Family Business
›
Family Business
Family Business
›
Family Business
Family Business
Family Business

30 Ottobre 2025

Art and Science of Managing Paradox of Open Innovation

Autore: Prem Sagar Menghwar                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Abstract: In April 2021, Edward Robb, an entrepreneur, who has been running the family business for the past twenty years, looked back at the last decade’s performance of their companies Applied Medical Coatings and Robb Surgical. Applied Medical Coatings was born as a spinoff company from Metal Cladding in 2003. However, Metal Cladding was established in 1943 by Edward Hupt Robb’ great uncle of Edward Robb. In the last 75 years, Metal Cladding has been an industry leader in providing applied coating technologies that enhance products’ performance while increasing market sustainability at the optimum cost. Metal Cladding has mainly provided products and services to United States Federal Agencies and Armed Service Branches for nearly six decades. In comparison, Applied Medical Coatings (AMC) was established to provide services to the medical industry. The core capability of AMC is that it has the potential to design and develop multiple coating solutions according to the needs of its customers. The company values and uses feedback from its two main stakeholders- corporations and healthcare surgeons- to develop, design, and refine the products. Using a multiple-step iterative process, the company collaborates with stakeholders on developing a range of products manufactured in the USA. However, deliver at the same or lower price developed outside the USA, where production costs are much lower. To achieve this goal, the company collaborates, putting its core knowledge at risk. Each time it collaborates with partners, the company faces the classical paradox of open innovation – how to protect its knowledge while benefiting from external knowledge. So far, it has managed to preserve its internal knowledge and capabilities while collaborating with external stakeholders. However, a new partner has brought colossal business but has asked for complete information about the product development process. It has demanded that it inspects each step in order to ensure that the products meet the criteria. Edward doesn’t want to lose this big customer; however, he can’t also take the risk of sharing the core knowledge. Second, in 2013, another company, Rob surgical, was established as a spinoff company of applied medical coatings. This company works in collaboration with doctors and people who work at universities and has an idea about developing a new product. This company manufactures new medical devices and sells them directly in the market. This collaboration brings other communication challenges because doctors and engineers speak different languages. Besides this, the Covid-19 crisis has disrupted supply chain issues due to the lockdown and closing of elective hospital units. These challenges are critical and pose a risk to the sustainability of the companies; hence, Edward is thinking of approaching his father and engineering team, who has vast experience, and trying to find a way to address these issues to ensure the survival of his family business. Download Case Study Richiedi Teaching Notes

Case Studies

30 Ottobre 2025

Facing the tide of Covid: crisis management driving innovation: the Coccato e Mezzetti case

Autori: Antonio Majocchi, Luciano Fratocchi, Manuela Presutti                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Abstract: Coccato e Mezzetti S.r.l. (hereinafter C&M) – is a medium-sized enterprise in the funerary and sanitary business with around 60 employees located in Galliate, in the province of Novara in the North of Italy. The company was established on 25 October 1983 by Pasquale Coccato and Carlo Mezzetti, who equally share the ownership of the company. The current company is an evolution of C&M Snc, founded by the same partners in 1978. After an initial transfer of a 10% of shares to the Coccato family, in 2001, upon the death of the co-founder Carlo Mezzetti (2006) his heirs decided to sell the remaining 40% of the share capital to the Coccato family. The deal took place in December 2008. Today the company is a typical family firm with owners and top managers coming from the Coccato family. C&M Snc’s original goal was to carry out production and commercial activities in the funeral products sector. Over the years, the founders have created an entrepreneurial journey characterised by both diversification strategies and downstream integration, which led C&M, among other things, to produce textile products for the health sector and provide funeral services. The story of Coccato is a story of managerial agility where the company shows not only a capacity of adaptation to the evolving competitive contexts, but also a constant and steady ability to find and exploit new business opportunities by both leveraging internal resources and cooperating with external partners. Thanks to its ability, which it has developed over the years, to adapt to very different circumstances and to continuously look for new business opportunities, the company was able to successfully navigate through the Covid crisis that heavily impacted the area where the company is located. During the worst days of the pandemic, the company – in a very difficult context – was able to increase production and to start offering products for which there was a very high demand in Italy. Download Case Study Richiedi Teaching Notes

Case Studies