MBA 580 Module 3 Project Milestone One Innovation Approach example

Milestone One: An Innovation Approach for Connected Vehicle Features at a Composite U.S. Automaker

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

MBA 580: Innovation and Strategy for High-Performance Organizations

Module Three Project Milestone One

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

Milestone One: An Innovation Approach for Connected Vehicle Features at a Composite U.S. Automaker

The Competitive Problem

Crestline Motor Company, a composite mass-market U.S. automaker, sells well-built, reliable vehicles, but its cars change little after they leave the dealer. Competitors increasingly sell vehicles that connect to the internet, receive software updates, report their own maintenance needs and offer new features during ownership. Researchers describing smart, connected products argue that such capabilities change not only products but the boundaries of industries, as value shifts toward data, software and services (Porter & Heppelmann, 2014). As a middle manager asked to lead a cross-functional team on this initiative, my task in this milestone is to recommend how Crestline should approach adding Internet of Things capabilities to its vehicles.

Customer Needs

Innovation should start from needs rather than technology. Crestline's own customer research and dealer feedback point to four. Individual drivers want fewer surprises: breakdowns, unexpected repair bills and trips to the dealer for problems that could have been caught early. They also want their vehicle to stay current, as their phones do, rather than feeling outdated after two years. Fleet customers, such as rental and delivery companies that buy about 15 percent of Crestline's vehicles, want data on location, fuel use and maintenance to reduce operating costs. And all customers want safety improvements, provided they trust how their data is used.

Four Feature Options

Four connected-vehicle options could meet these needs. Remote diagnostics and predictive maintenance would use onboard sensors to detect developing problems and alert the owner and dealer before a failure. Over-the-air software updates would allow Crestline to fix software issues, improve performance and add features without a dealer visit. A fleet telematics service would give commercial customers dashboards on location, fuel and maintenance. Vehicle-to-everything communication would let cars exchange safety information with other vehicles and roadside infrastructure. Table 1 assesses them.

Table 1

Assessment of Connected Vehicle Options

Note. Composite assessment based on internal and industry information.

How to Innovate: Build or Partner

The approach matters as much as the features. Crestline's engineers are strong in mechanical systems and manufacturing but thin in software, data analytics and cloud services, which are central to every option. Building all of that internally would take years and require hiring hundreds of software engineers in competition with technology firms. Open innovation offers another path: using external technologies and partners alongside internal development, and recognizing that valuable knowledge often lies outside the firm (Chesbrough, 2003). Crestline should own the parts of the connected vehicle that define the customer relationship and partner for the parts that are becoming commodities. That means building in-house the vehicle software platform and over-the-air capability, which control how customers experience the car over time, while partnering with established providers for cloud infrastructure, cellular connectivity and fleet telematics dashboards.

Privacy and Cybersecurity as Requirements

Connected features create new obligations. Vehicles would collect location and driving data, so Crestline must give customers clear choices about what is collected and shared and must not sell driving data without explicit consent. Over-the-air updates make the vehicle reachable remotely, so security must be designed into the architecture from the start, with signed software, isolated safety systems and a process for responding to vulnerabilities. Several markets now require automakers to demonstrate a cybersecurity management system for new vehicle types. These are not features to add later; a single breach or data scandal could damage trust in the brand more than any feature could build it.

Organizational Requirements

Adding connected features will test Crestline's organization as much as its technology. Today, each vehicle program is run by a chief engineer whose success is measured by cost, weight, quality and launch timing, and software is treated as one component among hundreds, sourced mostly from suppliers. A connected-vehicle strategy needs a different logic. Someone must own the software platform across all vehicle lines, not just one model; customer data must flow from vehicles to engineering, service and marketing; and products must be managed over their whole life, since features can be improved after sale. That requires three changes: a vehicle software organization with authority across programs, a data team that turns diagnostic signals into maintenance alerts and design improvements, and new metrics such as active connected users and feature adoption alongside traditional launch measures. Research on established firms suggests that separating new capabilities from the existing organization, while linking them through senior leadership, helps protect them from being absorbed by established priorities (Tushman & O'Reilly, 1996). The strategic plan in Milestone Two will define how that structure would work day to day and how the software organization would coordinate with the chief engineers who still own each vehicle.

Recommended Phased Approach

Crestline should proceed in three phases. In phase one, over the next eighteen months, it should launch remote diagnostics and predictive maintenance on its best-selling models, together with a fleet telematics service offered through a partner, because both are technically ready, meet clear customer needs and generate early revenue and data. In phase two, beginning with the next vehicle platform, it should introduce a centralized electrical architecture that supports over-the-air updates, the capability that will matter most over time but requires the most internal change. In phase three, it should join industry pilots of vehicle-to-everything safety without leading them, since that option depends on infrastructure and other manufacturers. This sequence builds capability and customer trust step by step while positioning Crestline for the discontinuous shift toward software-defined vehicles that research on established firms warns is easy to miss (Christensen, 1997).

Next Steps

Milestone Two will turn this approach into a strategic plan: the cross-functional team needed, the resources and timeline, the metrics for each phase and how the initiative will be managed alongside Crestline's existing product development process.

References

Chesbrough, H. W. (2003). Open innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Harvard Business School Press.

Christensen, C. M. (1997). The innovator's dilemma: When new technologies cause great firms to fail. Harvard Business School Press.

Porter, M. E., & Heppelmann, J. E. (2014). How smart, connected products are transforming competition. Harvard Business Review, 92(11), 64-88.

Tushman, M. L., & O'Reilly, C. A., III. (1996). Ambidextrous organizations: Managing evolutionary and revolutionary change. California Management Review, 38(4), 8-30. https://doi.org/10.2307/41165852