Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Innovation and fostering corporate entrepreneurship

Volkswagen is a highly innovative company. Innovation is one of the competitive advantages they have against their competitors. Normally they are the company to introduce a new feature in the industry and make it a must for the other brands such like- sliding doors, used not only in the automobile industry, cruise control, DSG- manual gearbox with automatic management, which changed the gear world forever, park assistant and so many more.
The company owns several research laboratories. Thy also work in cooperation with several good universities to exchange ideas, bring new people into their world and use fresh ideas. New technology is mainly developed for the motorsport world first. Their motorsport department is one of the best in the world even though it is not as famous as Ferrari or Mitsubishi. This is the department to create and experiment with new ideas and test them in the toughest environment. 
The fact that other brands gave up and just decided to use Volkswagen technology is indicative that the company has a lot to offer in the technology world. Volkswagen is not only looking for innovations in the technology used, they are also in search for managerial and service innovation. New specialized software for the company branches is released regularly. Even though, innovation is the job is specific teams and departments, that does not make the company less innovative than Google or 3M for instance. Innovations in the environmental issues such as long life services and bluemotion technology is something that distinguish the company from the rest. The fact that they did not follow the world craze about electric cars and hybrids, which are in fact not that ecological, they decided to follow their own part and make their automobiles really ecological and economical at the same time and became tho first brand to offer an engine that consumes just 1l/100 km, which should be like 240 miles for a gallon of petrol. If that is not innovation, nothing else is.

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