Study of the innovation management process in the development of a discontinuous product case: Motorola RAZR V3

This study will collaborate by bringing some detailed analysis and findings on a special case study of a discontinuous product development process, trying to answer how the discontinuous product development process takes place and the main factors that influence this process. Additionally, it tried to explore some explanations for the difficulties generally faced by the companies to sustain innovation. The case is about the Motorola cell phone RAZR V3, launched in 2004. RAZR V3 was noted by industry experts as game-changing feat of design and engineering, selling more than 110 million units by end of 2008 and recognized as one of the fastest selling products in the industry. The study uses a single case methodology, which is appropriate given the access to a phenomenon that happened inside corporate dominium and it is not easily accessed for academic studies, besides being a rare case of success in the cellular phone industry. In order to magnify the understanding of the phenomenon, the exploration was extended to contrast the RAZR development process and the standard product development process in Motorola. Additionally, it was integrated a longitudinal reflection of the company product development evolution until the next breakthrough product hitting the cellular phone industry. The result of the analysis shows that discontinuous products do not fit well traditional product development process (in this case, stage-gate). This result reinforces the results obtained on previous studies of discontinuous product development conducted by other authors. Therefore, it is clear that the dynamics of discontinuous product development are different from the continuous product development, requiring different treatment to succeed. Moreover, this study highlighted the importance of the management influence in all the phases of the process as one of the most important factors, suggesting a key component to be carefully observed in future researches. Some other findings of the study that were considered very important for a discontinuous product development process: have champions (who believe and protect the project) and not only one champion; create a right atmosphere to make flow the creative process; question paradigms to create discontinuous products; simple guiding light to focus the team; company culture that accepts and knows how to deal with risks; and undoubtedly, have a company strategy that understands the different dynamics of continuous and discontinuous product development processes and treat them accordingly.

Relationship of Coca-Cola Brazil and the communities participant of the social projects: (im) possibilities

Five years ago, Coca-Cola Brasil launched a program named “Coletivo Project”, with the purpose to enjoy an opportunity of increase on the potential consumption power of the low-income pyramid population that lived on the “favelas”. At the same time, it had the objective to offer to them a social and financial impact, which is a trust on the future, the first job for the young adults’ participant of this program and an increase on their family source of revenues, through salaries. This was possible because through Coletivo Project, Coca-Cola identified the assets they have through its value chain, focusing on its competencies, such as retail, merchandising and logistics to apply them on courses to teach the young people of the communities and, as a result, form them to be able to find their new jobs. Internal indicators followed in a monthly basis by Coca-Cola demonstrated that the communities that had the presence of Coletivos, in comparison to those without Coletivos, had social and financial impacts. The social was the fact that the young formed started to have more confidence on their future and felt with a higher self-stem to apply for and obtain their first job. On the financial aspect, they were benefit through the increasing of their revenues and also their families and Coca-Cola had an increase on sales, when compared to a community without a Coletivo Project installed. This dissertation seeks to identify the current relationship between Coca-Cola and the communities, through the Coletivo Project classes performed on the NGOs located at this places, in order to identify opportunities for improvement the benefits and the impacts (financial and social) on the NGOs, communities and all stakeholders of this project. This dissertation examines this relationship, through presence interviews performed on four NGOs selected, and located on four of the twenty communities, that are participants of the Coletivo Project on Rio de Janeiro city. These interviews performed with the students, representatives and educators of these NGOs. The covered period of the interviews ranges from April 2014 to August 2014. This dissertation draws on first-hand qualitative empirical evidence gathered through extensive fieldwork. The main findings among possibilities for improvement by Coca-Cola are: • Implement new courses, beyond those existent at Coca-Cola (Retail, Logistics, etc.). • Increase the content of the employment module of Coletivo classes, focusing on improving educational, cultural, economic, political, social and professional life. • Increase the scale, through the quantity of positions on the Retail Coletivo classes. • Develop cultural and sports events with the communities. • Support the points of sales, participant of the practical classes of the Coletivo Retail, with refrigerators and furniture with the Coca-Cola logo. • Provide coffee breaks and meals during the Coletivo classes, using Coca-Cola beverages and partners for food items, developing the nutrition platform of the company and filling a need of the students. • Perform a research with all stakeholders related to this Project, including those students and mothers that are not participant of the Coletivo, in order to listen to them, understand their needs, and offer solutions to fulfill these gaps. and on the side of the • Perform partnerships with educational institutions to make viable other type of courses, more technical, but that have a relation with the core business of Coca-Cola Brasil, such as marketing. • Implement the Coca-Cola University, already existed at the Company. • Create courses or activities focused on the children. Regarding the impossibilities, the findings are: • Improve the basic sanitation of the communities. • Improve the safety on the communities. • Provide a home to those do not have. • Implement courses that have no relationship with Coca-Cola business and expertise, such as gastronomy. However, Coca-Cola can influence stakeholders on that. The results suggest to executives of Coca-Cola that a deep and a qualitative research on the communities of Brazil, in order to listen young people, educators, mothers, partners that offer jobs, from Coletivo and out of the project, is mandatory, to understand their needs, dreams, complains and offer valuable solutions to all.

