Project "Gap Analysis" Overview Requirements

Project “Gap Analysis” Overview: Project Scenario: • You are the CEO of a shoe company called USA Shoes located in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA. You’re looking into gaining a new technology to allow your company to expand into the sports shoe market. • Your team found a new start up company located in rural Oklahoma called Cool Pads. This company has developed, and is producing, a soft and flexible material that has an interesting property. When you press your hand to one side of the material your hand gets colder. The heat from your hand is passed very quickly to the other side and expelled to the environment. • You are deciding to implement a technology alliance with Cool Soles. Innovation to Market: • Your team believes that when placed in a correctly design shoe the material will allow the shoe to effectively cool the foot during any sport activity. • Your team analysis has determined that the material has a greater financial potential if integrated into a sports shoe sold world-wide. • An inventive shoe design is required as there is a requirement for vents to move air around the material bottom and expel it. • Cool Pads has gained new U.S. patents for the material, processes, and specialized tools required to manufacture the material. Plan Issues: • Your team has the vast experience and knowledge required designing, manufacturing, and marketing shoes world-wide. • No one in you company has the experience, knowledge or skills in the fields required to produce the material. • Your strategic plan assumes the unique shoe design and manufacturing will use common and commercially available materials, techniques and processes. Manufacturing: • The material manufacturing process uses modified equipment publicly available, but the material is difficult to produce. It requires a new technologically complex process and some special tools, all of which have been patented by Cool Pads. • Cool Pads has produced enough material for testing but not to the scale required to support predicted shoe plant output. • USA Shoes plans to use one of their offshore manufacturing plants for the new sports shoe – locations currently under review. Strategic Plan: • During the strategic planning to determine how to exploit this innovative material your team did some due diligence on risks. - Innovation exploitation paths were analyzed (picked one with best business value) - Possible users (customers) were surveyed (found an interest - customer value) - Health and hazard issues studied (none determined) - Patent, environmental, and contracting lawyers contacted (no known legal issues) - Competitors investigated (no like technology marketed) - Testing data from Cool Pads indicates material durability under weighted cycled compressions – it takes a beating and keeps on cooling Additional Relevant Material: • Alliance Element Material Review - Review White and Burton (Chapter 7, Figure 7.1) four critical elements for implementing a strategy of technology acquisition (See PDF): o Integration o Leadership o Execution o Alignment • Gap Analysis - White and Burton discuss gap analysis as a tool to implement an analysis of differences between alliance goals and outcomes (See PDF). - The difference between a goal and outcome is considered as the gap. - The analysis attempts to identify gaps before major problems arise so manager can take corrective action. • Types of Alliance Fitness - Per White and Burton there are four critical types of fitness to an alliance that can be examined to identify gaps in alliance performance (See PDF). o Financial, Strategic, Operational, and Relationship - The gap analysis goal is to acquire, and analyze, effective fitness measures that can be used to gain an overall understanding of the dimension “alliance health” and the effect of the four fitness types. Project Requirements/Tasks: Deliverable Part 1: For each of the noted four critical elements, determine, and explain, one major risk that could negatively affect that element. • Negatively means the risk would cause the element to impact alliance implementation in a negative way. Deliverable Part 2: Provide a mitigation that would reduce each presented risk to an acceptable level. • Acceptable means that if realized, the risk as mitigated would not cause the element to impact alliance implementation in a negative way. Deliverable Part 3: Under the context of the USA Shoes and Cool Pads alliance scenario, determine one major measure for each type of fitness that will be effective in presenting an understanding of the alliance health. • Explain each measure - What is it? - How will it be measured? - To what is the measure compared? • For each measure determine a means and method that could be in place to allow the mangers to effectively respond to a negative measure (Outcome < Goal). Format/Content Requirements: • APA 7th Edition Format • Double Spaced • Size 12 Font • Times New Roman Font • Maximum of 5 pages of content. This does not include a cover page or reference page(s).