Congratulations, you are now in charge of a multimillion dollar company. You manufacture sensors, which you market to other manufacturers. They put your products into the devices they sell. Your company was created when the government split a monopoly into identical competitors. As a monopoly, operating inefficiencies and poor product offerings were not addressed because:

• Increasing costs could be passed onto customers; and
• Mediocre products would sell because customers had no other choices.

Although last year’s financial results were decent, your products are getting old, your marketing efforts are falling short, your production lines need revamping and your financial management is almost nonexistent.

Competition in the post-monopoly era means you can no longer ignore these issues. If you do, competitors with better products and/or lower prices will take your market share.

Sensors are devices that observe physical conditions. For example, the average cell phone contains dozens of sensors that allow it to interpret touch, spatial orientation, and signal strength. New sensor businesses are created every day in areas as diverse as security, aeronautics and biomedical engineering. You are in a business-to-business market, not a direct-to-consumer market; the sensors your company manufactures are incorporated into the products your customers sell.