Nvidia's Strategic Plan with Mission and Vision for Sustainable Innovation

Nvidia Sustainable Development
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August 14, 2022
Understanding the importance of strategic plans for developing and implementing sustainable innovation is important for any manager or leader. It allows him to have a concrete and easy-to-follow guide for every situation or contingency or improve his capacity to make sound decisions. In line with this, this paper will focus on one of the leading and famous publicly-traded companies, Nvidia. This includes an insight into the company itself, including its strengths, weaknesses, strategic goals, and corporate strategic plan, among others. In line with this, it is the author's belief that balancing sustainability with innovation and profits is essential to ensure the long-term growth of the company and the world as a whole. 
NVIDIA Basic Information
               Nvidia is one of the most famous companies when it comes to the development and production of gaming-related products such as graphic cards. Notably, its products are most commonly known to be parts of graphic cards used for gaming and other entry-level purposes. However, although most of its revenues are generated from graphics card production, the company has five primary revenue sources, which include gaming (45%), data center (41.8%), original equipment manufacturer (3%), professional visualization (8%), and automotive (2%). Nevertheless, since its main revenue stream is related to graphics card sales, most of its innovative energies are also dedicated to such. 
               In line with this, NVIDIA's main mission statement is "to provide the latest NVIDIA news on products, technologies, and events. To highlight and engage with our fans". In contrast, the company's vision statement is "we foster an environment that motivates our employees, empowering them to work as one integrated team." Additionally, it is worth noting that the company's website noted that "NVIDIA's latest corporate responsibility report shares our efforts in empowering employees and putting to work our technologies for the benefit of humanity."
These two are some of the core tenets of the company. 
               Based on the company's mission, vision, and CSR statement, the author believes that sustainable innovation should focus on the continuous development of new technologies, which should help reduce its carbon footprint while still meeting the increasing demands of its consumers in various market sectors.
Strategic Goals
Current Strategic Goals
               NVIDIA's current strategic goals are in line with its mission and vision, which include (1) "advancing the GPU computing platform, (2) extending its technology and platform leadership in AI and visual computing, and (3) advancing the leading autonomous vehicle platform, and (4) leveraging the intellectual property it already owns" (Teske, 2018). Going back to the aforementioned mission and vision, it becomes clear that the company's main focus is an innovation by improving its GPU computing platforms for all types of usage and maintaining its competitive advantage against other companies. While these are all strategic in nature, the author of this article believes that it missed two strategic components, namely; (1) engaging with their clients and (2) promoting sustainable innovation. 
Sustainable Innovation
               As mentioned early in this report, the focus of this strategic goal is primarily sustainable innovation. While this might seem narrow compared to the company's overall goals, the author believes that promoting sustainability would benefit it on all fronts. Sustainable innovation is defined as the company's continuous improvement and development of new products that have the long-term aim of creating both economic profit and social, economic, and environmental advantages for its clients. Given the company's circumstances, the author believes that sustainable innovation's direct and indirect benefits could help achieve the company's mission and vision for future developments.
               One of the benefits of sustainable innovation is an increased improvement in the company's ability to meet its production goals. In one study done by (Kneipp et al., 2019), the authors found out that the most successful companies these days strongly balance sustainability and innovation to foster innovation. This includes the improvement of its capacity to meet production goals. This capacity, in line with the GPU shortage, will be discussed further in the succeeding sections. 
               Another benefit of sustainable development is improving the company's ability to connect with its consumers. The company aims to "engage with its consumers," as its mission statement provides. A recent survey states that about 30% of consumers these days prefer to purchase sustainable products, which help improves the company's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (Petro, 2022). 
               Ultimately, the author of this article that due to the advantages of focusing on sustainable innovation, NVIDIA's corporate strategic plan should aim to balance sustainability and profits, with the end goal of creating new technologies (i.e., remote GPUs) to reduce its environmental impact further. 
SWOT and PEST Analysis
               In line with the company's sustainable goals, this section will conduct a SWOT and PEST analysis of the company. 
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
               NVIDIA is one of the leading publicly-traded tech companies with an established production line, robust financial performance, and broad consumer base. Accordingly, some of the company's strengths are the following: 
1 High-quality Products
2 Strong Financial Performance
3 Product leverage and portfolio
4 Diversification in new markets
5 Skilled production and labor force
 
High-quality Products.
               NVIDIA's products are considered high-quality by its individual, professional, or industrial clients. It won several awards from various prestigious institutions such as Fortune 2002 Fastest Growing companies and 2007 Forbe's company of the year (Reuters.com, 2007). Throughout its history, the company has also been in the front of various innovations, such as its invention of the GPU in 1999, its development of visual processing technologies for Playstation in 2003, and even powering the world's fastest supercomputer in 2010 (Nvidia.com, n.d.). This suggests that the company has always been at the forefront of innovation in the semiconductor industry and will more likely continue to be in the years to come. 
Strong Financial Performance.
               Nvidia's financial status is also highly robust despite external circumstances. In 2020, the company and the whole market suffered a graphics card shortage due to external factors such as the Covid-19 Pandemic and the silicon chip shortage (McLoughlin, 2022). Nonetheless, the company was able to maintain its revenues, earning over $5 billion during the GPU shortage, which was reported to be 61% year-over-year (Faulkner, 2021). In fact, an analysis of the company's share prices over a five-year period suggests that it even increased despite the pandemic and the virus, with recent reports showing the company "reported record revenue for the first quarter ended May 1, 2022, of $8.29 billion, up 46% from a year ago" (NVIDIA.com, 2022).
Product Leverage and Portfolio.
                The company also holds a strong portfolio of products developed in line with its semiconductor technologies. While its main focus is revenues generated from the gaming sector (45%), market analysis shows that it also has other competitive products for personal and industrial uses. It is also the number 1 graphics card producer in the market. 
Diversification in New Markets.
               The company has clients and supplier networks around the world. In the United States alone, news reports suggest that companies like Tesla, Google, Amazon, and Facebook purchase their graphics card from Tesla even though Google is also producing its own silicon chips at scale (Novet, 2019). In the world, the company reported that it had established networks in over 90 countries.
Skilled Production and Labor Force.
               Finally, the company has established production sites and a labor force around the globe. It primarily produces in the United States while outsources its products in technologically-developed regions like Taiwan. 
Weaknesses
               Centralization.
               One of the main weaknesses of Nvidia is the centralization of both its headquarters and production facilities. As stated earlier, most of the company's production facilities are made in the United States, while others are only under contracts with other production facilities. 
               Research and Development.
One of the main problems Nvidia has to address is its lagging research and development (R&D) budget compared to its significant technological threats. Based on its fact sheet, the company has currently invested about $5.7 billion in its R&D, with $3.9 billion for its chip production capabilities (Ballard, 2021). Apple has even promised a "tens of billions" budget for chip R&D (Morris, 2021).
Although this is higher compared to others, news reports state that governments are now allotting R&D budgets for chip manufacturing capacities, s...