Reaction Paper- 7

In today’s competitive world, the one who starts early most likely wins the race. We have

studied this concept as the first mover advantage in our economic class. Constant

improvement and enhancement have very important due to increase competitiveness in

corporate. The only way we can improve by building a learning organization. A learning

organization is an organization in which everyone learns from each other and as well as from

the people of other organizations. There are five ways of learning; solving the problem

systematically, experimenting, learning from experience, learning from others, and

transferring knowledge.

We all know when we go towards the problem systematically like with all the data, proper

thesis, the chances of getting the appropriate solution are very high. Similarly, when we keep

on experimenting every time, we learn something new, and each time we try to improve.

Experience also plays an important role in making the right decision as we saw in the

example of Boeing, its 737 and 747 models had some serious technical glitch after that they

form a team to study the faults that they made in the making of these planes and when the

team studying these problem given a chance of working on a new project they made most

successful model 757 and 767. Hence, we can infer from this that prior learning is essential if

you want to remain competitive in the market.

Learning from others is also very important, we can see through the example of NOKIA.

When in 2007, the mobile industry was going through the change, and companies like

SAMSUNG, APPLE, and BLACKBERRY were changing according to the industry, NOKIA

didn’t change at all and kept producing mobiles with keypads. Later on, they became

bankrupt. A company that was a market leader for so many years. So, it is essential for every

company from small to large to keep on changing and experimenting. We have another
example of KODAK, the company, which was the market leader in Camera, once became

bankrupt because they also didn’t learn anything from the changing market and their

competitors. In India, we have examples from Hindustan Motors to Lohia Locomotive; they

didn’t adapt according to the changing market situation and doomed.

We can see the example of Maruti and Hero; they are surviving because they learned from

the external environment and went into a joint venture with companies like Suzuki and

Honda respectively, now they are a market leader in India. Smart companies and managers

can foresee the future and can change according to the coming situation.

We also learned about the structure of global firms and different working styles from local

firms. A global firm needs to adapt according to the culture of different countries and needs

to hire people of different ethnicity to know the culture better.