A restatement of the welafare costs of inflation. The wast of scarce resources in the manufacturing , banking and household sectors

Lucas (2000) estimates that the US welfare costs of inflation are around 1% of GDP. This measurement is consistent with a speci…c distorting channel in terms of the Bailey triangle under the demand for monetary base schedule (outside money): the displacement of resources from the production of consumption goods to the household transaction time à la Baumol. Here, we consider also several new types of distortions in the manufacturing and banking industries. Our new evidences show that both banks and firms demand special occupational employments to avoid the inflation tax. We de…ne the concept of ”the foat labor”: The occupational employments that are aflected by the in‡ation rates. More administrative workers are hired relatively to the bluecollar workers for producing consumption goods. This new phenomenon makes the manufacturing industry more roundabout. To take into account this new stylized fact and others, we redo at same time both ”The model 5: A Banking Sector -2” formulated by Lucas (1993) and ”The Competitive Banking System” proposed by Yoshino (1993). This modelling allows us to characterize better the new types of misallocations. We …nd that the maximum value of the resources wasted by the US economy happened in the years 1980-81, after the 2nd oil shock. In these years, we estimate the excess resources that are allocated for every speci…c distorting channel: i) The US commercial banks spent additional resources of around 2% of GDP; ii) For the purpose of the firm foating time were used between 2.4% and 4.1% of GDP); and iii) For the household transaction time were allocated between 3.1% and 4.5 % of GDP. The Bailey triangle under the demand for the monetary base schedule represented around 1% of GDP, which is consistent with Lucas (2000). We estimate that the US total welfare costs of in‡ation were around 10% of GDP in terms of the consumption goods foregone. The big di¤erence between our results and Lucas (2000) are mainly due to the Harberger triangle in the market for loans (inside money) which makes part of the household transaction time, of the …rm ‡oat labor and of the distortion in the banking industry. This triangle arises due to the widening interest rates spread in the presence of a distorting inflation tax and under a fractionally reserve system. The Harberger triangle can represent 80% of the total welfare costs of inflation while the remaining percentage is split almost equally between the Bailey triangle and the resources used for the bank services. Finally, we formulate several theorems in terms of the optimal nonneutral monetary policy so as to compare with the classical monetary theory.

Do virtual platforms impact user behavior? An experimental comparison between messages on the company's website and Facebook page.

Companies have looked for many new ways to communicate with their customers. In the current scenario, Facebook has proven to be an efficient communication tool between consumers and businesses. This study aims to understand the differences in the complaint messages sent to companies, through an experiment that measured the emotional tone and the lack of formality in each message received by the website and the Facebook page of the company. As expected, people are more informal on Facebook. However, contrary to our intuition, participants tended to display more emotions on the company website. The social norms theory and the impression management contributed to explain the phenomena found.

