iRobot 2015 Annual Report Download - page 88

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As part of our 2016 plan, we have made capital allocation choices that will require significant investments in our business
during the year in order to drive future revenue diversification for our home robots business unit and further revenue
acceleration in 2017, 2018 and beyond. In order to execute this plan we need to continue to strategically invest in a number of
areas to:
• Strengthen our marketing capabilities globally and accelerate worldwide consumer adoption of Roomba to maintain
our market-leading position in robotic vacuum cleaners;
• Better position ourselves in China to capture an even larger share of the rapidly growing market for robotic floor
care;
• Develop our wet floor care business to generate a material, secondary revenue stream;
• Scale our infrastructure to support future connected products;
• Explore, develop and grow adjacent non-floor care home robot products that can generate meaningful diversified
revenue streams; and
• Make continued operational improvements that can reduce product and operating costs.
Key elements of our strategy include:
Talent: Investing in our people and our culture. To develop and integrate the best technology and to be the most
innovative robotics company, we must attract the most talented people across our functional areas. Our success is directly
related to the talents and abilities of our workforce, and to a culture, work environment and leadership that supports its
development and growth. Our strategy focuses on transforming our company into one of the most attractive workplaces for
those seeking to participate in the robotics field.
Technology: Investing in robotic technology and products to build better robots. A better robot lives in our world by
moving around its environment more intelligently, by cooperating with the people it serves more compellingly, and by
physically interacting with its surroundings more effectively. We strive to achieve and sustain world leadership with best-in-
class technology in the areas of autonomy, navigation, cloud robotics and manipulation. Our superiority in user experience
comes from leveraging the powerful capabilities of the connected world combined with thoughtful, intuitive design. We are
committed to developing, maturing and integrating these technologies to support our business and make these a reality in our
products. We implement these technologies with strict cost requirements to support our high-margin, profitable business
model.
Tempo: Investing to improve our agility, speed and operational efficiency. We strive to increase our pace of innovation
and bring compelling products to market more quickly in a cost-effective and highly reliable form. We are committed to
refining our innovation and product development culture and processes to deliver results faster by increasing the pace of
development, gaining efficiencies through designing and leveraging modular architecture and reusable hardware and software
components across products, and utilizing remote software updates and cloud computing to provide rapid cycles for release of
new features in the installed base of our products.
Brand. We invest in building a company with a vision, that strives to solve difficult problems, and empowers people to do
more. We strive to achieve this image by designing high-quality robots with a recognizable look and feel and a streamlined
ease of use, by employing impactful marketing, and by continuing to give back to the community. We invest in building and
advertising one unified, global brand.
Technology
We are focused on behavior-based, artificially-intelligent systems developed to meet customer requirements in multiple
market segments. Our systems are designed to move around their environments intelligently, by cooperating with the people
they serve and by physically interacting with their surroundings.
Our robots rely on technology related to navigation, cloud robotics and manipulation to accomplish their missions
autonomously.
Autonomy. Our robots employ intelligent autonomy because, without autonomy, robots require continuous human
attention. Autonomy requires, among other things, advanced navigation and dynamically updated mapping. We seek to
achieve and sustain a leadership position in navigation and mapping to enable a higher level of autonomy.