Topic > Zipcar: advantages that the company can offer

Index“Robin Chase, Zipcar and an inconvenient discovery”ProblemsAlternative solutionsProposed solutions Foundation“Robin Chase, Zipcar and an inconvenient discovery”In the article “Robin Chase, Zipcar, and an Inconvenient Discovery”, Deborah Ancona and Cate Reavis talk about the birth of Zipcar, a car sharing company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Boston. The article is a case study on how the company was formed and the challenges it faced after its inception. The authors note that the ventures' founders were Robin Chase and Antje Danielson while Jean Hammond was Zipcar's first investor. Four months after launching the car-sharing start-up, its co-founder couldn't believe what she had discovered about the company's financial performance. Chase found that the company had generated less revenue than the founders had expected. Based on this discovery, the case reveals various issues affecting Zipcar, workarounds to the issues, and proposed solutions as discussed below. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayIssuesZipcar's leaders invested a lot of time in designing the company's website, formulating the pricing model, and raising investment funds (Ancona and Reavis, 2014) . As a result, the company failed to invest in the building technology that could have made it successful. Zipcar needed technology to connect people who wanted to use car sharing services. The creation of this technology required huge investments during the early stages of the company's life. However, Chase, the company's co-founder, did not take this into consideration because she devoted much of her and her teams' time to designing websites and raising money for investments. Some Zipcar team leaders had other jobs and as such could not be fully available to use their experience to help the business get off the ground. For example, Danielson was an engineering expert whose services were needed by Zipcar, but she had a full-time job at Harvard (Ancona and Reavis, 2014). Given this reality, Danielson worked nights for Zipcar and on weekends, bringing little of his experience to the company. Chase's brother Mark also worked with another company and couldn't find enough time to work for Zipcar. Chase overlooked competence and innovation when hiring because he felt people were capable of doing better under his leadership. For example, when he hired Oakley, he believed the man could handle small details of his company. Oakley was not an expert in the car sharing industry as he operated a bar and restaurant and as such, Chase's move to bring him into Zipcar showed his weakness in hiring teams and this could have contributed to the challenges the company faced in its initial stages. .Gender issues were also found in the hiring of workers at Zipcar. Chase claimed that some of the consultants hired by Oakley, such as Kefer Welch, were unfit to run Zipcar (Ancona and Reavis, 2014). She also claimed that Oakley tricked her into hiring Welch because she was a woman. The company failed to build wireless technology in the early 2000s as such technology was not available at that time. This technology was needed to unlock and lock cars and also to connect customers to Zipcar's servers. Based on its demerits and unavailability, Chase recommended delaying the use of the technology. Additionally, leasing cars from manufacturers has been a challenge for.