Provide a 6 pages analysis while answering the following question: Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. An abstract is required. With the growing competition and the fast-paced world, the importance of strategic management has also become very important. Companies with well designed and well-planned strategies have shown high levels of success and profits when compared to companies with a weak strategic plan. This paper aims at contracting and comparing two cases of strategic management. The two cases chosen here are Amazon.com and Xelebri. The reason for the choice of these two companies is the fact that although both companies have used technology and innovation in their planning there has been a strong difference in the results of the two companies (Mintzberg, Lampel, Quinn & Ghoshal, 2002). Amazon has become a world-famous company while Xelebri has been quite unsuccessful and has not shown the desired results as would have been thought. This paper firstly provides a brief introduction to each of the cases with a focus on the issues of the companies and the factors that have led to their success. Furthermore, this paper will discuss the lessons learned from each of these cases and a conclusion.

Amazon.com was founded in 1995 by Jeff Bezos. The company only started marking profits in 2003 further which it has grown to become one of the most well-known brands in the world. The company has always maintained its strategy to emphasis on the widening of the business model by expansion and also customer innovation. The company has now grown to become one of the largest and most recognized brands in the world and is regarded as the number one online service. With a total of as many as six websites catering to almost thirty-two million customers across the world, the company has been very successful. The company has developed patented software for itself and the company has a number of other companies who like to put their content onto the website. The company has used technology to develop a state of the art website which caters to all the needs of the customers and includes browsing, searching, reviews and content, and also recommendations and personalization.

Case Problem

THE GRAPHIC PALETTE

The Graphic Palette is a firm in Charleston, South Carolina, that does graphic artwork and produces color and black- and-white posters, lithographs, and banners. The firm’s owners, Kathleen and Lindsey Taylor, have been approached by a client to produce a spectacularly colored poster for an upcoming arts festival. The poster is more complex than anything Kathleen and Lindsey have previously worked on. It requires color screening in three stages, and the processing must proceed rapidly to produce the desired color effect.

By suspending all their other jobs, they can devote three machines to the first stage, four to the second stage, and two to the last stage of the process. Posters that come off the machines at each stage can be processed on any of the machines at the next stage. However, all the machines are different models and of varying ages, so they cannot process the same number of posters in the specified time frame necessary to complete the job. The different machine capacities at each stage are as follows:

Stage 1Stage 2Stage 3

Machine 1 = 750Machine 4 = 530Machine 8 = 620

Machine 2 = 900Machine 5 = 320Machine 9 = 750

Machine 3 = 670Machine 6 = 450 

Machine 7 = 250 

Because the machines are of different ages and types, the costs of producing posters on them differ. For example, a poster that starts on machine 1 and then proceeds to machine 4 costs $18. If this poster at machine 4 is then processed on machine 8, it costs an additional $36. The processing costs for each combination of machines for stages 1, 2, and 3 are as follows:

Machine (cost)

Machine4567

1$18$23$25$21

220262419

324242223

Machine (cost)

Machine89

4$36$41

54052

64246

73349

Kathleen and Lindsey are unsure how to route the posters from one stage to the next to make as many posters as they possibly can at the lowest cost. Determine how to route the posters through the various stages for Graphic Palette to minimize costs.

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