Study of an innovation: SMART

Résumé du document

The innovation that I have chosen to study is the car SMART. First, before explaining the reasons for this choice, I would like to delimit the word innovation. Indeed, what is the difference between invention and innovation? One can say that innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas, but Baumol has a better definition of innovation that is: "the recognition of opportunities for profitable change and the pursuit of those opportunities all the way through to their adoption in practice". Innovation is the economical application of invention. Before analysing this innovation, it could be accurate to describe a SMART car. SMART is famous for being easy to be customized, indeed there are many colours available as well as accessorizes.

Extraits

[...] Suppliers are considered as real partners; deeply involved in the fabrication of the car, for instance there are only paid when the last control of the car is successful. Smart is also an innovation in positioning. The positioning has been the most difficult aspect to delimit for MCC. Indeed they have changed many times their positioning. First, the Smart was launched for European urban markets, thanks to its small size; this car can be parked easily and uses only half a car place. They want to target an audience plugged into urban living. [...]

[...] Swatch's CEO really wants to revolutionize the automobile industry. He has also predicted that people would be more concerned about car pollution. To him, carmakers have to integrate environmental preoccupations (pollution, traffic jams, and no parks enough) in order to sell cars. That is why he wants this future car to be small, electric and cheap. After many setbacks, MCC is created in 1994 (Mercedes city car and then Micro compact car), and is a collaboration between Mercedes and Swatch. [...]

[...] Mercedes works towards half price in car parks, because Smart takes half a place. In France, an agreement has been found with Avis car renter): for a year, drivers of a Smart can rent a Megane or an Espace (both Renault) for a month. Eventually, Smart is also an innovation in paradigm. Indeed, the executive of Smart have chosen a different way to attract customers. They have not emphasized the technical and convenient qualities of the car; they preferred to appeal the spirit of the car. [...]

[...] Study of an innovation: SMART The innovation that I have chosen to study is the car SMART. First, before explaining the reasons of this choice, I would like to delimit the word innovation. Indeed, what is the difference between invention and innovation? One can say that innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas, but Baumol has a better definition of innovation that is: recognition of opportunities for profitable change and the pursuit of those opportunities all the way through to their adoption in practice”. [...]

[...] The Smart is mass produced in 1995 and is shown for the first time in the auto show” of Frankfurt in 1997. The definitive design is presented at the Parisian auto show in 1997. So the creation of Smart is quite original, but has this innovation been a success? Some data can help us to answer this question. The main goal as a matter of sales was to have sold by the end of 1999. Unfortunately in June 1999 there were less than sales. [...]