Innovating Touch: The Strategic Shift in Laptop Design
This critical incident (CI) describes how a team within Intel successfully championed touchscreen technology for laptops in 2011, while negotiating industry challenges. Intel faced a dilemma in determining the appropriate strategy to adopt and the actions to take to maximize this opportunity for itself and the PC industry.
Although the CI describes a situation that occurred in 2011, the insights and concepts offered by the CI in responding to marketing opportunities and obstacles are universal and timeless. They include finding or creating innovation that can be validated via a minimum viable product (MVP), enabling the adoption of that innovation through partnerships while reducing any
technology or infrastructure barriers, and creating marketing pull by effectively communicating the unique value proposition.
This decision-based critical incident would be appropriate for graduate or undergraduate courses in entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship, management of innovation, entrepreneurship and technology ventures, technology marketing, business strategy, and management.
- Identify the external and internal challenges and opportunities facing a high-tech company in a fast-moving environment and how management might respond to them.
- Apply the Business Model Canvas to analyze the potential impact of technological innovation on a company.
- Evaluate the alternative actions that a company could take and debate their pros and cons for the company and the industry.
- Recommend actions and strategies that maximize a business opportunity for the company as well as the industry and defend those recommendations.