Business Strategy
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Where new players undermine long-established successful organizations, so-called “incumbents”, the power of disruptive innovations becomes visible. As disruptions affect each industry at a point in time, a phase of transition and restructuring threatens car manufacturers to lose shares of their after-sales business.
This bachelor thesis aims to recommend a strategic direction for OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and to address the following research questions: (1) how can disruptive innovations be identified, and to which extend is the automotive aftermarket susceptible for such? And (2) how can incumbents, in particular OEMs in the aftermarket, manage disruptions to remain successful in the long-term?
For answering these, a literature analysis was carried out, based on the Theory of Disruptive Innovations and high-quality scientific journals. Moreover, the aftermarket was analyzed primarily based on market studies conducted by consulting firms and its disruptive susceptibility was assessed by applying Klenner et al.’s theoretical framework.
Overall, this thesis identified that a balance between stability and disruptiveness is decisive to survive as an incumbent in the long-term. In order to manage disruptive innovations, scoring and analysis models are recommended for identification, whereby a response may include acquisition or cooperation with a disruptor and its technology. Furthermore, the study has revealed that above all adapting the organization, including mindset, culture and processes to the market, supports the creation of disruptions. The findings of the aftermarket analysis and thereof based assessment showed that its susceptibility for disruptive innovations is medium to high, whereby digital platforms have most potential. Furthermore, the market analysis indicated that car manufacturers should use their own advantages and build up an ecosystem while making use of customer and vehicle data.
Non-R&D-intensive firms and industries play and continue to play an important role in the German manufacturing industry, as their 41% share of value added in 2007 indicates. Nonetheless, non-R&D-intensive SMEs especially need to ready themselves for a future shaped by a continuously increasing internationalization of competition, rising knowledge intensity and complexity and an impairing job market situation due to demographic changes. Non-R&D-intensive SMEs are therefore more than ever required to boost the effective and efficient exploitation of firm-specific resources and competences in order to generate, secure or enhance competitive advantages. As studies however show, existing strategic competence management concepts are currently implemented rather by large firms. In addition to small firm size, low R&D intensity effects staff setup, innovation behavior, generation and use of knowledge and competitive market behavior which further negatively influence a firm's possibilities and propensity to implement these strategic competence management concepts. In a first step into this field of study, this master thesis aims to identify and analyze specific characteristics facilitating or discouraging an implementation of strategic competence development processes in non-R&D-intensive SMEs in the form of requirements, drivers and barriers. A literature review addressing the particularities of non-R&D-intensive SMEs and the attributes of current strategic competence management concepts discouraging an implementation of strategic competence development builds the foundation for nine guided interviews of explorative nature involving four non-R&D-intensive SMEs conducted to acquire qualitative empirical data to complement the theoretical findings. A total of 22 specific characteristics, i.e. eleven requirements as well as six drivers and five barriers, facilitating or discouraging an implementation of strategic competence development in non-R&D-intensive SMEs were identified after forging the bridge between theoretical and empirical findings.