Outsourcing Innovation at Sasken Technologies

Executive summary
Student’s name
Institutional affiliation
Course code and name
Instructor’s name
Date
Executive summary
Outsourcing for innovation comes with various risks, including cultural and social isolation, potential data privacy breaches, and unemployment. The capabilities to manage these risks vary from one company to another. If a company cannot effectively manage the involved risks, the chances are high that the innovation will not be a success. The leading companies of the near future will be those who embrace a strategic outsourcing model that provides the most competitive advantage by addressing issues head-on. The goal is a strong and sustained competitive advantage, not just short-term cost savings. This paper will focus on the case of outsourcing innovation at Sasken Technologies.
The client was aware that the outsourcing process of making a satellite phone could incur various challenging. Outsourcing for innovation is complex because it presents the vendor and the client with various risks. An example of the risks incurred in the case of Sasken Technologies are delays caused by customs procedures (Sridhar & Vadivelu, 2017). The transportation of hardware prototypes to Indi from Europe would take longer than planned. Such delays also delayed the process taken of making the satellite phone. This presented a challenge for both the vendor and the client.
While acquiring any new and innovative product, some risks would need to be taken into consideration. One of the risks present in the case of Sasken Technologies was the possibility of data protection breaches. In this case, making a satellite phone required storing sensitive customer information inside Sasken's mainframe without any physical security measures. According to the case study, some software and hardware that reached Sasken Technologies had bugs. Removing such bugs played an important role in facilitating the manufacturing of a quality product. This risk was minimized by developing software that was, in turn, used to remove the bugs from the satellite phone parts (Sridhar & Vadivelu, 2017). Another risk outlined in the case study is that the battery malfunctioned a week before the phone's launch. The risk occurred due to a technical problem. However, it was mitigated by ensuring that the technical error was corrected in Europe before the launch date. A volcanic eruption also disrupted the entire process because the ashes thrown in the air led to the closure of the European airspace. However, this was a natural calamity, a type of risk that the c...