Kudler Fine Foods Case Analysis Kudler Fine

Kudler Fine Foods Case Analysis

Kudler Fine Food Case

Business Proposal to Enable Greater Innovative Thinking and Contributions

Creating greater levels of innovating thinking and contributions throughout the company will lead to a broader base of potential next-generation products to select from, an increase in the number of concepts and ideas to reduce costs, and most importantly, deliver greater value and responsiveness to customers. These and other benefits can be realized when frameworks and programs are put into place that encourages and rewards innovating thinking and contributions.

The most effective approaches to creating innovation at Kudler center on providing employees with the autonomy to select and pursue ideas they see as innovative and capable of delivering long-term value, mastery of their given areas, and an overriding purpose to continually contribute new concepts. The three elements of autonomy, mastery and purpose are critically important for first creating a culture of innovation to build on (Foss, Laursen, Pedersen, 2011). The intent of this proposal to define how innovative successes will be measured, how the system will affect the hiring process, define how employees will be rewarded for innovative thinking, and how the system will affect financial management, investor relations, the brand and the shareholders. Innovation is not a binary state, it is rather an evolutionary one that continually must be nurtured and solidified through trust and consistency (Coyne, 2001).

The culture needs to be in place first, and then the incentives and programs created to nurture and measure innovation. Kudler Foods need to look at how Google has created a culture where innovative new ideas are continually sought out and encouraged, and learn from that company to gain competitive advantage in the food business. The measurement process is one that is engrained into the long-term project process and includes gate-based decision points and a series of metrics to evaluate the overall viability of one idea relative to another (Steiber, Alange, 2013). Kudler Foods needs to do the same.

Using culture as the foundation for creating greater innovation, it is recommended that a programs be designed to provide every employee an opportunity to contribute new ideas, and then see the results of their recommendations on the impact of the business. Kudler needs to consider modeling itself after the 3M model of innovation, which is predicated on setting innovation goals for each division and providing every employee an opportunity to contribute to them (Coyne, 2001). Innovation is therefore measured in how many of these concepts are brought forward, and the resulting impact on the operational aspects of the company initially and over time, to its financial performance (Foss, Laursen, Pedersen, 2011). The development and engineering teams will be provided a separate program that rewards innovative new product concepts with the company paying the patent search, filing and publication costs. This immediately increases the mastery aspect of innovation, a core component of long-term motivation (Foss, Laursen, Pedersen, 2011). The second and third components of autonomy and purpose will also be designed into the program to ensure all elements of long-term motivation are integral to the program.

Development and engineering staff will be rewarded with patents filed with the U.S. Patent Office in their names, with the actual intellectual property belonging to the company. The developers and engineers will have the opportunity to lead development of the actual product from prototype to production. Kudler Foods needs to do the same with its key employees who are designing and producing packaged goods and pastry products. The hiring process for designers and engineers will concentrate on those interested in pursuing a career where they will be given the opportunity to create and run their own programs based on the innovative new products they produce. This aspect of the program will be measured by the number of patents produced, the number of new innovative products that move through each stage of development to be completed products, and the pay-off of each innovative idea from employees (Foss, Laursen, Pedersen, 2011). Every employee needs to see how their contribution is making a contribution to the company, and with that level of ownership, external stakeholders will see continued gains in the performance of the company.

Paper 2: Theory-Based Strategic Experiment

Using a theory-based strategic experiment to optimize the van's use for catering jobs and customer deliveries needs to be predicated on optimizing routes to reduce fuel costs and ensure the highest profit margins possible. With the constraint of higher fuel costs also constraining the costs that can be charged by the catering business, Kudler's needs to first consider which catering and customer deliveries are unprofitable to pursue over time.

While cost is often considered the first significant constraint, it is often the workloads that have grown over time to become so large and diverse that the business advantages they initially provided are no longer relevant (Zachariadis, Tarantilis, Kiranoudis, 2013). Kudler's needs to first look at catering and customer deliveries that are being made to unprofitable customers or part of unprofitable catering contracts. This in keeping with the level of detail, nature of predictions and frequency of strategic reviews so critical to operating a business.