FULL PROJECT OVERVIEW
The goal of the strategy term project is to give you practical experience with the elements of strategic management. Each
assignment requires data collection about, and analysis of, the firm you select for this study. By the end of the final step of
this project, you will have gained practice in using key strategic management concepts and processes, increased your
understanding of the material, and developed real experience in conducting a complete strategic management analysis of a
company.
Step 1: Initial Firm Selection and Review
Select one company you are interested in learning more about, or a company from an industry that intrigues you; this will
be the company you will strategically analyze at the end of each chapter. Be sure to choose a company that makes its
details (for example, annual reports, number of employees, management structure, business model, and so forth) easily
available to the public. Since much of what you’ll be doing for each assignment is obtaining and analyzing data about the
firm, available access to firm’s details is especially important.
Selecting a Publicly Held Firm
The primary approach to this project is to select a publicly held firm. Many large firms (for example, Apple, Google, and GE)
have been widely reported on in the business and popular press, and a wealth of information is available on them. Other
medium-sized public firms, such as Tesla, Netflix, and BlackBerry, can be used as example firms for this project. One
cautionary note: For firms that are less than three years public or in industries that are not well-defined, it will take extra
effort to properly identify such items as competitors and suppliers. But if it is a firm you are truly motivated to study, the
effort can be quite rewarding.
Relevant data on all public firms can be freely obtained using web services such as Edgar (www.sec. gov/edgar.shtml). (For
guidance on how to pull data from the Securities and Exchange Commission website, ask your instructor to download
instructions from the Instructor’s Resources tab in Connect for the fourth edition. Annual reports for firms also are a
treasure trove of information. These reports and other quarterly update materials are often available from the firm’s own
website (look for “about us” or “investor relations” tabs, often located at the bottom of the company’s website).
Additionally, most university and public libraries have access to large databases of articles from many trade publications.
(Factiva and ABI/Proquest are two examples.) Company profiles of a variety of publicly listed firms are available at reliable
websites such as Hoovers.com and finance.yahoo.com. Many industries have quite active trade associations that will have
websites and publications that can also be useful in this process. Your local librarian can likely provide you with additional
resources that may be licensed for library use or that are otherwise not available online. Examples of these are Value Line
Ratings & Reports and Datamonitor.
STEP 1: COMPLETE OR ANSWER THE FOLLOWING
1. Provide a brief history of the company.
2. List the top management of the firm and note what experience and leadership skills the executives bring to the firm. If
it is a larger conglomerate, list both the corporate and business managers.
3. What is the principal business model of the firm? (How does the firm make most of its profits?)
4. Search for a vision, mission statement, and statement of values for your chosen firm. Note that not all organizations
publish these statements, so you may need to make inferences from the available information. Relevant information is
often available at the firm’s website (though it may take some searching) or is contained in its annual reports. You may
also interview a manager of the firm or contact investor relations. You may also be able to compare the official
statement with the business press coverage of the firm.
STEP 2: COMPLETE OR ANSWER THE FOLLOWING EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL ANALYSES
1. Are any changes taking place in the macroenvironment that might have a positive or negative impact on the industry in
which your company is based? Apply the PESTEL framework to identify which factors may be the most important in
your industry. What will be the effect on your industry?
2. Apply the five forces model to your industry. What does this model tell you about the nature of competition in the
industry?
3. Identify any strategic groups that might exist in the industry. How does the intensity of competition differ across the
strategic groups you have identified?
4. How dynamic is the industry in which your company is based? Is there evidence that industry structure is reshaping
competition or has done so in the recent past?
5. A good place to start with an internal firm analysis is to catalog the assets a firm has. List the firm’s tangible assets.
Then make a separate list of its intangible assets.
6. Now extend beyond the asset base and use the VRIO framework to identify the competitive position held by your firm.
Which, if any, of these resources are helpful in sustaining the firm’s competitive advantage?
7. Identify the core competencies that are at the heart of the firm’s competitive advantage. (Remember, a firm will have
only one, or at most a few, core competencies, by definition.)
