In the Vapor Case Study
Introduction
Basically, Linda is facing the dilemma of deciding how to respond to the company’s management’s decision to abandon the potentially revolutionary gaming platform that they have been working on for a couple of excruciating and exhausting months in an effort to scare of its competitors and discourage them to research and develop a highly competitive product—something which Linda’s team eventually succeeded in doing that’s why their project is being slowly abandoned in the first place .
If given the chance to speak with the management, I would express firm opposition to the initial decision. I would present the following short letter to Thomas Hale and the company’s management. This option was chosen because an open letter would be formal; it can also be lengthy. It offers the freedom, flexibility, and formality needed for someone to express her rational thoughts and position on the issue to a person or group of authority .
Creating the Communication
The creation of the communication was focused on writing a formal but facts-filled letter addressed to the management. This was chosen in order to be formal yet vocal enough regarding Linda’s position on the issue.
The Final Product
Dear Management Team Members
This is Linda, one of the technical specialists working on possibly the company’s greatest gaming console product ever. It pains me to hear that the company’s management team has decided to pull the plug for this project due to several reasons. This open letter is aimed at convincing the people at the upper management to turn the decision around and allow us to have our key product released to the market within the next few months, ideally before the final month of the slow pullout program—basically a bargaining proposal if you will.
Firstly, technological innovation is one of the most important, although intangible assets, in almost any industry . And so far, there are only a few points in the history of gaming consoles when a revolutionary product has been introduced. Perhaps one of the most revolutionary products ever released in the said industry was the first iteration of Sony Corporation’s Play Station. Released in 1995, Sony’s Play Station was the most popular gaming console in the 32-bit era of video games; it sparked huge growth in the CD-ROM industry as most of the gaming developers hoped to partner with the gaming console’s rapidly increasing popularity . Being patronized by millions of users worldwide, the release of this revolutionary product not only helped Sony Corporation, its developer, to generate huge profits over the course of the next decade (as a result of record console sales); it also cemented the company’s status as one of the formidable gaming console developing companies in the planet.
Now, the reason why Sony Corporation’s history is being discussed is because of the huge similarity between its situation and that of Gink Corporation. We are on the verge of a great discovery and we are scrapping this golden opportunity to leave a mark, a legacy even, in the gaming console industry.
Secondly, the product’s release would put the company in a position where it would take its competitors at least a couple of years before they could catch up and release their own version of the potentially successful product. Having worked with the proposed product’s development first-hand, I can confidently say that this product can easily be the next big thing in the gaming console market, similar to how Sony’s Play Station revolutionized its market.
Thirdly, we have nothing to lose if we are going to push through with the product’s release because we already have finished the trickiest parts of the product development. It would certainly be a waste if the company would just scrap the project eventually. This would also be considered as a loss of a great opportunity to make it big in this highly volatile market.
So, I am asking for your consideration to give us at least half a year to finish the product and release it to the market before completely pulling out the plug. The company has nothing to lose and a lot of things to gain, after all.
Sincerely,
Linda
References
Reeves, L. (2016). The best way for an employee to communicate with a boss. Chron Demand Media, http://work.chron.com/way-employee-communicate-boss-8620.html.
Sheehan, R. (2014). Technical Communication Strategies for Today Global Edition. Chapter 6 In the Vapor Case Study, 165-166.
The Fallible Investor. (2010). Technology and Competition. Comments from an Australian Value Investor, http://thefallibleinvestor.com/2010/04/09/technology-and-competition/.
Time Inc. (2016). A History of Video Game Consoles. Time Inc, http://content.time.com/time/interactive/0,31813,2029221,00.html.
