Knowledge in Strategy
Strategic Management
Strategic Management
Krutika dhakate
Kodak Vs Fuji
Kodak Vs Fuji Case study
Aditya Battalwar
Transformation series
Yes Bank - Transformation series
Vaibhav Gusain
Strategic Management Slides
Strategic Management Slides
Sreelaksmi M.
Strategic Management II Slides
Strategic Management II Slides and reading material
Ishan Agarwal
Strategy-A Brief Introduction
Strategy has been studied for years by business leaders and by business theorists. Yet, there is no definitive answer about what strategy really is. One reason for this is that people think about strategy in different ways. For instance, some people believe that you must analyze the present carefully, anticipate changes in your market or industry, and, from this, plan how you'll succeed in the future. Meanwhile, others think that the future is just too difficult to predict, and they prefer to evolve their strategies organically. Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes, authors of "Exploring Corporate Strategy," say that strategy determines the direction and scope of an organization over the long term, and they say that it should determine how resources should be configured to meet the needs of markets and stakeholders. Michael Porter, a strategy expert, and professor at Harvard Business School emphasizes the need for a strategy to define and communicate an organization's unique position and says that it should determine how organizational resources, skills, and competencies should be combined to create competitive advantage. While there will always be some evolved element of strategy, planning for success in the marketplace is important; and that, to take full advantage of the opportunities open to them, organizations need to anticipate and prepare for the future at all levels. For instance, many successful and productive organizations have a corporate strategy to guide the big picture. Each business unit within the organization then has a business unit strategy, which its leaders use to determine how they will compete in their individual markets. In turn, each team should have its own strategy to ensure that its day-to-day activities help move the organization in the right direction. At each level, though, a simple definition of strategy can be: "Determining how we are going to win in the period ahead." Strategy can be classified into 3 components: Corporate Strategy Business Unit Strategy Team Strategy Corporate Strategy In business, corporate strategy refers to the overall strategy of an organization that is made up of multiple business units, operating in multiple markets. It determines how the corporation as a whole supports and enhances the value of the business units within it; and it answers the question, "How do we structure the overall business so that all of its parts create more value together than they would individually?" Corporations can do this by building strong internal competencies, sharing technologies and resources between business units, by raising capital cost-effectively, by developing and nurturing a strong corporate brand, and so on. So, at this level of strategy, we're concerned with thinking about how the business units within the corporation should fit together, and understanding how resources should be deployed to create the greatest possible value. Tools like Porter's Generic Strategies, the Boston Matrix, the ADL Matrix, and VRIO Analysis will help with this type of high-level analysis and planning. The organization's design is another important strategic factor that needs to be considered at this level. How you structure your business, your people, and other resources – all of these affect competitive advantage and can support your strategic goals. Business Unit Strategy Strategy at the business unit level is concerned with competing successfully in individual markets, and it addresses the question, "How do we win in this market?" However, this strategy needs to be linked to the objectives identified in the corporate level strategy. Competitive analysis, including gathering competitive intelligence, is a great starting point for developing a business unit strategy. As part of this, it's important to think about your core competencies, and how you can use these to meet your customers' needs in the best possible way. From there you can use the USP Analysis to understand how to strengthen your competitive position. You will also want to explore your options for creating and exploiting new opportunities. Porter's Five Forces is a must-have tool for this process, while a SWOT Analysis will help you understand and address the opportunities and threats in your market. Team Strategy To execute your corporate and business unit strategies successfully, you need teams throughout your organization to work together. Each of these teams has a different contribution to make, meaning that each team needs to have its own team-level strategy, however simple. This team strategy must lead directly to the achievement of business unit and corporate strategies, meaning that all levels of strategy support and enhance each other to ensure that the organization is successful. This is where it's useful to define the team's purpose and boundaries using, for example, a team charter; and to manage it using techniques such as Management by Objectives and use of key performance indicators. You need to be working efficiently to achieve the strategic objectives that have been set at higher levels of the organization; so, an important element of your team strategy is to implement best practices to help your team to meet its objectives. Activities that optimize supplier management, quality, and operational excellence are also important factors in creating and executing an effective team strategy.
