Bringing Innovation to the Market: Mbooth - Case Study Example

Bringing innovation to the market Introduction: In recent years of rapid technological advancements, innovative ideas for products as well as services do play a critical role in an organization’s success. Innovation has become an essential ingredient of modern business and it forms the basis on which the companies compete. Typical men entering business arena want big products. They want big ideas. If they’re equipped with big balls then they place big bets on a big future. No one wants to be “another one” selling off old ideas or product. Bringing an innovative product to market is challenging. Today, more than ever, successful and sustainable innovation means managing critical issues different stages in the business. Innovation requires the involvement and commitment of both top management and Employees. And leadership must help the company to maintain its focus and momentum, which will naturally tend to deteriorate over time. Innovation with all its merits also carries some barriers along with it which tries to deteriorate growth. Many of the barriers comes from individuals who don’t believe in the merits of innovation, or those who believe that they wont either get funding or else their own life career might be jeopardized, if innovation fails. It is important for organization’s management to address these problems before venturing in a new project. As it is proposed by Mitch, an innovation consultant,” Real innovators challenge excuses. Real innovators challenge the status quo. They do not concede to current reality. They find a way over, around or through whatever obstacle is in their way - whether that obstacle is the lack of funding or the assumption that there is a lack of funding." Innovation completely rocks and rolls our lifestyle. It creates huge turns in way of life. Our lifestyles are the result of other people’s efforts to improve the human condition. They mixed ideas and inventions together to create the present world around us. Our Innovation: Our innovation is going to multi tasked vending machine, vending music, multimedia content such as mp3 files; e-Books, audio books, maps and videos. The booths would be in the places such as airports, train stations and gyms. The booth is called the "mBooth". Here’s how it looks to the user – they walk up to our device and swipe a credit card. If they’ve used it before, they are recognized and their account information comes up. If not, an account is initialized. Either way they next go to a browser that lets them to select the criteria- music, books, audio books, maps. Upon choosing your option, it displays search list for available books or music or map by title, author, genre, etc. It May also have options for displaying their previous purchases through vending machines. For example one may see a list of books previously purchased. They select a product. Next they select delivery type – the book can be emailed to an address, made available online at a password-secured site, or transferred then and there to the user’s device via Bluetooth, wifi, or memory card. They walk away with a new book or music or map on their device. The browser may also be programmed to display the results of search, taking into account the user’s interest or favorite authors or music genre. They may also be provided some option to customize their search settings for better results. Literature Review: There have been a lot of machines of this genre in the market. The only innovation we have done with our machine is that we have combined the features of many such machines. In conventional type these were usually standalone machines marketing only particular type of products, either music or books alone. Music vending machines are special vending machines that offer music alone in return to money. Music vending machines excite the music crazy crowd. Some machines offers opportunity to carry back the purchased music by copying the music in CDs or MP3. They also help to download the music to cell phones and iPods. Music vending machines are the modified versions of jukeboxes. Jukeboxes were used in olden days to listen to their favourite music by inserting a coin. Today’s music vending machines have music hearing post and operating computer system. Technological innovations have enabled the machines to download music using the FairPlay DRM technology or Harmony DRM conversion system. Likewise similar machines exist for selling e-books. These machines apart from selling, also provides free abstracts and sample pages of the book for easier reference. They also provide the customers of the books to rate them. Similarly a machine for vending folded paper items, such as maps are also available in the market. But our machine provides all in one solution for this. They belong to new generation vending machines. They motivate the entertainment market with a new trend. It combines all the above features of the three vending machines in one. It can sell music, books, audio books, maps all through one machine. Investments: It is going to be one stop search for many entertaining products for our customers. With this much features, our products capital investment is essentially high. The cost of copyrights along with maintenance will also add up to this cost. Problem with the big bet approach like the one we have opted is that we are limited to a small number of guesses. We are forced to choose our options too early either invest heavily or put off the project. There is no case of gradual investment taking into account the returns it provides in the initial period. Judging winners and losers before the race begins very early. It is like putting all eggs in one big basket. Or worse scenario of putting all faith in one egg. Most of us accept the common sense notion that risk should be spread. For some reason it is hard in some business to spread that risk by sharing out the ‘risk dollars’ between many small projects. Our innovation belongs to the later type. And consequent to this heavy investment, our product must have sufficient heavy financial backing, especially at the start of the project. In course of the business, a lot of investments in terms of obtaining copyrights and paying other remunerations is needed. Although the initial cost invested is high, the machine starts paying off the returns dearly in course of time. It will surely rock among the entertainment lovers, providing them with all sorts of options to them. Some tie up with soft drink giants such as Coca cola and Pepsi to market integrated machines. The integrated machines offer opportunity to have soft drinks while enjoying browsing through the various products. This also brings about good cost saving to both the