We haven't gotten to the formal "How to Manage like a Big Company" course in the program yet, but we've analyzed plenty of case studies that highlight how to quickly identify that a company is in protection mode and no longer intends to add value to their market or for their customers.
Here's a perfect example from the PC / Netbook market, which we analyzed back in ITMgmt last semester. The model for unnovation goes something like this:
- New competitor comes out with a new product/concept/service, which initially seems radical or crazy (to your way of thinking).
- Big company immediately dismisses the product in public forums.
- Big company talks about how that model is bad for everyone in the industry. Essentially creating a negative-sum game.
- Big company internally creates a taskforce of people to explore if they could do it. They usually take existing people from their semi-competitive product line to evaluate it, biasing the results from Day 1.
- Internal taskforce can't figure out how to make something better, since they are using the new product as a template (to copy).
- Internal taskforce decides that it would be better to dumb down an existing product and claim market-share in the existing market.
- Company publicly announces that the new market is viable, and one of their growth areas.
- VP from a previously failing group gets internally promoted to SVP/GM of the "new" division, because he has experience in new markets. This is sort of like when losing head coaches get recycled in the NFL or NBA.
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