Erik Peterson (A) Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

ERIK PETERSON INTEGRATIVE CASE ANALYSIS

1. What problems are faced by Erik Peterson? Group them as internal factors and external factors in two separate sections and use sub-headings for each factor?

Erik Peterson was a 29 years old, young and energetic person, who was a native of Colorado and recently completed his MBA degree after the completion of the BS and Master’s degree in biological engineering from MIT. He had earned an experience of three years as a management consultant in the telecommunication and pharmaceutical sector. He was very competent and collaborative towards his professional and personal life; therefore most of the people praised him once they met him. After completing his internship at a well-reputed medical device manufacturing company, Peterson had made a choice to join the Scientific Materials group of medical device manufacturer. He was appointed as a product manager, in charge of marketing and sales of the Biometra’s Catheter. Right after his appointment, he realized that the new product had a number of problems regarding its marketing and launch that had made the problem a high profile issue for the company’s future sustainability and market growth. The problems that were faced by Peterson are broadly divided into the following two categories.

Internal Factors

Ineffective Job designing: - There was no proper framework for the Peterson’s job, as instead of reporting Jenkins, Peterson was required to report Jeff Hardy, who was the vice president of control and planning of the peripheral vascular division. Although, from Exhibit-1 of the case it was clear that according to the organizational structure of the company, Peterson was required to report Hardy but Jenkins had a different mindset towards the launch of a new or the first medical device of the company. According to his perception and self-made strategy, if the company failed to successfully launch an industrial product to the market and failed to generate expected sales from that launch, he would immediately replace the former product manager and asked the new manager to report directly to him till the achievement of the expected sales target. Therefore, Peterson was confused by his reporting structure and requirements of his job.
Lack of experience regarding product development: - Peterson had very limited experience in the overall medical device industry, especially in the development and promotion of a new product because being a fresh graduate it was his first professional engagement. Besides his limited experience, he also lacked the supervision of experienced and co-operative superiors. He was also promoted to the position of acting General Manager with overall authority to supervise and run the Biometra’s Operations. Therefore, it was very difficult for him to handle the situation and needed a serious and experienced superior, who could guide and assist him to perform his duties effectively.
Lack of Confidence: - Peterson was not confident enough to deal with his executives and ask them about his reporting structure and job requirements. Although, he knew that he had to report, Jenkins related to the progress of the work and other issues but still he was asked to report Jeff Hardy without any formal guidelines.
Personal Clashes with Cantor and Green: - Peterson was unable to convince five significant key opinion leaders (KOL) to use the Biometra’s Catheters right after its launch and give their feedback upon its effectiveness and market compatibility. In order to deal with this problem, the company’s headquarters at Los Angeles had sent two people i.e. DR. Scott Green, group vice president of regulatory and clinical affairs for medical devices and Karen Cantor, the special project assistant and attorney of Scott Green to join the launch team. Although, Peterson had got some relief after their joining but it was nullified due to the personal clashes that he had with both the persons during his summer orientation session at SciMat. Due to the presence of these clashes, Peterson was unable to participate in the process of negotiation with these KOL’s and was also not interested to get report from the Green and Cantor.

External Factors

Ineffective Validation Process of Biometra’s Catheter: - Initially the company had set its manufacturing facility in Woburn to create prototypes for product testing and development but soon after they realized that these arrangements would be much more expensive for the company due to high real estate and labor cost. Therefore, Jenkins had decided to outsource the manufacturing function to Costa Rican manufacturers because they had a higher number of FDA-Certified production facilities and enough experience to meet all the manufacturing complexities and requirements of Catheter manufacturing. The Costa Rican facilities were also an attractive choice for the company because of the low labor and other operational costs. Soon after giving that project to the Costa Rican manufacturers, Peterson realized that the validation process of manufacturing equipments had fallen seriously behind schedule. The devices were so poorly assembled that they failed to consistently meet the standard specifications set by the company and FDA. Therefore, Peterson had personally visited the manufacturing facilities and got a bit satisfied by their modern machinery and equipments but the contractors continued to have issues in validating the manufacturing process of Biometra’s Catheter while the facility director was unable to provide any reasonable cause of the issue...............

Erik Peterson at Biometra Case Solution

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Describes the challenges faced by a recent MBA graduate in his job as general manager of the mobile phone company owned by the parent company. Raises issues of corporate relations department and the difficulties faced by an inexperienced manager who seem to get a little support. Redisguised version of the previous case. "Hide
by John J. Gabarro Source: HBS Premier Case Collection 18 pages. Publication Date: November 17, 1993. Prod. #: 494005-PDF-ENG