Texas Instruments Case Study

1) Strategy, culture, strength and weakness. Volume up and the price down is the key strategy at TI over the years. TI 's organizational culture can be summed by a "Do it ourselves" approach. TI is run by engineers for engineers. The company prefers to hire straight out of college and incentivizes employees with salaries and tenures in addition to a company culture that rarely fires. By this, TI cultivates loyal and more importantly proud employees. It is no surprise therefore that there is an almost obsessive dislike of other company 's products. TI 's culture both its strength and weakness as it was a source for breakthrough innovation whilst at the same time arrogance and corporate hubris which eventually tempered with their success. TI didn’t just want to be competitive in the markets it entered; it wanted to dominate them (hubris). 2) Decision to introduce the 9900 microprocessor. Competition at the time was just beginning to make 8-bit microprocessors. The 9900 microprocessor is a 16-bit microprocessor. TI believed that by introducing the 9900 microprocessor they could make competition (Intel being one of them) obsolete and become the new marketplace standard. This is a reflection of TI hubris. 3) Decision to develop a computer based on the 9900 microprocessor. In line with company 's "do it ourselves" culture, the decision to develop a computer based on 9900 microprocessors was mainly based on the fact that this chip was made by TI divisions. TI 's initial strategy was to have three market segments and ended up with one target segment, the home computer for the "every man". . TI neglected to take into their consideration both cost and suitability of the processor to this target audience. In terms of cost, this meant a higher cost to the consumer division than basing it on the more popular 8-bit micro-processors, which would in turn roll over to a higher cost to end consumer and thus making the computer less attractive to the "every-man".