This past class we learned about the “Product Life Cycle” as well as the decisions management has to make when introducing a new product.  A company usually has many strategy options on how to go about offering a new product, but overall the main goal is to “meet the consumer’s wants and needs.”    Not only that, but they also want to be sustainable and create a competitive advantage.  Well, in the past couple of years Apple has done a great job doing just that with its innovative products.  The technology that has recently been receiving a lot of attention is their tablet, the iPad.

Apple’s introduction of the iPad was clearly a successful one, and this then began the tablet phenomenon.  All of a sudden, it became a necessity in the eyes of many consumers.    Upon seeing Apple’s success many companies followed and created their own tablets.  For many of these “followers”, this was not even the right market for them, but upon seeing Apple’s success they felt compelled to.

I was one of the many individuals that decided to go with the “inexpensive option” and buy a “follower’s” tablet.  At the time it looked like a great idea because I would have something similar to the iPad, but at a much cheaper price.  What I did not know at the time was that the price mirrored the quality.  This specific tablet turned out to be a “low performance, low cost” product, hence why it was cheap on the market.  It seemed as if it was put together without any proper research—simply created just to compete with Apple.  The issues were endless; everything from the actual hardware to the software and I was left unsatisfied.

Typically in a PLC, the introduction stage is the most important stage for a product.  The reason being is because the growth stage depends on it; the phase where you actually begin to profit.  If you succeed in your introduction stage which includes proper research and development, constant quality tests, good marketing, etc., you are able to enter the growth stage and go beyond.  It seemed as though this specific tablet company literally crashed every path in the process of their introduction phase just so that they could get their tablet out on the market.  The consequence of that was that this product ended up being a loss for the company because it never went past the introduction stage.

This article I found on KnowThis.com breaks the introduction stage into two parts—an early and a late stage.  It talks about the basics of what it takes to get past the introduction phase and the challenges faced by many companies when introducing a new product, similar to what this tablet creator was faced with.  Read the complete article at: http://www.knowthis.com/principles-of-marketing-tutorials/planning-with-the-product-life-cycle/introduction-stage-of-the-plc/

My question is:  why do these major companies set themselves up for failure like that, even though there have been plenty of examples in the past where a similar mistake was made and it led to nothing but disappointment?

Last class we learned about the Project Triangle and did an activity where we saw all the aspects of this triangle.  The Project Triangle entails three important parts:  performance, time, and cost.  All of these are very important to a project’s success, but some are given more emphasis depending on the project.  Some projects have crucial deadlines or a very strict budget but for all projects, I believe performance is what really matters.  Professor Cook had us do an activity that included all three aspects of this triangle.  We were given a project to build a skyscraper with marshmallows and uncooked spaghetti.  We were given 20 minutes to complete it, which covered the time aspect of the project triangle, a budget (we had a limited amount of marshmallows that we were able to use), and that touched on the cost aspect, and finally the performance part, which was based on how strong, durable and tall the building was.  This activity really allowed me to see how vital all three aspects are to a project’s success.

This activity also brought out the discussion of planning and if it is possible to over plan.  It got me to think because I always believed that one can never plan enough.  I was then reminded of the time my family and I opened up our own restaurant a few years back.  We had fixed a date for our grand opening, but were still in the midst of planning.  We had yet to finalize the menu items, the seating arrangement, the menu design, etc.  Two days before the grand opening, we realized that we were nowhere near ready for the grand opening.  We had not received our printed menus, the table and chair coverings, and other minor details were yet to be completed.  We were then forced to push the grand opening back three days.  Looking back now, I think that we had spent too much time planning for the grand opening and left very little time to execute.  For instance, we had spent too much time planning and designing the menu, or the setup of the restaurant, which put us behind schedule.  Thankfully in our case, time was not as important as our performance. Fortunately, in the end, the grand opening turned out to be a huge success!

Furthermore, I came across an article on the internet titled “Overplanning Can Kill Your Business Idea,” and it talks about how planning too much can negatively affect your business.  Falconer, the author, writes about ways to avoid over planning, and one of them being “Plan Deadlines First.”  This would have been a very effective strategy had I implemented it during the planning phase of our family restaurant.  We would have kept smaller deadlines leading up to the main deadline, rather than playing it by ear.  The article can be viewed at:  http://www.lifehack.org/articles/management/overplanning-can-kill-your-business-idea.html.

I was wondering, do any of you think it is possible to “over-plan?”  Or can you never plan enough?