- Strategy formulation and implementation
Read the case study, ‘driving the future: How autonomous vehicles will change industries and strategy’ (file name: DTHAVWCIAS)
Answer these questions:
1) is autonomous driving technology a blue ocean opportunity. Why or why not? Think carefully about this.
2) Using the strategy canvas from the BOS tools (https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/tools/), how might autonomous vehicles be used by your organization to create a BOS for the organization?
- Agility as a strategic concept
Competing on cost leadership, competing on differentiation, competing on core competencies, competing by getting more of the industry value chain, competing (or rather, not competing!) by developing your own blue ocean. These are all strategic options that we have looked at so far.
But, not everything can be planned, and nowadays many industries are so turbulent that they change before you can put your plans into action. The concept of VUCA is a good one to get your head around. e.g. https://hbr.org/2014/01/what-vuca-rea.
This is a good framework: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities
Read the two articles ‘How to Thrive in Turbulent Markets?’ and ‘Adaptability: The New Competitive Advantage.’ Answer these questions:
1) Can, and should; all organizations develop the capabilities to be agile? Which organizations can and should be agile, and which maybe not?
2) Can your own organization be agile? What could it do better to be more agile? Give an example.
3) To what extent can your organization ‘absorb’ damage? What might it do to develop more absorption capability?
- Mergers & Acquisitions
Many of us, whatever our job and industry, will experience a merger or acquisition in our lifetime. It is a very common way to grow and/or to reorganize the organization to meet changes in the external environment. In addition, if we work in an organization, which is no longer sustainable, selling to another organization is a very common way to make use of the assets. M and A should always be seen as one of the strategic options for an organization. But, approaches to M and A differ!
– Discuss how M&A are changing the rules of the strategic game (or not)?
– Discuss the differences in approach presented in this article and through the Hindalco case
4. Outsourcing (and other ways of structuring the organization)
Using your own assets to grow, (“organic growth”) and M and A, are two ways of growing and/or evolving the business. We now look at another way, outsourcing, which has become a major feature of strategic management in recent years.
Read the article about outsourcing. Also, do a search of Google on outsourcing of articles about it.
Discuss the following questions:
– Why is outsourcing so popular now?
– What does your organisation outsource, and why?
– What are the pitfalls to avoid when outsourcing?
