The Big Case Study

Case Study – The BIG idea – Innovation Management

1. Why does BIG seem better able to identify and bring to market innovative toy concepts whereas the major toy companies feel they are in a period of a “lack of innovative”?

2. How proprietary or defensible is BIG’s system? Could one of the major companies replicate it? Why or why not?

3. Can BIG replicate its system in other industries, such as lawn and garden?

1. To answer this question, we want to split the question into two questions because in our opinion there are different causes why BIG seem to be better able to identify and bring to market innovative toy concepts and why big toy companies are in a lack of innovation.

Why the major toy companies feel they are in a period of a lack of innovation?

The major toy companies were too focused on their operational performance that they didn`t concentrate enough on the invention of new toy products, but value creation in this industry was all about innovative products. Therefore, the industry recently faces lack of imagination and innovation, which ended with the opportunity for BIG to enter with a new concept in this market. As also mentioned in the lecture “MANAGING INNOVATION” (J. Tidd, J. Bessant, K. Pavitt, 204) on page 8, BIG here was able to find the perfect timing respectively used the right window of opportunity. So BIG was able to profit of the first mover advantage and to gain a lot of market share.

In high competitive markets like the toys industry firms have to demonstrate added value to the end-user, which means that providing innovative solutions is essential. It is not rentable anymore to ride a great license such as a movie character.

The case study is from the year of 2005. In this period of time different trends became more and more important. These trends are:

• video games captured more and more the toys industry
• kids were evolving faster and want to be like their parents  
• toys have to be easy to understand in usage
• toys have to be instructive, kids should learn while playing
• also the design gets more and more important

That means that a lot of things in the product market of toy and juvenile-products producers changed. The toys industry did little research in the previous years and so they were surprised about all these new developments. So it came to a lack of innovation.

Why does BIG seem better able to identify and bring to market innovative toy concepts?    

Innovation can come from anywhere and corporation process provides just one avenue out of many to help drive creative solutions. Corporations in the toy industry have their own development departments, which are creating new toys for them. But beside the product development departments there are many other possibilities of inventing new toys.

For example asking and involving lead users in the innovation process of new toys. Lead users are normally really convinced about a product and use it very often. Therefore, they have a strong motivation to improve products or to create new ones, which fit best to their needs. It is also important to involve professional inventors from outside the firm in the innovation process of toys. They often have contacts with different corporations in the industry and evolve ideas for them.