Lecture # 23Lecture # 23

PROSPECTORS – Prospector enacts an environment that is more dynamic than other types of organizations.

Unlike the defender, whose success comes primarily from efficiently serving a stable market, the Prospector’s prime capability is that of finding and exploiting new product and market opportunities.

For Prospector maintaining a reputation as an innovator in product and market development may be perhaps more important profitability.

Entrepreneurial problem: How to locate and develop market opportunities?

- The systemic addition of new products or markets,

Combined with retrenchment in other parts of domain –characterizes the Prospector.

-Prospector must have the ability to scan, survey a wide range of environmental trends and events.

-So the organization spends heavily on individual and groups who scan the environment.

-Change (within industry and to different industry) is major tool of the Prospector manager to gain edge over competitors.

-Product and market innovation protect the organization from a changing environment but the organizations risks the low level of profitability and stretch (over expansion ) of it resources.

Engineering Problem-How to avoid long term commitments to a

single technological process?

Solutions: to invest in flexible, proto-type technologies-to invest in multiple technologies.-Prospectors have low degree of routinization and

mechanization.-Believes in organic organizations technology is

embedded in people.Therefore technological flexibility permits a rapid

response to changing domains but the organization cannot develop economies (or efficiency) in production and distribution system because of multiple technologies.

-Decentralization increases cost while centralisation to economies.

Administrative Problem: How to facilitate and coordinate (rather control) numerous and diverse operations?

Solution lies in having organic-structure-process mechanism

-Therefore top management is dominated by R & D and Marketing experts, planning is broader rather than intensive, and oriented towards results not methods.

- Project structure characterised by low degree of formalization, decentralized control, lateral and vertical communication ,etc.

- Therefore flexibility is the catchword for all three types of problems of entrepreneurial , engineering and administrative.

- Administrative system is ideal to maintain flexibility and effectiveness but may underutilize or misutilize resources.

• ANALYZER- The research shows that the defender and Prospector seem to reside at opposite ends of continuum of adjustment strategies.

- Between these two extreme we have analyzer and It is a unique combination of the two types.

- A true Analyzer is an organization that attempts to minimize risk while maximizing the opportunity for profit it combines the strengths of both the prospector and defender into a single system.

- The best word to describe Analyzer’s adaptive approach is “balance”.