A Teaching Case Study: Innovation, Product Development, and Organizational Transformation at the Sunnic Group

The following teaching case study details an exciting and modern case of an integrated circuit distribution company in Taiwan (the Sunnic Group) as it transitions through several major innovation initiatives creating new products and a new role for itself in the industry while simultaneously fending off market forces, competition, and degrading profits. This case study delivers important lessons about conducting innovation via four major areas. The first area details how market forces, intense competitions, entry barriers, and corporate growth can create situations where innovating on a large scale has strong advantages over the alternatives. The second area shows how theories on innovation and customer value propositions are used to create realistic strategies for new products and feasible plans for organizational change. Topics like knowledge management, creating new capabilities, and key performance indicators are discussed. Next, the actual implementations of several innovation initiatives are explained in dramatic fashion with characters demonstrating resistance to innovation, competitor's reactions, and conflicts of interest; more importantly, it demonstrates how product development strategies can actually play out. This section also captures how transforming an organization can be stressful, leadership intensive, and difficult. Finally, the case reviews the results of the transformation and innovation efforts via the patent and financial results. This case is designed to teach students a mix of theory and practical skills. A lengthy list of questions for students is also provided and a teacher's edition from page 21 onwards of this text contains lecture notes that help in guiding class discussions and aid in creating assignments.