Conceito jurídico de empresa: uma interpretação à luz da sua função social

A monografia trata acerca da influência que a função social da empresa exerce sobre o conceito de empresa. O entendimento sobre a função social da empresa não é pacífico, mas é consensual que a Constituição de 1988 o consagrou como princípio da ordem econômica. A constitucionalização do direito privado é determinante para os efeitos do princípio da função social da empresa. O ponto central do trabalho é verificar se existe um conceito de empresa que se adeque ao princípio da função social da empresa exigido pela Constituição. Dentre as teorias dos atos de comércio, da empresa e da firma, esta última tende a explicar o fenômeno da empresa de modo mais congruente com a função social da empresa.

The diversity of diversity: further methodological considerations on the use of the concept in cultural economics

The implications of diversity still raise confusion in the cultural debate. We address them from both a formal and conceptual viewpoints, putting in check the validity of some arguments. We conclude that: measuring diversity demands key decisions and careful statistical procedures; ignorance on optimal diversity levels and on ways to generate them is widespread in the cultural field; there is no support for cultural diversity as something associated to fair economic and political systems; restriction to sheer economics requires the establishment of links between diversity and measurable properties – something rather incipient. Diversity, as a social choice, should be distinguished from it as an economic value.

Sports administration: an examination of the competitive balance concept through european and brazilian domestic soccer leagues comparison

A questão do Equilíbrio Competitivo é um tema importante da economia dos esportes profissionais nos Estados Unidos e na Europa. Muitas pesquisas foram feitas para estabelecer os critérios mais relevantes para avaliar a competitividade das ligas profissionais de futebol. Esta pesquisa analisou a relevância do Equilíbrio Competitivo como determinante da competitividade comparando o Brasileirão Série A com as nove principais ligas na Europa (Bélgica, Inglaterra, Alemanha, Holanda, França, Itália, Portugal, Escócia e Espanha). A competitividade é a capacidade de uma empresa (um clube) ou de uma indústria de enfrentar a concorrência efetiva ou potencial. A medida da competitividade deve levar em consideração uma série de fatores importantes como a qualidade e a relação qualidade/preço, a gestão de recursos humanos e a organização empresarial. Esse trabalho visa demonstrar que, apesar da incerteza do resultado ter sido considerado por muito tempo como um fator positivo de atratividade/interesse dos fãs nos esportes, um campeonato equilibrado poderia ter um efeito insignificante, para não dizer desprezível sobre a competitividade das ligas de futebol a longo prazo. Os resultados mostraram que o aumento do Equilíbrio Competitivo pode ser relevante para os campeonatos mais fracos (Bélgica, Holanda, Portugal, Escócia), mas nao dos cincos melhores (Alemanha, Espanha, França, Inglaterra, Itália). Consequentemente, o Equilíbrio Competitivo deve ser contemplado como uma variável desprezível quanto à competitividade das ligas de futebol, apesar do interesse crescente pelo conceito na literatura. Baseado principalmente em pesquisas de Dell'Osso e Symanski (1991) e de Oughton e Michie (2004), o índice HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman) tem sido utilizado para determinar o nível de concentração de 11 ligas de futebol estudadas. Uma revisão da literatura sobre administração de futebol e esportes foi realizada.

The implementation of corporate governance in Germany and Brazi l: a comparative case study

The recent promotion of best corporate governance standards by several different government institutions and non-for profit organizations resulted in the implementation of more sophisticated governance mechanisms. As consequence to the separation of ownership and control the concept of agency theory arose. Agency theory argues that without out proper control mechanism managers would behave exploit owners due to information asymmetry. Regulators have promoted corporate governance mechanisms in order to address this issue. This paper aims to contrast the implementation of best corporate governance practices in Germany and Brazil on the example of two practical examples. With this purpose in mind, this paper analyzed two companies listed in the main stock exchange in Germany and Brazil throughout a period of 5 years. In order to measure the degree of corporate governance practices implemented 3 different parameters have been chosen. In line with great part of the literature the parameters considered to be relevant are; composition, procedures and deviation from the local corporate governance code. The comparison of the data revealed that board composition in the two analyzed companies is similar regarding the proportion of independent representatives but does distinguish in size. While committees are related to the same topics it can be implied that Natura’s board is more involved in the actual management of the company. Lastly, Beiersdorf has been able to comply to a larger extend with the recommendations of the local German code than Natura to the recommendations published by Brazilian code of the IBGC.

