Innovation at UPS: What Can Brown Do For You? The principal industry in which UPS participates can simply be described as package delivery. The company provides time-definite delivery services and leads their competitors in this industry. The main competition for UPS are companies such as FedEx, United States Postal Service and the international counterparts of these companies. UPS has transformed itself from a company known only for delivering packages to a company that has become world renown for providing business solutions to companies of all types and sizes. The company had been very successful in employing the previous dominant business model of increasing efficiency in ongoing business activities in order to lower costs and realize greater profits. Management stressed small innovations that carried the company a long way to increase efficiency. These small adaptations take the form of simple technological innovations such as the creation of scanners that sense package shape and allow for greater efficiency in the shipping hubs to more abstract adaptations such as inventing technology to route delivery trucks in such a way that left turns were minimized in an effort to avoid idle time at stoplights and save gas. These changes, among countless others, greatly increased their efficiency, reduced costs, and increased profitability in the parcel delivery aspect of business operations. The company went from messenger services to truck delivery services and eventually evolved into a global company that used its own planes to transport parcels throughout the world. Despite the company’s success, management realized that in order for continued growth the company would have to get creative and use their assets in a way that would inspire growth and new areas of profitability – they would have to innovate. The key to this was using the company’s key assets in a manner that would allow for growth and not simply efficiency gains or cost reductions. Figuring out what...