Consilium- Consulting and Strategy Club, IIM Kashipur
VRIO-Framework
The VRIO framework, in a wider scope, is part of a much larger strategic scheme of a firm. The basic strategic process that any firm goes through begins with a vision statement, and continues on through objectives, internal & external analysis, strategic choices (both business-level and corporate level), and strategic implementation. The firm will hope that this process results in a competitive advantage in the marketplace they operate in. VRIO falls into the internal analysis step of these procedures but is used as a framework in evaluating just about all resources and capabilities of a firm, regardless of what phase of the strategic model it falls under. VRIO is an acronym for the four question framework you ask about a resource or capability to determine its competitive potential: the question of Value, the question of Rarity, the question of Imitability (Ease/Difficulty to Imitate), and the question of Organization (ability to exploit the resource or capability). The Question of Value: "Is the firm able to exploit an opportunity or neutralize an external threat with the resource/capability?" The Question of Rarity: "Is control of the resource/capability in the hands of a relative few?" The Question of Imitability: "Is it difficult to imitate, and will there be significant cost disadvantage to a firm trying to obtain, develop, or duplicate the resource/capability?" The Question of Organization: "Is the firm organized, ready, and able to exploit its resource/capability?" The question of Value: The basic question asked by the V in the VRIO framework for internal analysis is “Is this resource or capability valuable to the local firm?” In this case, the definition of value is whether or not the resource or capability works to exploit an opportunity or mitigate a threat in the marketplace. If it does do one of those two things, it can be considered a strength of the company. However, if it does not work to exploit an opportunity or mitigate a threat, it is a weakness. Occasionally, some resources or capabilities could be considered strengths in one industry and weaknesses in a different one. (Strategic Management Journal, 5, pp. 171–180. Barney, J.B. (1991)). Six common examples of opportunities firms could attempt to exploit are technological change, demographic change, cultural change, economic climate, specific international events, and legal and political conditions. Furthermore, five threats that a resource or capability could mitigate are the threat of buyers, threat of suppliers, threat of entry, threat of rivalry, and threat of substitutes. Generally, this exploitation of opportunity or mitigation of threat will result in one of two more outcomes: an increase in revenues or a decrease in costs (or both). A great way to identify possibly valuable resources or capabilities is by looking into the company’s value chain. In the value chain, a business develops its products and services step-by-step, with each function along the way adding some sort of value to the product or service. The choices a firm makes regarding its value chain (including how to operate, and which steps to operate in) is closely tied to the firm’s resources and capabilities, therefore making it a valuable tool in identifying value in resources and capabilities. If some asset that your company has allows you to operate more effectively in a certain portion of the value chain, chances are that resource will be considered valuable by the VRIO framework. Question of Rarity Having rarity in a firm can lead to competitive advantage. Rarity is when a firm has a valuable resource or capability that is absolutely unique among a set of current and potential competitors. How to determine if your resource is rare and creates a competitive advantage? A firm’s resources and capabilities must be both short in supply and persist over time to be a source of sustained competitive advantage. If both elements (short supply and persistence over time) aren’t met, then the resources and capabilities a firm has can’t be a sustained competitive advantage. If a resource is not rare, then perfect competition dynamics are likely to be observed. Example of Rarity - A janitor who defines his/her job as helping the firm make and sell better products instead of just referring to their job as simply cleaning up facilities is quite unusual. Most individuals would agree that this firm has a source of competitive advantage over other firms in their industry because their objectives and strategies are transparent throughout the entire firm; unlike many other firms where only top-tier management is the only group that believes in their objectives and strategies (Barney & Hesterly, 2011). Question of Imitability The primary question of “imitability” asked in the VRIO framework in an internal analysis is that “Do firms without a resource or capability face a cost disadvantage in obtaining or developing it compared to firms that already possess it?” Firms with valuable and rare resources, which are hard to imitate by other firms, can gain the first-mover advantages in the market and can hence gain a competitive advantage. A firm can either exploit an external opportunity or neutralize an external threat by using its rare and valuable resources. In this case, the firm can gain a competitive advantage. When the firm’s competitors discover this competitive advantage, they may respond in two ways. First, they can choose to ignore the profit gaining by the competitive advantage and continue to operate in their old ways. Second, they can choose to analyze and duplicate the competitive strategy of its rival. If there is no cost or little cost in obtaining this rare and valuable resource, the fellow firms can imitate the competitive advantage in order to gain competitive parity (firms that create the same economic value as their rival’s experience competitive parity). However, sometimes it is hard for other firms to get access to the resources and imitate the innovative company’s strategy. As a result, the