that failures to innovate despite changing technological forces, even in seemingly stagnant industries, can lead to an organization’s demise.

The innovative idea of utilizing nano-robots to perform surgical repairs for significant injuries such as tri-mal fractures will be affected by numerous forces.  These include such technological forces as several market entrants, changing software, and artificial intelligence approaches.  These forces will also have legal forces such as the required animal and human testing and, ultimately, FDA approvals.  Rapid changes or movements in these forces can quickly impact the feasibility of this type of innovation.

References

Mol, S. (2020). 6 Major companies that failed to innovate in time. Ground Control. Retrieved 10/8/2022 from https://togroundcontrol.com/blog/6-major-companies-that-failed-to-innovate-in-time/

 

Seth, S. (2020). Blackberry:  A story of constant success and failure. Investopedia. Retrieved 10/8/2022 from https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/062315/blackberry-story-constant-success-failure.asp