CEO of a company that is looking to change its fortunes through innovation.

Assume the role of the owner/CEO of a company that is looking to change its
fortunes through innovation. You are the CEO of Top Pet Products, Inc., a leading company in the pet novelty
toy business. Your mother started the business 30 years ago with a group of friends. They experimented parttime for years, with many failures along the way, until they developed an electric mouse that realistically
mimicked the movements of a real mouse, Speedy the Mouse. Speedy drove cats around the country crazy
and grew Top Pet Products with high profits. Top Pet Products rode Speedy to over $10 million a year in sales
and almost 100 employees and a manufacturing operation in California. Unfortunately, success breeds
imitation, and Speedy has faced heavy competition and declining sales. The company had developed some
new versions of Speedy over the years, like Zombie Speedy for Halloween, but those did little to stop the sales
decline.
You took charge of the company last year after your mother retired. Your initial assessment is that the company
had lost its entrepreneurial spirit and had no drive to develop new innovative products. The company is also
not as profitable as it really should be, given its sales. You believe the firm is just not being innovative in its
operational processes. Processes employed 20 years ago are still used today but are now impeding the
company’s progress.
You could sell off the company and the rights to Speedy to a larger competitor, but you really want to save your
family’s legacy and turn the company around. Many of your employees have been with the firm for ten years or
more. They are extremely loyal, and all have significant expertise related to the job. You want to keep them, but
the status quo is not acceptable.
After reading and viewing this week’s required resources, address the following in a brief paper with an
accompanying employee pamphlet:
Analyze the underlying challenges that Top Pet Products is experiencing.
Document five ideas from your research that you will implement at Top Pet Products to increase the
entrepreneurial spirit and create an organizational culture that encourages innovative ideas and initiatives from
all your employees. Please make sure the ideas are ethically sound.
Include how technology might be used to implement these five ideas, such as the use of social media or video
conferencing