8. Perform a SWOT analysis for your firm. Remember that strengths and weaknesses (S, W) are internal to the firm, and
opportunities and threats (O, T) are external. Prioritize the strategic actions that you would recommend to your firm.
Refer to the Implications for Strategic Leaders section on how to conduct a SWOT analysis and provide
recommendations building from strategic alternatives.
STEP 3: COMPLETE OR ANSWER THE FOLLOWING INNOVATION AND BUSINESS STRATEGIES QUESTIONS
1. Where does your firm position itself on the industry life cycle? What are the strategic implications?
2. What is the firm’s innovation strategy? Does it rely on incremental or radical innovations? Disruptive or architectural?
What are the competitive implications of the firm’s innovation strategies?
3. What attributes describe the current major customer segment for your firm? Are these changing? If so, is your firm
prepared to meet these new customer demands?
4. How does your firm organize for innovation? Does it use a closed or an open innovation approach? Is its current
approach working, or does it need changing? If it does need changing, in what way?
5. Does your selected business have differentiated products or services? If so, what is the basis for this differentiation
from the competition?
6. Does your firm have a cost-leadership position in this business? If so, can you identify which cost drivers it uses
effectively to hold this position?
7. What is your firm’s approach to the market? If it segments the market, identify the scope of com-petition it is using.
8. Using the answers to the preceding questions, identify which generic business strategies your firm is employing. Is the
firm leveraging the appropriate value and cost drivers for the business strategy you identified? Explain why or why not.
9. What suggestions do you have to improve the firm’s business strategy and strategic position?
10. Create a strategy canvas for your firm. Set on the horizontal axis an appropriate selection of the value curve items and
on the vertical axis, set the other industry segments (such as strategic groups) for comparison.
STEP 4: COMPLETE OR ANSWER THE FOLLOWING GLOBAL STRATEGY QUESTIONS
*** If your firm is already engaged in international activities, answer the following questions***
1. Is your company varying its product or service to adapt to differences in countries? Is the marketing
approach different among the nations involved? Should it be?
2. Is your firm working internationally to access larger markets? To gain low-cost input factors? To
develop new competencies? Is its approach in all three areas appropriate?
3. Which of the four global strategies is the firm using? Is this the best strategy for it to use? Why or
why not? (FYI: Exhibit 10.9 provides a summary of the four global strategies.)
*** If your firm is not now engaged internationally, answer the following questions***
1. Would your firm’s product or service need to be modified or marketed differently if it expanded
beyond the home country?
2. Does your firm have the potential to access larger markets by expanding internationally? Does it
have the possibility of lowering input factors with such expansion? Please explain why or why not.
3. If your firm decided to expand internationally, where does the firm reside on the integrationresponsiveness framework? (FYI: Refer to Exhibit 10.7 if needed.) What does this result say about
the “best” global strategy for your firm to use for international expansion?
STEP 5: COMPLETE OR ANSWER THE FOLLOWING DESIGN AND GOVERNANCE QUESTIONS
1. What is the organizational structure of your focal firm? Would you describe it as following a
traditional organizational structure or a holacracy? What key characteristics can you point to as
evidence? In what way has this structure had an impact on the firm’s competitive advantage?
2. Consider your firm’s competitive position and how it has responded to shifts in the external or
internal environments. What major strategic change should the firm seriously consider implementing to avoid inertia? Or if the firm is already facing inertia, what can it do to break it?
3. Find a list of the members of the board of directors for your firm. How large is the board? How many
independent (non-employee) members are on the board? Are any women or minorities on the
board? Is the CEO also the chair of the board?
4. Who are the largest stockholders of your firm? Is there a high degree of employee ownership of the
stock?
5. In reviewing press releases and news articles about your firm over the past year, can you find
examples of any actions the firm has taken that, though legal, may be ethically questionable?
6. You have now completed 12 modular assignments about your selected firm. You know a lot about
its mission, strategies, competitive advantage, and organization. Is this a company you would like to
work for? If you had $1,000 to invest in a firm, would you invest it in the stock of this firm? Why or
why not?
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