innovative companies that implement its strategies based on costly-to-imitate and valuable resources can gain a long-term competitive advantage, which ensures a company’s sustained success (Hill & Jones, 1998). Hence, to sustain the competitive advantage, it is not sufficient for a firm's resources and capabilities to be valuable and rare - they should also be inimitable. Forms of imitation In most cases, imitation appears in two ways, direct duplication or substitution. After observing other firms’ competitive advantage, a firm can directly imitate the resource possessed by the innovative firm. If the cost to imitate is high, the competitive advantage will be sustained. If not, the competitive advantage will be temporary. Otherwise, an imitating firm can attempt to use a substitute in order to gain a similar competitive advantage of the innovative firm. Cost of imitation: Cost of imitation is usually high in order to gain a competitive advantage due to the following reasons: unique historical conditions, causal ambiguity, social complexity, patents. Unique Historical Conditions: an innovative firm gains low-cost access to rare resources in a particular time and space. Causal Ambiguity: an imitating firm cannot tell the factors that lead to the competitive advantage of an innovative firm. Social Complexity: when the resources involved in gaining competitive advantage is based on interpersonal relationship, culture, and other social backgrounds. Patents: a source of long-term competitive advantage certificated by an authority in a few industries such as pharmaceuticals (Barney & Hesterly, 2011). Question of Organization Once you have realized the value, rarity, and imitability of your company’s resources and capabilities, the next step is to organize your company in a way to exploit these resources. If done successfully, your company can enjoy a period of sustained competitive advantage. There are many components to this question of organization. They include but are not limited to, the company’s formal reporting structure, management control systems, and compensation policies. Formal reporting structures are simply a description of who in the firm reports to whom. Management control systems include both formal and informal means to make sure that managers’ decisions align with a firm’s strategies. Formal control systems can consist of budgeting and reporting activities that keep top management informed of decisions made by employee’s lower down in the firm. Informal controls can include a company’s culture and encouraging employees to monitor each other. Firms incentivize their employees to behave in the desired way through compensation policies. These policies can include bonuses, stocks or salary increases but can also include non-monetary incentives such as additional vacation days or a larger office. These components of the organization are known for complementary capabilities and resources because alone they do not provide much value. However, in combination with a firm’s other resources and capabilities, it can result in a sustained competitive advantage. Without the correct organization, even firms with valuable, rare and costly to imitate resources and capabilities can suffer a competitive disadvantage.
Mahindra & Mahindra Sustainability Report
Mahindra & Mahindra Sustainability Report as part of Sustainability course
Shelly Arya
Ambush Marketing
Ikea recently opened their stores in Hyderabad under a lot of pomp and show, but one Indian businessman utilized· this opportunity to promote their own brand. Read on to see how Future Group used a simple marketing strategy to promote their own brand 'HomeTown'.
Naman Sikka
OYO - An Ace in Hospitality Industry
OYO started its journey in January 2013 under the vision of Ritesh Agarwal to improve the hospitality and hotel business. In 2016, OYO brought the concept of early check-in called sunrise check-in at 6 am, and also recently rolled out OYO Captain, a personalised concierge service in the budget hotel category. It expanded its presence to more than 22 cities in India so that customer can set OYO as their preference, no matter which city they travel to. OYO introduced the new concept of short-term homestays, a model similar to Airbnb and has its presence in more than 10 cities under this segment like Udaipur, Goa and Shimla that attract innumerable tourists. OYO has been constantly keeping a check on customer needs and preferences by gathering insights and feedback from the customers. Customers feel their opinion heard when they see OYO making changes accordingly. Customers have the privilege of getting easy hotel bookings on arrival as well and do not have to preplan. Most of the customers have been recorded to book hotels either just before arrival or on arrival by the Data Science Team of OYO. Data Science team has been working mainly on segmenting its customers, identifying their needs, How OYO can cater their needs and finally why customers will prefer OYO over its competitors. This has helped OYO create a customer-centric image amongst its customers and has also succeeded in gaining their trust. OYO has been working hard on gaining customer attention through various strategies like it has not only expanded to every corner of the nation but it's marketed itself well by big hoardings with OYO trademark placed almost on every partner hotel, making its presence and market share felt very well. Providing services like complimentary breakfasts, early check-ins, free quality toiletry kits and discount coupons to new customers have not only maintained its existing customer base but gathered new customers as well. Easy cancellation and on arrival bookings on mobile app access is also contributing to winning customers for OYO.
OnYourMark- Marketing Club, IIM Kashipur
Corporate Strategy of RIL
This presentation talks at length about the corporate strategy of Reliance India Limited.
Satyaki Kundu
iNTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS HISTORY MATERIAL
iNTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS HISTORY MATERIAL
Gautham A.