{ "item_title" : "The Dynamics of Innovation", "item_author" : [" Klaus Brockhoff", "Alok K. Chakrabarti", "Jürgen Hauschildt "], "item_description" : "Jorg Bensinger, a group head of Audi corporation's R&D depart- ment, had been waiting for long to find a chance to advertise his idea of a four-wheel drive for passenger cars to one of the board mem- bers. Favorable experiences had been collected in drive tests with the lItis, a jeep-like car developed for use in the German army. The ex- periences showed extremely good performance on icy roads and in snow. Bensinger's chance came in February of 1977, when he could talk to Ferdinand Piech, then R&D vice president of Audi and a technology buff. At this time Audi wasn't quite considered as a tech- nological leader in the public. Technology based innovations were expected from Mercedes or Porsche by many customers. Piech, Ben- singer, and others sensed that introducing the four-wheel drive to passenger cars could initiate a strategic change. Under great secrecy development work and prototype construction were commissioned. One obstacle seemed to be space requirements for the gear-box. Hans Nedvidek, former race-track engineer in the Mercedes team, was assigned to the team, and he developed an ingenious solution to the problem. It took until September of 1977 until other board mem- bers were informed, and after some rallying the board found a con- sensus in the next month to authorize further development steps for a four-wheel drive car. However, Audi is a subsidiary of Volkswagen Corp. The accord of the much bigger mother had to be secured.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/3/54/065/659/3540656596_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "169.99", "online_price" : "169.99", "our_price" : "169.99", "club_price" : "169.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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