Applied Research Technologies, Inc: Global Innovation’s Challenges

A) Introduction
1°) ART
Applied research technologies, Inc is a huge corporate group of about 60 business units that all operate as a profit center. Now considerate as one of the technology world’s giant, its major divisions include-but are not limited to- healthcare, industrial automation, energy (extraction, conversion and transportation solutions for oil and gas) as well as heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems for residential, commercial and industrial markets. Through its very wide panel of expertise and experience, it benefits from massive funding possibilities that coincide with its corporate culture that consist in innovation and entrepreneurship.
Because of globalization, competition within the industrial sector has become pretty though, especially coming from fast developing countries like China, India or Brazil.
Basically the positive point in those developing markets is that the demand, on a very large point of view, is growing and specifically the one for water, either for drinking or not-for-drinking consumption.
Actually it is a well known fact that access to water is going to be one of the most important issues of our time, with a forecasted worldwide population of over 9 billion people by 2025.
Talking about figures and so as to illustrate the purpose above, the total US water industry on its own represents a market of over $106 billion.
To succeed in this era of killing competition ART, Inc and more especially its filtration unit, benefits from several internal resources that are as follows next.

2°) the filtration business unit:
In the past, the unit’s core line of the filtration business unit was the mobile water treatment, but new Chinese competitors appeared in the late 1990s, making an erosion of margins. Therefore ART decided to develop the next generation of filtration product.
But today after two high-profile new product’s failures, the unit