Reference no: EM133899337
Assignment:
Cell phones are nothing new. But imagine if you got to help develop the new phone from Amazon. Would you it slide open to have double touch screen so you can do two things at once? Would it allow you to video call several of your friends at once? Would you be able to use your phone as a USB drive and let it attach to computers or projectors for presentations? Or would you design it to fit the business niche, with advanced teleconferencing abilities so that you could deliver a presentation and run a meeting all through your phone from anywhere?
Lap 126 is Amazon's private skunk works that employs over 1600 people. The lab spent the past five years developing amazon's new smartphone called the fire phone. It includes sensors that are allow phone users to operate the phone and play games without having to touch the screen. The phone also has infrared cameras that allow images to move with the user and shows images in 3D.
Development of the fire phone began in 2009 and was hindered by technical and organizational challenges. Employees were tasked with the mission of creating a phone that would be different and better for Amazon's most engaged customers. To do so, teams were created and put in charge of finding the right cameras, how to stabilize the 3D effect, how to use camera tracking for scrolling and interacting with the menus, how to enhance the integration with the Amazon app store and prime, and how to make customers aware of the new features. Leadership on the project changed several times, with CEO Jeff Bezos even stepping in to lead the project. The teams themselves have to deal with conflicts among one another, balancing the desires of management, the drive to make something cool, and the budgetary and technological requirements.
In designing the Fire Phone, Amazon employees were tasked with being very creative. What the different feature teams did to come up with creative ideas for the phone? How does Amazon evaluated the team's success?