Case Evaluation
Ecton is going to position the company to be acquired but the board of directors and clinical advisors has some concerns about the ramifications of that plan. This paper evaluates Cannon’s Phase III Plan on March 1998. Cannon proposed a path for the next year containing five major points (Edward, 1999, 8 and 9). The bottom line of this proposal is positioning Ecton to be acquired by the end of the 1998. One of the crucial concerns of this acquisition is the possible effects on “Ecton’s product development process”. Another concern Cannon holds is the ability of Ecton to penetrate a very harsh market fills with big, established, and advanced manufacturers. Also, Cannon is not sure on how to approach specific market …show more content…

The first concern of Ecton’s board of directors and clinical advisors is the impact on their activities when acquired, specifically, the “product development process”. Cannon and his team left their previous company, Interspect, because of its way to handle their product development process. In other words, Ecton team wants to focus on its product instead of solving products’ problem or rescuing other project. Thus, Cannon and his partners will work in more freedom environment if they keep their company away from acquisition.

Action Plan
If Ecton machine passes the tests, Cannon should actively approach the big manufacturers, HP, Acuston or ATL. In this way, Ecton team will be focusing on developing their product and start working on a new product in parallel. The acquired company then will launch the production line for Ecton imaging system which expected not to take long time (because they share the same domain, ultrasound instrument knowledge). Since the future is for the contrast echocardiography, Ecton team may start research in this specific field. Ecton’s board of directors and clinical advisors may express their conditional approval of any acquisition based on the team core objective, which is their special product development process. Moreover, targeting global market, specifically, developing countries may help the