THE CREATIVITY PORTFOLIO

Case Analysis

The Coca-Cola Company

The Coca-Cola Company is a beverage retailer, manufacturer and marketer of non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups. It’s widely recognized and best known for its main flagship product Coca-Cola which was invented by pharmacist John Stith Pemberton in 1886.

Paradigm shifts:

A proliferation of management paradigms is occurring, defining paradigms as a means of understanding the world and a basis for informing action, thus a paradigm is a systematic set of ideas and values, methods and problem fields, as well as standard solutions, that explain the world and inform action.(According to Thomas Clarke and Stewart Cleggare).

Understanding the Paradigm Shift of the Coca-Cola Company:

The New Face of Bias in the Workplace: – It is unthinkable that a global company like Coke could be guilty of discrimination against its minority employees, however, a new paradigm exists for discrimination and bias in the workplace.  As demonstrated by Joel Author Barker, in his 1989 video (The Business of Paradigms), “When a paradigm shifts, everyone goes back to zero. It doesn’t matter how big your market share is or how strong your reputation, or how good you are at the old paradigm.  With the new one, you go back to zero. Along the way the company has learned valuable lessons about bias in the workplace and has proved to be an even better place to work for all employees.

Article summaries

The Summary of “Developing countries are competing on creativity as well as cost. That will change business everywhere”

 “Developing countries are competing on creativity as well as cost. That will change business everywhere” the Economist. Apr 15th 2010

This article that appeared in the Economist early last year depicts of a paradigm shift from a world market dictated by the western more developed countries to a world economy chiefly dependent on the emerging markets to propel growth. It explains how the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and now South Africa) have exploited the concepts of “lean manufacturing”, cheap skilled labour, breakthrough technology and innovation to produce low cost products that were once a prerogative of the developed world for their people.

The article begins by an annotation that almost three decades ago a major transformation happened in the automobile’s manufacturing industry; Japan overtook America as the world’s biggest car producer. This was unthinkable for the Detroit bosses in America and it necessitated a visit to Japan. To their disbelief, they witnessed a country that had transformed its entire economy into a hotbed of business innovation through “lean manufacturing”. This event marked the beginning of a revolution that took over in almost all factories globally, the same revolution that is now spreading fast into the developing world thus creating a shift in the world’s centre of economic gravity towards the emerging markets.

China for instance has sustained an annual growth of more than 10% for the past five years while India has its figures at 8%. This sudden growth has been instigated by the self belief and discontentment of these two nations as the sources of cheap skilled labour. Contrary to that, they have taken up the challenge to the west on innovation and product redesigning of everything. These redesigning is geared at reducing the cost of production thus producing cheaper commodities faster than their rival western corporations. This continuing trend is slowly snatching the economic leadership mantle from rich world even as more western multinationals like IBM and Ericsson try to take advantage and also invest in these emerging markets to create an edge over their now biggest competitors such as HUAWEI.

The Summary of Gary Rivlin’s “The problem with Microsoft…

Gary R. (2010). “The problem with Microsoft…” Fortune Magazine March 29, 2011.

In this article, Gary Rivlin depicts Microsoft’s current CEO Steve Ballmer as an egocentric leader who is unquestionable and utterly disrespectful to his support and innovation staff. Ballmer’s many dismissals and discontinuations of key creative products by the company’s innovative team has continued to hurt its software industry dominance while other tech company’s like Apple and Google continue to develop successful products that mesmerize their consumers.

The writer begins by telling the rather unfortunate incidence of Courier, a project Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division was developing to catapult Microsoft into the mobile devices field that is very lucrative at the moment and which has completely dodged the corporation. Steve Ballmer eventually discontinued that project in its later stages terming it unnecessary due to its heavy borrowing from “windows”,   Microsoft’s vaunted computer operating systems.

This action is viewed as an act of improvidence by the top management even as they continued to get a lot of major cycles wrong such as the emergence of the mobile phone as the new age PC. Furthermore some of Microsoft’s products such as The MP3 player, the Zune, Bing: Microsoft’s revamped search engine, the Xbox gaming system and acquired mobile-technology company Danger were really coming down with negative user reviews.

All this has been blamed on Ballmer himself and his deep pride that causes him to dismiss excellent consumer-oriented ideas. It is a no br

The Summary of Howard Schultz’s “How Starbucks Got Its Mojo Back”

Schultz H. (2011). “How Starbucks Got its Mojo Back” The Newsweek, March 13, 2011

This article is written as a narration by the current Chairman and CEO of Starbucks chain of coffee shops, Howard Schultz’s. It contains a dramatic account of the series of events making up the story of “Starbucks”. The company grows remarkably in its first years of business until He moved out of the CEO’s office and it came crumbling to its knees. He later moved back into office and things started looking up again.

The CEO records that he was first involved in the coffee business back in 1982 as the head of marketing of Starbucks then a small coffee company operating four stores. He later came to develop a strong passion for offering an excellent customer experience in their coffee houses while attending a business trip in Italy. His bosses differed with his ideas and thus he resigned and become one of Starbuck’s major competitors.

In 1987 with the help of a few investors, he bought off Starbucks, merged them with his own stores and kept the name Starbucks Coffee Company. The business g

The Summary of Jessi Hempel’s. “IBM’s Sam Palmisano: A super second act”

Jessi H. (2011). “IBM’s Sam Palmisano: A super second act” Fortune, March 4, 2011

The article tells of the tale of IBM’s CEO Sam Palmisano involvement in the company’s transformation from a just revitalized venture to the envy of the entire tech world and a darling of investors. It concentrates on his early life, education, family and career developments that helped IBM get back on its place in the information technology realm through constant innovation, intrapreneurship and strategic planning.

International Business Machines (IBM) was among the pioneer companies to venture in the technology and information industry in America. On the boost of its successful huge and powerful mainframe market share, IBM went ahead to become the leading computer maker globally back in the 1960’s and 1970’s. However in the early 1980’s personal computers and servers replaced those bulky mainframes and that signaled the beginning of IBM’s troubles since the then arrogant and bloated management failed to discern and innovate with time.

 

For a complete Creative portfolio, Order with us now!!

Use the order calculator below and get started! Contact our live support team for any assistance or inquiry.

[order_calculator]