Innovation Dimensions in the Industrial Product Design Landscape: East vs. West Comparison Case Study

Under the supervision of the Operations and Information Management department, Victor Castro and I sought to re-create an innovation framework to effectively measure quality of innovation in companies. In this paper, we outline the process of creating the Innovation Spider Web and testing its effectiveness. Assuming global applicability, I then use the web to understand different points of innovation for competing companies in the U.S. vs. China that have gained worldwide financial success. Considering the limited scope, I’ve set some boundaries. Due to contextual circumstances, the paper focuses particularly on companies in the industrial product design landscape from late 1990s to today. The 3 case studies outlined look at main comparable competitors with headquarters in U.S. and China respectively. These companies are #1 and #2 globally, with China leading the way. The purpose of the case studies is to set up for generation of hypothesis of the posed question... Is China capable of innovation? Would these financially successful Chinese companies have higher innovation ratings than U.S. companies? Are there certain dimensions that tend to stand out for these more “innovative” companies? These are some of the questions that the paper aims to answer.