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    Opening The Valve

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    Himanshu Baranwal
    Valve was founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. It followed a decentralized structure that empowered employees and promoted innovation. In 2003, Valve launched Steam to digitally distribute games, helping the company succeed. However, new threats emerged from Sony and its PlayStation. Valve is now considering expanding into hardware manufacturing but this would require changes to its unique structure and culture and enter a crowded market. The company must carefully consider the risks of this strategic shift.

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    Opening The Valve

    Uploaded by

    Himanshu Baranwal
    60 views2 pages
    Valve was founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. It followed a decentralized structure that empowered employees and promoted innovation. In 2003, Valve launched Steam to digitally distribute games, helping the company succeed. However, new threats emerged from Sony and its PlayStation. Valve is now considering expanding into hardware manufacturing but this would require changes to its unique structure and culture and enter a crowded market. The company must carefully consider the risks of this strategic shift.

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    Opening the valve

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    Valve was founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. It followed a decentralized structure that empowered employees and promoted innovation. In 2003, Valve launched Steam to digitally distribute games, helping the company succeed. However, new threats emerged from Sony and its PlayStation. Valve is now considering expanding into hardware manufacturing but this would require changes to its unique structure and culture and enter a crowded market. The company must carefully consider the risks of this strategic shift.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    60 views2 pages

    Opening The Valve

    Uploaded by

    Himanshu Baranwal
    Valve was founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. It followed a decentralized structure that empowered employees and promoted innovation. In 2003, Valve launched Steam to digitally distribute games, helping the company succeed. However, new threats emerged from Sony and its PlayStation. Valve is now considering expanding into hardware manufacturing but this would require changes to its unique structure and culture and enter a crowded market. The company must carefully consider the risks of this strategic shift.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Name : Himanshu Baranwal Roll No : P39074

    Section B

    Opening the valve: From Software to Hardware

    A game development company “Valve” was founded by two ex-Microsoft employees Gabe
    Newell and Mike Harrington in 1996. Their game was first published in 1998 due to which
    company gained huge recognition and great sale numbers. This company had a super
    decentralized and super flexible structure with employee treating themselves as owners. The
    employee can choose their working hours and had full freedom for innovation. The mutual
    adjustment was the work culture that this company followed. The company never choose a
    specialized employee but always a multi-tasker who could write programs and work on image
    processing too. They were given free hand in the selection of new plans and strategies, the event
    formed a team called Cabals which was formed not on seniority or hierarchy but by giving name
    themselves. The appraisal process was also kind of unique here in which employees were rated
    among themselves.

    Then a lot of changes happened in the gaming market and it raised a threat to the valve as their
    products lacked innovation and differentiating factor. To counter it Valve launched STEM a
    digital distributing platform in 2003 which brought the company back on track and in the game.
    But privacy was still a major concern. In 2004 the company started selling online games just to
    get rid from claws of privacy. They covered the market base quickly and became the market
    leader in selling games online.

    In 2013 they faced another threat that is of Sony’s Play station. Valve started thinking to cop up
    this threat by entering into a segment of the big picture. It is trying to prospector approach by
    announcing bold and risky strategies which would let them occupy living room approach. So in
    the nutshell company wants to go for hardware manufacturing business which will certainly
    change is organization structure plus the risk followed. They even thought of outsourcing the
    work but that was against the vision of the company.
    So here is the dilemma situation if the company should expand or not. The working and
    organization structure of Valve is very much different from the other companies. They believe in
    giving freedom to its employees which enhances their innovation ability, productivity and
    creativity. Now if the company goes into manufacturing business then more standardization of
    procedures are needed and new workers for new roles are needed that would follow the
    standardized operating procedures. This field is new for the company to enter and the gaming
    industry is already getting flooded with a variety of products. So the company should take further
    steps in a very calculated way.

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