involved organizations. Locations: The device would probably work best in three kinds of areas – Airports, or other areas where people with technology are likely to be sitting for long periods Gyms, Theatres, pubs, stores, clubs, railway stations, universities, sub ways, gas stations etc, all over the country to provide a convenient way for people to buy electronic versions of music, books, maps and receive them immediately using their ipods, wifi,etc Any high-traffic retail area such as provisional stores, Shopping malls, Bookstores, super markets to provide a sales outlet for retailers like Amazon, Powell’s, Borders, etc who normally would not have any physical or local point-of-presence in that area. Apart from these locations, one or two versatile machines can be maintained and their locations can changed to places of high seasonal crowd. For example, if any pop shows are organized, a machine can be installed there with lot of new and old collections of that particular pop star. If any sport event as football takes place, the machine can be shifted there to take advantage of the crowd. But the space for the machines has to be obtained from the organizers of the event paying them sufficient remuneration. Some tie ups with local clubs organizing such events regularly can also be maintained to install such machines on the day of event. Such tie ups can also be maintained with some other similar companies supplying their product through vending machines. In this case some offers can be designed for combined purchase of their product and ours. Outline for setting the Business: The machine requires a combination of hardware and software to serve as platform for the vending process. These two for \m the major part of the initial capital investment. They are likely to determine the effectiveness of the vending machine and must have sufficient speed in operation. Necessary hardware A small form factor PC along with a touch-screen and some hardware buttons, to be installed in a box. The example of ATM’s can be followed Bluetooth and infrared access points for data transfer to customers. These need to be secured enough to avoid damage by the customers. It must also avoid any input data from customers hardware to avoid Virus attack of computers. Some sort of custom card-reader mechanism to allow transfer of data directly to various memory cards (MMC, SD, etc) Possibly an internal mechanism to allow blank memory cards to be fed into an internal card reader to have data installed and then route the card to an external delivery point A credit-card reader as in conventional card reading machines Necessary software A custom POS interface to tie into the screen, hardware buttons, and other custom hardware. The software must be compatible wuth any hardware that a customer might possibly employ. Some sort of DRM to prevent abuse of copyrighted material (god, I can’t believe I just typed that). The DRM technologies referred plays an important role in avoiding copying of copyrighted material. No publisher is going to authorize the transfer of copyrighted materials electronically without a pretty solid DRM system in place, but as we all know, solid DRM is a myth. So it becomes more of a compromise between what satisfies the publishers and what’s technically feasible. In this case we have to decide on the DRM standard used by most of the organizations and that is compatible for most customers’ mode of saving the electronic data. Throw into the mix the fact that you’re working with potentially dozens of different publishers, some of whom have existing e-book lines using various and sundry DRM systems of their own, and the need to target several different devices and OSs (Palm, PPC, laptops, smart phones), and it becomes a Gordian knot. Hence this forms an important area of concern. Conclusion: Through innovation Mbooth really provides a very good opportunity to get a real great leap in the entertainment market beating our competitors, in actual there will be no competitors. The scope of this product is virtually guaranteed theoretically from business perspective. But in real life business situation, nothing is guaranteed. Many of the products which had the best of technology built in them have failed miserably in the market due to various reasons. Hence it’s always necessary that we maintain a vigil eye on the products success from time to time apart from reviewing our own financial situation. Also we must avoid any pitfall (such has possible flaw in software leading to hacking) with our products technology through testing from different perspective. Innovation can win wars by completely destroying the opponent. On the other hand it can also send you back to the stone ages, by great failure of the innovation. A right mind set with good innovativeness is essential to venture into such business. Hence it is a game whose result is unpredictable. Any new venture through innovation must be carried out keeping these things in mind. References Amphichon Inc., 2005. E-Book Vending Machine . [Online]. Amphichon Inc.. Available at: http://amphichon.com/projects/ebook-vending-machine/ [accessed 29 april 2008]. Bellamy  , Max, 2008. Music Vending Machines. Ezine Articles, [Online] Available at: http://ezinearticles.com/?Music-Vending-Machines&id=352811 Coffman, Bryan., 2007. Building the Innovation Culture. [e-book]. Available at: http://www.innovationtools.com/pdf/Building_the_Innovation_Culture.pdf [accessed 29 april 2008]. Engadget Plc., 2005. Multi-format content vending machines get all growed up . [Online]. Engadget Plc. Available at: http://www.engadget.com/2005/01/27/multi-format-content-vending-machines-get-all-growed-up/2id=[accessed 29 april 2008]. Freepatentsonline Inc., 2005. Map Vending Machine . [Online]. Wikipedia Inc.. Available athttp://www.freepatentsonline.com/4042146.html [accessed 29 april 2008]. Innovation tools Plc, 2005. Kaizen and Innovation. Innovation Weblog [online] Available at: http://www.innovationtools.com/Weblog/innovationblog-detail.asp?ArticleID=817 Innovation tools Plc, 2005. The 100 lamest excuses for not innovating. Innovation Weblog [online] Available at: http://www.innovationtools.com/weblog/innovation-weblog.asp [accessed 29 april 2008]. McKEOWN, MAX., Summer 2008. The truth about Innovation-find the creativity inside. [e-book]. Available at: http://www.innovationtools.com/PDF/The_Truth_About_Innovation.pdf [accessed 29 april 2008]. Morris,Langdon., 2007. Creating The Innovation Culture. [e-book]. Available at: http://www.innovationtools.com/PDF/CreatingInnovationCulture.pdf [accessed 29 april 2008]. The Register Plc., 2008. Apple iPod out of tune with Reals Harmony . [Online]. The Register Plc. 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