Technical innovation outsourcing case
The trend of international outsourcing is very obvious. In a survey of senior managers conducted by the British Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), 68% of the respondents think outsourcing is very important or very important.
At the beginning of the 20th century, R&D and innovation were usually developed by General Electric, DuPont, IBM and AT & amp； A giant company like T is a monopoly. At that time, the person in charge of the enterprise tended to think that not only the important R&D work could not be handed over to others, but it was best to complete the R&D and manufacturing of the whole value chain independently. However, with the fierce industry segmentation, the market has higher requirements for the speed and breadth of product innovation, but the high investment of enterprises often cannot achieve sufficient results. This forces most innovative companies to seek ways to change: more than 30% of P&G's product innovations come from outside the company, Intel captures fresh ideas through millions of venture capital every year, IBM conducts extensive "strategic alliances", and even the most innovative companies such as Apple and Google have not stuck to their own territory.
Nowadays, companies including Dell, Motorola and Philips are buying some digital equipment designs from Asian developers, then making appropriate adjustments according to their specific requirements, and finally applying these designs to their own brand products. Moreover, this business model is no longer limited to mobile phones. From laptops, high-definition televisions, MP3 music players to digital cameras, Asian original equipment manufacturers and independent design studios have become new forces in almost all technical equipment fields. At the same time, more and more product design work began to shift overseas. Before that, Cisco, Lucent, Nortel Networks and other communication giants all designed sophisticated switches and routers by themselves, and now they plan to entrust external companies to design low-end products for them and ask them to help develop some key software.
Advantage Analysis of Technological Innovation Outsourcing
1. Complementary resources. Almost no internal R&D organization can master all the knowledge and processes related to technological innovation activities, and it is difficult to have all the necessary resources and personnel. Therefore, enterprises must rely on external knowledge and talents to maintain the sustainability of innovation. Bertie Cohorn, chief technology officer of Nokia, said, "No one can fully grasp everything ..." Because technological progress and supply chain development have reached an extremely sophisticated level.
2. By outsourcing technological innovation, enterprises have increased the flexibility of innovation and development, improved the pace of innovation, reduced the comprehensive risk of innovation, and completed some innovations that could not be completed by their own efforts. For example, plamOne cooperated with Hongda Company in Taiwan Province Province, China to develop the best-selling Treo650 smartphone, which effectively shortened the product development time for several months, reduced the product defect rate by half, and increased the gross profit margin by nearly 20%. "There is no doubt that they have become an indispensable part of our innovation process …" said ……”plamOne's senior vice president in charge of global business.
3. Maintain the company's core competitive advantage. If the cost of technological innovation outsourcing is lower than that of independent technological innovation activities (or one of them), outsourcing technological innovation activities can maintain the company's core competitive advantage. For example, the top management can be liberated to focus on solving the core problems of the company's business; Can let the company's engineers concentrate on developing the next generation technology, etc.
4. Reshape the corporate image and improve the product line. Motorola's TALKABOUT 2688 mobile phone is a typical case of outsourcing application technology innovation to achieve this goal. The design of this mobile phone is designed by Taiwan Province Acer Group's mobile communication company, and the domestic production is undertaken by the joint venture between Dongfang Communication and Motorola. After the listing of TALKABOUT2688 in April 2000, it not only won excess profits for the company, but also brought huge strategic benefits to the company. At that time, Nokia's 32 10 series products won a large part of the market by changing the color of the shell and cute modeling. Although Motorola's 2088 and 2 188 series also put forward the same demands with the same function, they are not only at a disadvantage in sales, but also considered to be very conservative and enterprising in product development because they entered the market late and have little difference from previous products. However, after the launch of the 2688 series, its thinness and fashion not only reversed the unfavorable situation in the market, reshaped the corporate image, but also improved Motorola's product line. It laid the foundation for the formation of four categories of product series: scientific and technological progress, time management, fashion and daily communication.
5. Reduce research and development costs. Facing the rolling development momentum of technological innovation outsourcing, people have gradually formed a * * * understanding: more innovation is crucial to the development of the company, but compared with the current R&D expenditure of the company, the achievements of R&D are insignificant. For many years, the CEO of the company has been trying to save money in the factory floor, logistics department and warehousing field. Now they have put forward a sharp question to the once isolated R&D department: Why are there so few best-selling products from the laboratory to the market? How many products have these high-paid engineers created that can change the development pattern of the industry or have breakthrough technologies? Ellen Delatre, head of high-tech consulting business of Accenture Consulting, said: "In controllable expenditure, R&D expenditure is the largest remaining item. In the future, the company will either cut the budget expenditure of the R&D department or increase productivity. " Outsourcing of technological innovation is a good measure to reduce R&D costs.
Analysis on the Disadvantages of Technological Innovation Outsourcing
Create new competitors. The outsourcing of technological innovation is the easiest to get quick results, but it is also the easiest to produce negative effects. In 1980s, IBM entered the PC field and handed over the development of operating system and chip technology to two small start-ups at that time, thus cultivating the future Microsoft and Intel.
Another risk is that companies may lose the incentive to invest in new technologies. Jim Andrew, senior vice president of the Boston Consulting Group, said: "This is a very slippery road. Once innovation activities start to rely on suppliers, you will unconsciously slow down the pace of innovation until it stops. "
It may lead to the loss of core competitiveness of enterprises. Some companies that rely too much on "outsourcing" are losing the ability of independent innovation, which is the real pillar of their business and high profits. At present, large western companies that are aware of this "dangerous symptom" have begun to adjust their strategies and redefine the boundaries of outsourcing. Take the mobile phone as an example. Although design outsourcing is still popular, most companies just take "mobile phones that need price wars" to China for design, while the high-end ones are "very tight". In the words of Edward Zander, CEO of Motorola, it is necessary to draw a clear line, conventional technology can be outsourced, and core intellectual property rights are above the protection line. The standard for judging conventional technology and core technology is generally considered as "whether it can be bought in many places". A person in charge of Chunlan said that the compressor, motor and shape design of Chunlan air conditioner are outsourced because "these things can be bought everywhere", while the electronic control system, refrigeration system and "synthesis technology" are the core things that need to be developed by themselves. For example, an air conditioner manufacturer imported a set of frequency conversion control system from Japan, and the light entrance fee cost 30 million. In the future, it will be necessary to increase the price by 200 to 300 yuan for each assembled one, which will lead to the loss of its competitiveness. Of course, if an enterprise does not accumulate a lot of technological innovation resources, even outsourcing technological innovation activities will not affect its core competence.
Whether a technological innovation or a part of it is independently completed by an enterprise or outsourced should be decided after weighing the advantages and disadvantages. Decision makers can consider whether to outsource from the aspects of maintaining competitive advantage and outsourcing cost. If a technological innovation activity is time-consuming and laborious for an enterprise to complete independently, but it can't be first-class in the industry after paying a huge price, which will distract the enterprise from maintaining and enhancing its core competitive advantage, then this technological innovation activity should be outsourced. Similarly, if the cost of outsourcing a technological innovation activity is lower than the cost of independent research and innovation, then this technological innovation activity should also be outsourced.