- 14 Mar, 2021
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Competitive Advantage and Strategy
1. Identify a firm that has reported declining performance or filed for bankruptcy in the last five years or so. Evaluate how the competitive forces within its primary industry may be responsible (or perhaps, not responsible) for its performance. Suggest two actions that the firm could have taken (or can still take) to weaken the intensity of one or more competitive forces, explaining how these would work. Please provide the citation to at least one press article that helped you in identifying this firm and also reference any material from the course that helped in the analyses.
2. Identify an entrepreneurial venture that started up in the last five years or so. Identify a core competency that the venture has developed (with some reasons why you believe this to be a competency) and evaluate the relative strength of this competency in providing the venture with a degree of competitive advantage. Suggest two ways in which the firm’s managers could have enhanced (or can still enhance) this competency’s role in sustaining the venture’s competitive advantage, explaining how these would work. Please provide the citation to at least one press article that helped you in identifying this venture and also reference any material from the course that helped in the analyses.
3. Identify a firm that has made some major strategic changes in the last five years or so. Discuss aspects of its current competitive strategy and how it is significantly different from the strategies it was pursuing earlier (particularly emphasizing implementation of these). Evaluate whether or not the new strategy will enable the firm to compete more effectively against rivals and suggest two ways in which it could have been further modified (or can be modified now), explaining how these would work. Please provide the citation to at least one press article that helped you in identifying this initiative and also reference any material from the course that helped in the analyses.
4. Identify a technology-based product launched in the last five years or so by a firm (which should not be its first product). Evaluate the type(s) of innovation and degree of diversification (if at all) involved in this initiative. Identify reasons for the commercial success (or lack thereof) of the product to date and suggest two actions that could have been (or could still be) effective in enhancing the adoption of this product, explaining how these would work. Please provide the citation to at least one press article that helped you in identifying this product and also reference any material from the course that helped in the analyses.
5. Identify a company that entered a new foreign country within the last five years or so (may not be its first such entry). Evaluate the objective(s) for the parent in entering this country and how the mode of entry and structures/ systems established in the new country are helping (or hindering) achievement of the objective(s). Suggest two actions that the parent firm or its subsidiary could have taken (or can still take) that would enhance its performance in the new country, explaining how these would work. Please provide the citation to at least one press article that helped you in identifying this international expansion and also reference any material from the course that helped in the analyses.