Question

MotorCar, a major automobile company headquartered in Detroit, is concerned about being left behind in the race to produce autonomous vehicles. There remains much uncertainty regarding the future of autonomous vehicle technology. Some industry experts say fully self-driving cars could be brought to market within a couple of years. Others believe the technology could take decades to develop. And still others are skeptical that the technology will ever be safe enough to bring to the automobile mass market. Further, in addition to safety and technological hurdles, there are regulatory obstacles as well. However, MotorCar has decided that it needs to innovate.

The company is considering (1) increasing funding to its existing R&D department to expand to the development of AI (artificial intelligence) technology, needed for self-driving vehicles; (2) launching a fully owned subsidiary (a new company that it owns and controls) focused exclusively on AI; or (3) partnering with a major Silicon Valley tech company that has already made considerable progress on AI technology.

Required:
What do you see as some of the potential benefits and risks of these different organizational approaches?

Answer 1

(1) increasing funding to its existing R&D department to expand to the development of AI (artificial intelligence) technology, needed for self-driving vehicles

This strategy would produce the benefit of puttinig the company on the edge of the development of AI in order to produce driverless vehicles.

The risk is that the investment could be too high for the initial benefit, since there is no certainty that driveless cars will be in the market in the short-term.

(2) launching a fully owned subsidiary (a new company that it owns and controls) focused exclusively on AI

This strategy would produce a similar benefit as the strategy above. However, it could also benefit from a little bit less administrative control because in this case, the AI development would be in charge of a subsidiary, not a division.

The risk is the same as above: initial investments may be too high for the initial benefits.

(3) partnering with a major Silicon Valley tech company that has already made considerable progress on AI technology.

This strategy produces the benefit of requiring less investment while still putting the company on the edge of AI research. However, the risk lies in loss of control over the thecnology, and possible future conflicts with the partner company.