Future Innovations

Organizations might have a good plan, but other things might go wrong

Organizations might have a good plan, but other things might go wrong due to uncontrollable variables. Wade (2012) describe some of these variables as political, economic, societal and technological forces that will have a negative impact on business despite having a good plan. I will discuss three organizations that had a good plan but failed because something went wrong because of things out of their control.

Blockbuster was a video-rental business. The business was doing fine when video films were delivered in a form in VHS and DVD. The video delivery changed from VHS and DVD to online delivery but Blockbuster a good plan but fail to adapt to the new change (Davila, Epstein, 2014). Due to technological innovation, video films were was stream through personal computers, smartphones, smart TVs Blockbuster retail outlet is struggling, and hundreds of the firm's store are closing down. Companies such as Netflix, Redbox are taken over the video market from Blockbuster. Netflix now offers videos cable televisions, phone companies, and video-on-demand while Redbox is now renting videos overnight through vending machines of a Dollar (Davila, Epstein, 2014).

Sun Microsystems was building high-end servers and developing Java programming language and became an industry giant in information Technology in 1990. However, due to the dot.com bust, Sun Microsystems lost many of its customers. Personal computers become powerful and cheaper; server are now available in the form of vertical machine and cloud computing is providing servers as infrastructure as a service, and fewer people will buy expensive servers. Sun Microsystems could not survive and was sold to Oracle.

               Another company that failed due to uncontrollable variables is Nokia.  Nokia was very successful and had been a market leader in the cell phone market (Davila, Epstein, 2014). The company produces good durable cell phones with good sound and camera functions. When smartphones with touched screen technology became available, Nokia still stayed with their plan of building durable cell phones.  The smartphone technology became mobile phone technology of choice, and Nokia lost its market.

The factor affecting good plans very relevant to consider because they the can influence the success of business. From the above example, the societal and technological forces affect the organizations such as Nokia, Sun Microsystems, and Blockbuster. Despite management having good business and strategic plan other unforeseen circumstances can impact the business negatively.  Therefore business plan alone cannot guarantee success, but it is very important to have a plan. According to Fairley (2009, a bad plan is better than no plan at all and failure to plan means preparing to fail.

Societal and technological forces

Societal and technological forces can innovation idea. A few years ago the idea of robot cars driving themselves, digital currencies and internet of things and thing which was not possible are possible now. The world is experiencing a faster pace of social, economic and technological change that no longer seems impossible It is forecast that by 2020 over 5 billion people will use the internet and about 80 billion of devices and machines will be connected together to share information. The internet of things will grow exponentially and will affect business positively and negatively. The combination of cloud computing technology and internet of things there will be a new range of technology-enabled services like as smart lighting, mobile working solutions, and smart device that will shape the lives of our society.

References: 

Davila, T., & Epstein, M. (2014). The innovation paradox: Why good businesses kill

breakthroughs and how they can change. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Fairley, R. E. (2009). Managing and Leading Software Projects. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Wade, W. (2012). Scenario planning: a field guide to the future. John Wiley & Sons.