Ensuring Innovation at Method Park (Case 2012-01)

Case summary

Erich Meier, VP of product management at software product firm Method Park, has to decide on how to position his company for innovation and future growth. The company is getting buried by a large number of one-off feature requests by its established customers. This work on custom features rarely makes it into the main product and keeps valuable resources away from product innovation. The VP needs to make a hard decision: Satisfy existing customers and endanger future market leadership or focus on innovation and risk alienating well-paying customers?

Example case question [1]

  • Should Method Park disrupt its customers? If so, how?

Case difficulty cube [2]

  • Analytical dimension: average
  • Conceptual dimension: difficult
  • Presentation dimension: average

Freely available materials

Materials for lecturers