Raising money to invest in innovation is hard. Companies both large and small work to strike a balance between executing an existing business model and thinking ahead to advance their business. As individuals think critically about how their business should move forward, they should first get a 360-degree view of their environment. This journey starts with research on the current state of the business and critical thinking questions that can help leaders drill down deeper.

Prompt
In this blog post, you will take on the role of the recently-promoted chief innovation officer (CIO) of an established U.S.-based company of your choosing. It is within your responsibilities to discover new ways to improve an existing product or service in North America, or to introduce a new product or service to the market that will give the company a market edge over competition and fit within the company’s core competencies. For the purposes of this blog post, and for this entire course, you will do the latter.

The new product or service must be something that cannot be easily duplicated and takes into account consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP). If a consumer doesn’t have a problem or need for the product or service offered, they will not be willing to exchange money for the solution.

The first step of such an undertaking requires research and an examination of the selected company’s financials and current resources. Moreover, this new product or service offering must leverage the strengths of the company.

Using MarketLine, Yahoo Finance, and the investor relations page on the company’s website, select and research an established company of your choice. Specifically, look at the company’s 10K Report with a focus on the company’s business in North America. You will continue to research and work with this company throughout this course in the milestones and project.

In your blog post, identify the company you researched and describe its potential new and unique product or service. Include an image of the company’s current SWOT from the Shapiro Library and address the following questions:

Value proposition: What is the company’s main business?
What value does the company deliver to the customer?
Profitability: Is the company currently profitable?
SWOT analysis strengths: What are the company’s main strengths to be leveraged to create a new product or service?
Product or service singularity: What is unique about the new product or service?
New product or service projections: How can the new product or service improve profitability? Note: this is an estimation based on research of the company’s current market position.
Guidelines for Submission
Your blog post must be between 400 and 800 words in length and be submitted as a Word document. Your blog post should be written in a professional voice and should be appropriately formatted for a blog. Any sources cited should use APA formatting.

Below are some additional resources for improving your blog:
How to Write a Blog Post for Beginners: This article is an introduction to writing blog posts.
12 Easy Ways to Improve Your Blog: This article examines important elements in developing your own blog.
Blogging Best Practices PDF: This bulleted list gives you a quick summary of the best practices top bloggers use.

Sample solution

Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell. 

In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.

God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.

Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.

To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.

 

References

Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.

Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies4(8), 487.

Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.

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