Overview
Discussion: The goal of this discussion is to evaluate the deliberate strategic and innovation choices that an organization makes to meet market conditions, including competition, pandemics, economics, and technology.
Inside an old brick building in the leafy town of Haverhill, Massachusetts, you’ll find one of the last vestiges of a once-formidable industry. Entering the six-story structure is like going back in time: Stacks of kiln-dried maple wood line the walls. Artisans carefully tinker with tuning pins and soundboards. A light tinkling of classical music rises above the whir and putter of 100-year-old machines. Not long ago, piano factories like this were one of America’s largest and most formidable industries, employing tens of thousands of workers. Today, only two remain: Steinway & Sons in New York, and this place — Mason & Hamlin.
Read the article: How One of America’s last piano manufacturers stays alive.Links to an external site.
In the article we are told he slowly started to rebuild — by turning to the past.
- He hired a team of three engineers to digitally reconstruct blueprints of the high-quality pianos the company gained a reputation for in the early 1900s.
- He turned back to many of the original innovations and materials the company had used a century earlier.
- He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on specialized tools, many of which were decades old.
- He equipped each piano with a tension resonator, a device pioneered by Richard Gertz, a Mason & Hamlin engineer, in 1895.
Considering the history of the company from its founding to the most recent incarnation,
- Why would the owners set those strategic priorities?
- How does this set M & H apart from its competitors?
- What does the return to old innovations say about the process of innovation?
- What lessons from M & H apply to your organization?
Please respond to at least one of the first three questions and then apply that response as part of your answer to question 4 – what are the lessons for your organization?
Assignment: Dietz and Watson (D&W), a family-run business that had been operating in Philadelphia for over eighty years, was a key player in the deli meat product market. D&W was concerned about losing market share overall; it was dependent on the aging baby boomer segment and possibly not top of mind for a younger, more progressive demographic. In early 2019, the company's vice president of brand strategy had to consider various options for investing the brand's resources and offer a credible plan to the chief financial officer.
Read the case, Dietz and Watson: Making an 80-Year-Old Brand Young Again (available in your Harvard Coursepack) and the recommended resources listed below. Then, prepare a 3 – 5 page memo for the CFO that outlines your recommendation in the following areas:
- Absent any resource constraints, what is the most viable strategy?
- How might digital marketing help D & W achieve its goals and support its growth?
- Does the decision to target Millennial and Gen Z consumers make sense per the data? What subgroups are the most viable?
Supplemental resources:
- Website: Dietz and Watson, Inc.Links to an external site.
- Video: Dietz & Watson. (2023). How Dietz & Watson has been doing it The Right Way for 80+ yearsLinks to an external site. [Video}. YouTube. (1 minute) (Video Transcript).
- Article: Wilson, H. J., Guinan, P. J., Parise, S., & Weinberg, B. D. (2011). What’s Your Social Media Strategy?Links to an external site. Harvard Business Review, 89(7/8), 23–25.
- Article: Correani, A., De Massis, A., Frattini, F., Petruzzelli, A. M., & Natalicchio, A. (2020). Implementing a Digital Strategy: Learning from the Experience of Three Digital Transformation ProjectsLinks to an external site.. California Management Review, 62(4), 37–56.