Innovation, Design, Creativity Strategy Organizations: Kudler There

¶ … innovation, design, creativity strategy organizations: Kudler

There are several key components to effective business and marketing strategy. Some of the most eminent of these are the prudent usage of creativity, innovation, as well as an appropriate design that customers and potential partners can relate to. An analysis of the strategy of two companies in particular, Kudler Fine Foods and Riordan Industries, readily confirms these facts, and serves as a model for other organizations to pattern themselves after.

There is an innate simplicity in the strategy employed by Kudler Fine Foods, which was the creation of Kathy Kudler in the final years of the 20th century. The food retailer still relies on the marketing image of its founder simply trying to merge two exceedingly pragmatic ideas into one innovative one -- that in which it could "create one store that would stock a wide selection of the freshest ingredients as well as all of the tools a gourmet cook could ever want" (No author, 2013). The concept is basic, yet there is no denying the novelty of aggregating to essential elements of gourmet cooking: fresh ingredients with a myriad selection of tools with which to prepare them. This innovative approach considers the customer's needs first, and has allowed the retailer to open three locations, and possibly more as of the time of this writing.

Catering (quite literally, in some cases) to both of these needs of the customer is an integral part of fostering creativity with which to produce business. Moreover, the company augmented the creative approach of its innovative method of serving customers by backing it with solid customer service. Not only can customers procure a wide selection of culinary delights spanning from produce, seafood and meat, dairy and cheese and baked delights, but they can also enjoy these goods delivered to their home. In addition to the innovative approach of retailing both ingredients and preparation tools, part of the appeal of and one of the focal points of this organization is the creativity of its products. For instance, some of its ham is downright exotic and features pigs imported from Italy that have been fed acorns to significantly enhance its effect on the palate (No author, 2013). Such delicatessens are not only rare, but fairly creative within the culinary world -- which is a powerful component of the business and marketing strategy of Kudler Fine Foods.

It would be difficult to attain the sort of pecuniary prowess that San Jose, California's Riordan Industries -- which owns Riordan Manufacturing, has without excelling in areas of design, innovation, and creativity. The organization has amassed revenues exceeding a billion dollars, over 500 employees in over two continents with six locations, and is on track to reach "future yearly earnings of $46 million" (Baihaqi, 2009). More impressive still is the fact that its clientele base for its plastic manufacturing spans a variety of industry from the public sector and the military) to private sector industries in food and beverages, transportation, and Original Equipment Manufacturers.

One of the key facets of the strategy for this multifaceted organization is its design, which is global in nature yet preserves the intimacy of local connections. This fact is achieved largely through its improvements in telecommunications and computer (internet) networking. With approximately one third of its locations on the other side of the world in China (not including its research and development headquarters in San Jose), it is vital that these various subsidiaries of Riordan Manufacturing stay in constant communique with one another to provide efficacious management and allocation of resources.

As such, there was a substantial upgrade to the company's information networking and telecommunications systems at the start of the present decade that allowed it to utilize the most innovative technology to keep abreast of its competitors. The basic design for the upgrade was to provide Local Area Networks (LAN) for each of the individual locations, which mirrored an overarching Wide Area Network (WAN) with which the disparate locations could readily communicate with one another (No author, 2010). In applying this upgrade, the locations substantially increased their bandwidth to facilitate greater expedience and capacity of data to travel within and between locations for communications purposes. Individual aspects of schematics that were also upgraded include operating systems for computing equipment, cabling and graphics.