Three applications of the marginal cost of public funds concept

This paper illustrates the use of the marginal cost of public funds concept in three contexts. First, we extend Parry’s (2003) analysis of the efficiency effects excise taxes in the U.K., primarily by incorporating the distortion caused by imperfect competition in the cigarette market and distinguishing between the MCFs for per unit and ad valorem taxes on cigarettes. Our computations show, contrary to the standard result in the literature, that the per unit tax on cigarettes has a slightly lower MCF than the ad valorem tax on cigarettes. Second, we calculate the MCF for a payroll tax in a labour market with involuntary unemployment, using the Shapiro and Stiglitz (1984) efficiency wage model as our framework. Our computations, based on Canadian labour market data, indicate that incorporating the distortion caused by involuntary unemployment raises the MCF by 25 to 50 percent. Third, we derive expressions for the distributionally-weighted MCFs for the exemption level and the marginal tax rate for a “flat tax”, such as the one that has been adopted by the province of Alberta. This allows us to develop a restricted, but tractable, version of the optimal income tax problem. Computations indicate that the optimal marginal tax rate may be quite high, even with relatively modest pro-poor distributional preferences.

Neww challenges in the luxury universe: an exploratory study of the concept of luxury experience in the Brazilian market from the perspective of brands and consumers: a case study of Pati Piva.

Luxury has evolved over the centuries; new challenges have created questions of appropriate strategies for brands. Experience and authenticity became important aspects in the field: consumers are enjoying more material comfort and there is a trend of a cultural shift for personal fulfillment and aspiration through experience. The biggest challenge for today's luxury marketers is to not only talk to the target, but to understand how the target is shifting, while not alienating consumers and damaging the brand´s image. Considering managers and consumers perspectives separately, it would be possible to conclude that their perceptions are congruent, as many studies have presented. However, if perspectives are put together and compared, different realities could emerge. This exploratory research is based on a case study that describes both perspectives of their perception on luxury experience, consumer behavior and consumption motivations, and luxury retailing. It was developed interviews with the brand owner and 10 brand´s consumers, and also indirect observations in the brands distribution formats. In the brand perspective, the case study has shown that luxury experience involves the construction of brand experience strategy based on products, multiple retail channels, consumer engagement, personal activity, exploration of five senses and other forms. In the consumer´s perspective, results revealed that brand consumers interviwed have different luxury experience perceptions and expectations; however, what is common is that service and quality must be maintained and they reflected the overall experience. Additionally, luxury retailing influences directly the consumer´s perception that must integrate multiple channels to fulfill personal demands. The research makes contributions for both actors - brand and consumer, in the sense that translates theoretical concepts of the experience itself and tries to clarify aspects that are still unknown and explored through the exploration of ways to detect the alignment between brand and consumer expectations of the experience.

Improvement on the sales forecast accuracy for a fast growing company by the best combination of historical data usage and clients segmentation

Industrial companies in developing countries are facing rapid growths, and this requires having in place the best organizational processes to cope with the market demand. Sales forecasting, as a tool aligned with the general strategy of the company, needs to be as much accurate as possible, in order to achieve the sales targets by making available the right information for purchasing, planning and control of production areas, and finally attending in time and form the demand generated. The present dissertation uses a single case study from the subsidiary of an international explosives company based in Brazil, Maxam, experiencing high growth in sales, and therefore facing the challenge to adequate its structure and processes properly for the rapid growth expected. Diverse sales forecast techniques have been analyzed to compare the actual monthly sales forecast, based on the sales force representatives’ market knowledge, with forecasts based on the analysis of historical sales data. The dissertation findings show how the combination of both qualitative and quantitative forecasts, by the creation of a combined forecast that considers both client´s demand knowledge from the sales workforce with time series analysis, leads to the improvement on the accuracy of the company´s sales forecast.