HP Kittyhawk case study analysis
However, plans can never keep pace with changes. Kitty’s didn’t acquire the expected customer segments, which caused the dilemma. To analyze the internal and external situation of Kitty’s project, a SOOT analysis is conducted as follows: Strength High storage capacity Early to the market Access to best team members Well-established brand Image Emphasis on project parameters Strong support from top management HP culture Weakness High product cost and price Late to future storage requirements Fail to predict the market
Lack of agility and entrepreneurial Opportunity Access to unexpected customers Technology Improvements Make changes to meet potential customer Threat Well-established competitors Influence of other two technologies Difficulties of implementation Uncertainty of technology development Uncertainty of market needs From the external and internal analysis, it showed that Hewlett-Packard’s Kitty’s project had a great chance to succeed in the market, especially with plenty of strength.
In fact, In terms of an innovation, Kitty’s was very successful. The design on several prestigious technology and new-product awards for 1992, which got much attention from the market.
But to drive growth, Innovation also needs to be useful and successfully Implemented. So, did Skeletally achieve that? That’s the key to success. Differentiation Strategy Bruce Spanner made a wise decision to attack an entirely new market. If Hewlett- Packard choose to go for the traditional DAM market, the market share would probably remain the same.
Kitty’s can differentiated itself from other major players. Efficient Project Implementation Rick Seymour choose his teammates he believed can serve the project best.
He looked for risk taker and people who were quick thinking and action. In addition, Spanner laid emphasis on the project parameters a lot, especially in time and financial goals. They did everything they can to ensure that the team functioned well. Quite sensibly, Kitty’s team finished Kitty’s right on schedule with 12 months, which usually took 18 months.
Issues Lack of Research and Development At the beginning of Kitty’s, David Witt, the project’s R manager, required all engineers to sign a creed before Joining the team. “l am going to build a small, dumb, cheap disk drive!” With the limited time, the engineers was able to make a decent 1.3-inch drive, which is small enough. Besides, with high-volume MEMO, Kitty’s priced at around $250. Although it was said that $130 seems to be the cost lour of any fully featured disk drive, the price of Kitty’s was still in high-end product segment. The R department should put more effort on how to reduce the cost in order to make Kitty’s more competitive in the market.
Insufficient Market Forecast As an information technology corporation, Hewlett-Packard should be more sensitive and prudent to the newly emerged market. According to their forecast, Kittiwakes biggest customers could be PDA. But in reality, the PDA market never emerged as expected. Although several unexpected customers showed up, the actual production bevel was never as good as the original plan, showed in Exhibit 7. Kitty’s team should do more market research on the metallization of PDA market and what the future of PDA market is.
Also, it was risky to only focus on one potential market. It is important to decentralized risk by identifying more than potential customer segment. Future of Kitty’s There were three options ahead of Hewlett-Packard management. Otherwise, Kitty’s project should be closed. I firmly recommend Hewlett-Packard to abandon this project.
First, Hewlett-Packard was never a strong player in disk-drive industry. It as unwise to continue the project after two major failure, especially when the team was losing confidence.
Second, technology is changing rapidly. If Hewlett-Packard could not get the picture of disc-drive market clearly, any further options was going required Kitty’s team to have a significant design breakthrough to pull the cost down. Nevertheless, it could be achieved or not. A $50 drive Just met the current needs of certain customers, instead of the future demand.
Therefore, Hewlett- Packard should disband the team and put the resource into their strong products before it was too late.
