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In the past decades, most watchmakers have decided to source core parts from suppliers. This has led to the quasi-monopoly of the component manufacturer ETA, owned by the Swatch group. Now this strategy is backfiring, with ETA creating stricter conditions to its customers, the latter complaining about unfair business practices but fundamentally unable to find alternative strategies. As one executives states, "it's not ETA that has created a monopoly, but others, by not investing".

Article that discusses the importance for companies to couple innovation strategy with the core values of their brands.

Interesting article on J&J's longtime growth story. Strategy appears to be midway between a diversified conglomerate and a focus on health-related core competencies

The battle for smartphones is no longer a Symbian / Nokia vs.Microsoft affair. The two real competitors appear to be Apple and Google. However, it is interesting to notice that their strategy is markedly different, and depends on the underlying business model of the two companies. Apple wants to use cheap Apps to bring users to its devices. Google wants to use Internet access to bring users to its search algorithms. In any case, it is interesting to notice that both firms base their competitive position on a mixture of openness (to achieve reach) and secrecy/closeness (to make money).

What will paradigms for TV sets after HDTV is a bit of a question mark. On the one side, it might be 3D technology. On the other, it might be convergence with the Internet. TV-set makers are playing big bets on both possibilities, and convergence is of course dependent on the existence of content and software that can make it interesting in the eyes of customers. As is currently happening for smartphones, content need not be generated internally, but through app-store mechanisms. Will this strategy pay off?

Success in business models often comes unexpected and generally is due to complementary products and services. For instance, the app store has been one of the main drivers behind the success of i-phones and has been widely imitated by other smartphone manufacturers. However, it appears that Apple hadn't viewed it as such an important element of its strategy at launch

This an example of a business model change. The innovation is in the change of the way to make money. Deutsche-Bahn entered with its new business model in the market of another country, where the competitors are going in a completely different way.  But is the way to make money adopted by Deutsche-Bahn really innovative, or is Trenitalia going in the wrong way, allowing so  the German competitor to realize its strategy?

At the Intel Investor Conference on Tuesday, Intel's Paul Otellini opened his remarks by taking a step back to survey the results of the major restructuring that Intel has been implementing since 2006. This change has turned Intel from a company that makes chips into a company that sells platforms, software, and services-the whole stack. "The company has been transformed in a way that is remarkable, and in the aggregate reflects a different kind of company than we've ever had before," Otellini said. Much of this transformation was about getting costs down (read: layoffs) and boosting per-worker productivity, but the most interesting and important part of the story was the software and services piece. Early on in his talk, Otellini set the tone by naming silicon process technology and software as two of Intel's key differentiators from the competition. At a later point in the talk, he went on to explain that back in 2000, "we were just a chip company... over the years we've added a number of things. We've got platforms, software, and services increasingly being added."

Google's innovation strategy started out with mostly internal developments, then moved to related acquisitions - mostly to speed up innovation - and is now moving towards loosely related investment. However, this effort is not viewed as diversification but as getting a foothold in fields that now seem unrelated, but might not be in the future, giving the ubiquity of information technology

Microsoft is trying to claw up market share in the smartphone industry. Really not an easy task, also because the traditional strategies used by the company are not so applicable in the current "cloud-based" paradigm, and would also bring close scrutiny from public authorities

We all know stories of radical innovation becoming disruptive because incumbent cannot change their competencies and embrace the upcoming technology. Maybe not any more, given the fluidity of modern markets for technology. In fact, one of the main players of the e-paper industry, PVI, is in fact a subsidiary of a major Taiwanese paper mill, and has pursued an interesting strategy of partnership and acquisition in order to transition to the new technology.

Apple's iPad has opened up yet another element of uncertainty on the future "dominant" IT device. In addition, given that a major application of the iPad is likely to be book-reading, uncertainty is there concerning file and DRM formats for e-book. What will the prevailing strategy be? Proprietary formats, or open formats with proprietary DRM systems, or completely open formats? The problem of course is portability of content, which may or may not be valued by consumers. However, given that I currently can lend a book to a friend, what will happen when a Kindle-using friend will want to borrow my iPad-based novel?

The story of Zai, makers of luxury ski equipment, is interesting and typical of firms who plan to work on a differentiation strategy and carve themselves a niche with little competition, at the same time solving technical tradeoffs in a different way than done by "traditional" competitors

The digital generation loves social networking, but still there is no way to ensure that social networks are easy to use together. Especially because there are too many. Microsoft is playing the card "Kin", formerly known as Project Pink. Kin's been developed in collaboration with some important partners like Vodafone, Sharp, in order to be more competitive and to create a new smartphone platform., and also with Verizon, to guarantee a huge distribution for the product, in contrast with Google's strategy. The aim of the first pair of mobile Kin (in the future Microsoft could add other devices to this first generation platform) is not to simplify but to amplify the social users life and has got the difficult task of attracting the young, future consumers, within the Microsoft ecosystem, rather than in those created by Google and Apple.

Yet another acquisition by Google. The company, also thanks to its impressive position in cash, has a long-term strategy of using acquisitions in order to grow its base of technology assets and competencies.

German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel is trying to mark the future of the electric and hybrid vehicles founding the "National Platform for Electric Mobility" - a new alliance dedicated to promoting sustainable mobility. A clear objective: she wants to take electric mobility out of its niche model status and become the market leader for a new type of sustainable mobility by 2018. This strategy is planned by the German federal government, which would like to to promote electro-mobility and to see about one million electric vehicles on the roads by 2020. It's a clear way to force the German carmakers for reshaping mobility. The market needs innovations that are intelligently coordinated and networked, from the engines themselves to a reliable infrastructure (charging points) and well-trained experts who can deal with highly complex technologies.

Google is pushing on its cloud-based strategy, with multiple sources of content - be it books, TV, or else - being delivered to multiple devices from its own data centers. It is likely to find weak resistance from stalwarts of past technology, but some fierce competition from the likes of Facebook.

Alex Goldfayn's new book is called Evangelist Marketing: What Apple Amazon and Netflix Understand About Their Customers (That Your Company Probably Doesn't). He is CEO of the Evangelist Marketing Institute, a marketing consultancy with clients that include T-Mobile, TiVo and Logitech. You remember, don't you? The emails magically appeared while you weren't looking.

Daimler and BYD (China) plan to establish a development center to combine the German automaker's expertise in automotive engineering with BYD's battery and low-cost production know-how. The companies aim to create a new brand for the vehicle that will be positioned between BYD and Mercedes models. Development time may take about three years. Daimler said last month it will focus on cleaner technologies to take global market share from rivals BMW and Audi.

In Europa la Chevrolet Volt non è ancora stata lanciata sul mercato, ma i tecnici della GM stanno già preparando la nuova generazione della vettura elettrica. Sono tante le proposte allo studio, ovvero affiancare al motore elettrico un motore rotativo oppure un piccolo diesel. Nel primo caso si otterrebbe una modesta potenza aggiuntiva, ma ci sarebbe il vantaggio dell'ingombro contenuto, mentre nel secondo caso ci sarebbero bassi consumi, però il prezzo di vendita sarebbe inevitabilmente più elevato. Intanto GM ha anche affermato che la nuova generazione di batterie elettriche saranno molto meno care rispetto a quelle attualmente montate sulla Volt.