Managing Explosive Growth Homework Help

Identify the issues management needs to address.  2. Analyze and evaluate the issues identified above based on the information provided in the case and additional information available on the company’s website (if necessary). 3. Recommend a set of actions management should take to address the issues that you have identified and analyzed………..

According to Mazutis (2008) Research in Motion is a company whose line of business is the manufacture of BlackBerry smart phone devices. Despite having an excellent team of engineers who were delivering award-winning products, the company was growing explosively and was facing fierce competition from other Smartphone producers in the global marketplace. The managers needed to address the research and development plans of the company, in order to formulate a strategy in dealing with the expansion and competition problems. Having doubled revenue in the year 2007, there was need to double the number of software engineers but the company was facing scarcity both in space and talent.

Research in Motion had a traditional growth strategy that involved sourcing its labor force from the local talent pool through recruitment of new graduates from Waterloo University, through referrals by employees and by making acquisition of small companies with interest in technology. It had the challenge of acquiring one thousand four hundred new software developers to keep up with the pace in research and development as well as integrating them into the company culture, which was free of bureaucracy and the main reason for the low employee turnover rate in the company. The culture had created a dynamic and nice environment that engineers liked to work in.

To nurture the culture, the company had to remain centered in Waterloo but the current issues relating to space posed a big challenge to this idea. Research in motion had attracted and utilized most of the talent in waterloo and therefore had no option than to venture in the global software developers’ market which was difficult given the high competition. If the option to hire from other places in the market was considered, then it posed the difficulty of the perception by the engineers who would opt for a more attractive and cosmopolitan area such as the Silicon Valley in Los Angeles as opposed to Waterloo, Ontario.  Furthermore, there was the challenge shortage in physical space at Waterloo.

Considering the fact that Research in Motion was very specific on the type of engineers it expected to hire, getting the right employees was a major challenge. As Dayna had put it, the company was not just after growing its own talent since hiring young graduates would need patience before they start performing at a higher level. The company needed some seasoned software engineers to lead various teams in innovation. Such exceptional software developers are scarce in the highly dynamic wireless communications market.

It was now clear that the previous growth strategy employed by the company were not going to deliver the expected results in the research and development, whose scope in resources was targeted at maintaining the existing technical superiority. Among the available options was to extend the graduate recruitment program to other universities. However, they had to compete with other companies such as Microsoft which offered incentives such as subsidizing  transportation and housing, memberships to health clubs and subsidized housecleaning as well. In this venture, Research in Motion could tap into the state of Canada as one of the best places to live on earth to attract excellent talent from around the world.

As much as the company posted job openings online, it had no specified way of managing qualified applicants that had applied for the wrong job and whose talent was needed by the company. There was a need to therefore creatively revise the way recruitment was done. They could as well adopt the hiring method of some of their competitors such as Symbian who solicited for resumes from interested candidates periodically rather than advertising for specific job openings or reach out to universities around the globe and establish collaborations that would enable the company tap young talent from other locations on the planet other than the traditional Canada. Such a scope would be very appropriate in the company’s bid for expansion to other locations around the globe.

In expanding to new geographical locations, Research in Motion had more challenges to overcome: It had to ensure the expansion is done very strategically, there was the problem of the cost of talent in other locations which were much higher compared to Waterloo and there was the high employee turnover rates in other places as they are wooed away by other high-tech companies in those new geographical locations. Moreover, there was the internal challenge by the employees of the company who simply did not believe that the products could be built outside Waterloo in Ontario. They feared migrating production to outside plants would be tantamount to them losing control over the production process. The company also had to migrate to places that housed mature skill set; a home of other hardware and software companies and near a university with strong programs in the fields of software and hardware to enable the company tap into the young talent.

Research in Motion also faced a big challenge in expanding outside of Canada in terms of source code loss and software piracy especially in the developing countries where there are weak laws on IP protection. There was also the problem of restrictions on cryptographic software where they are restricted or keenly scrutinized for security reasons. Research in Motion had always maintained its BlackBerry source code as a high business secret and therefore such requirements as eavesdropping on BlackBerry users as demanded by the Indian government with the claim that terrorists may hide behind encrypted message was a pain in the neck. They had other organizational challenges in the event of going global integration with the head office, communication and organizational design.

References

Mazutis, D. (2008). Research in motion: managing explosive growth. Ontario: Richard Ivey

School of Business, University of Western Ontario.

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