The Amazon Smartphone Launches Tech's Costliest War - Essay Example

?Business Papers Table of Contents Article The Amazon Smartphone Launches Tech's Costliest War 3 Article 2: The Terrible Management Technique ThatCost Microsoft Its Creativity 4 Article 3: The Future of Focus Ventures 5 Article 4: Leadership Styles 6 Works Cited 7 Article 1: The Amazon Smartphone Launches Tech's Costliest War The article “The Amazon Smartphone Launches Tech's Costliest War” was published in Business Week. The authors of this article are Ashlee Vance and Brad Stone and it was published on July 6, 2012. The above mentioned article presents the innovative measures taken by Amazon.com Inc in launching their product in the competitive market. The article states that Amazon, being a new company in the mobile phone sector, has introduced high price mobile phones in the market. Amazon’s primary aim is to target the big-boy club for their product. Amazon also has focused on the brand and the services to be provided on the device along with the target market. To sustain with the strong competitors namely Apple, Google, and Microsoft among others in the market, who are considered to be within the big-boy club, Amazon has put more emphasis on the mobile phone outlook or design. Therefore, Amazon’s Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos called on Foxconn to design and engineer their mobile phone. Amazon also lacks requisite capital which its competitors have in the business process. However, it possesses credit cards in excess of 100 million consumers and a reputed storefront that can enable it to compete in the smartphone market (Vance and Stone). Innovation is an important aspect in every business related endeavor while aiming to sustain in the world. This is because innovation helps to develop new ideas and knowledge. From the view point of the companies, innovation can be defined as the new finding for their products’ development such as style, taste and other new elements within the products to sustain in the market and to satisfy the demand of the consumers along with earning profits (Bruce). After reviewing the article and the innovation concept, it is assumed that Amazon has considered the innovation concept in introducing its product in the competitive market. Article 2: The Terrible Management Technique That Cost Microsoft Its Creativity The article “The Terrible Management Technique That Cost Microsoft Its Creativity” was written by Frederick E. Allen and was published on July 03, 2012 in Forbes. The above mentioned article is about a leadership based issue. The article refers to another article published in Vanity Fair and written by Kurt Eichenwald regarding Microsoft’s inability to keep a sustained pace of growth since 2000. It alludes to the fact that inept and destructive management techniques adapted by Microsoft are the core reason behind the company facing downfall in various areas it has attempted to enter, such as music, books and social networking among others. After witnessing the considerable fall of Microsoft, Kurt Eichenwald, the author himself interviewed employees of Microsoft to recognize the core reason behind such a scenario in the company. From the feedback, he has identified the problem of Microsoft. The primary problem is the functioning process where the employees had to vote forcefully in order to measure the certain mass of employees’ performance as top, good, average, and poor performers. Furthermore, the team of Microsoft that introduced a new idea of screen touch e-reader model was told by the Microsoft officials not to come up again with this kind of ideas but rather to work on the software development dimension which will bring more profit for the company. This has been a bane for the company in terms of behavior and practice of Microsoft officials, which discourage employees to introduce new innovative ideas further in future (Allen). After reviewing the article, it is assumed that Microsoft has been incorporating poor management practices as well as unfavorable organizational structure, for which the functionality and the performance of the management were declining. As a result, Microsoft was not able to introduce new innovative ideas in the market due to which they cannot preserve their market position. The organizational structure can be defined as the schedule made by the top management for running the operational processes smoothly and systematically in order to achieve the fundamental objectives (Grossi, Royakkers, and Dignum). Article 3: The Future of Focus Ventures The article “The Future of Focus Ventures” was published in Fortune on July 06, 2012. The author of this article is Dan Primack. This article covers the strategic decision making of a Palo Alto, Calif based firm named Focus Ventures that was considered while planning for the Venture III. With the help of the article, author Dan Primack is able to describe the process considered by Focus Ventures in securing its venture in the present and future scenarios. The company had raised US $250 million worth capital from Venture II to provide support for Venture III in 2006. Funds for venture capital generally are made for a period of five years. However, the venture of Focus Ventures was driven by a 20% provision of recycling that signifies an availability of capital in future. Although there are rumors present in the market, they are still going for introducing the new model in the market. In reducing the risk of loss, the company had considered a strategy to provide backing to software companies as well as expansion stage communications companies (Primack). While reviewing the article, it can be assumed that Palo Alto, Calif based company Focus Ventures had a chance of solvency of their operational unit, and then also they desired to go with Venture III. This planning can be stated to be a part of strategic decision making, which was taken despite a view of market watchers regarding the volatile scenario related to the company. Furthermore, the strategy can be deemed to have taken place owing to the fact of securing the company’s products and operational units from solvency (Aoua, Lee, and Wu). Article 4: Leadership Styles The article “Leadership Styles” has been adapted from ‘The Wall Street Journal Guide to Management’ by Alan Murray, which was published by Harper Business in 2011. The article discussed the leadership and its requirements for the people and the organisation. It addresses the fact that leadership styles need to be adapted according to the requirements of the particular situation, the particular needs of the people involved and the challenges confronted by the organization. Six different leadership styles have been mentioned in the article which was originally published in the book titled Primal Leadership. These leadership styles can be utilized by the leaders according to the requirement of the moment. The six different leadership styles are visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting and commanding ones. Visionary leadership style tends to be more adequate when the organization demands new direction. Its main objective is to make the people work towards a new set of goals and thus it assists in the attainment of the goals of the organisation. Coaching leadership style is one of the most significant leadership styles where the main objective is to assist people in enhancing their performance and, thus, drive their motive towards the attainment of the goals of the organization. Affiliative leadership style is focused on team work and, thus, leads to harmony among the members of the organization. Democratic leadership style is essentially focused upon the knowledge and the skills of the people and, therefore, generates a group commitment to the resulting objectives. Pacesetting leadership style mainly focuses upon setting high principles of performance. Commanding leadership style is not considered to be the most effective leadership style for the organization because of the fact that it triggers criticism instead of praise of the employees working in the organization (“Leadership Styles”). It can be analyzed that excluding commanding leadership style, all the five leadership styles that have been studied in the paragraphs above can be utilized by the leaders to lead the organisation. It is a well known fact that leadership strategies determine a leader’s personal leadership style. Hence, the choice of the above mentioned leadership style will also depend upon the leadership strategies. Works Cited Allen, Frederick E. “The Terrible Management Technique That Cost Microsoft Its Creativity.” Forbes 2012. Web. 07 Jul. 2012. Aouad, G, A. Lee, and S. Wu. “A Framework for Strategic Decision-Making Based On A Hybrid Decision Support Tools.” Journal of Information Technology in Construction 2005. Web. 07 Jul. 2012. Bruce, Andy. “An Integrated Approach to Managing Innovation.” White Paper n.d. Web. 07 Jul. 2012. Grossi, Davide, Lamber Royakkers, and Frank Dignum. “Organizational Structure and Responsibility an Analysis in a Dynamic Logic of Organized Collective Agency.” Springer Science Business Media 2007. Web. 07 Jul. 2012. “Leadership Styles.” The Wall Street Journal 2011. Web. 07 Jul. 2012. Primack, Dan. “The Future of Focus Ventures.” Fortune 2012. Web. 07 Jul. 2012. Vance, Ashlee, and Brad Stone. “The Amazon Smartphone Launches Tech's Costliest War.” Bloomberg Business Week 2012. Web. 07 Jul. 2012. Read More