Business Strategies and Competitive Analysis

Strategies in a Disruptive World

• The course examines strategies in a fast-changing, disruptive world.
• It aims to provide frameworks applicable to various strategic problems.
• Understanding new paradigms and strategic management frameworks is crucial for companies.
• The course will analyze current disruptive trends, industry impact, and future scenarios.
• Companies will formulate successful strategies and implementation plans.

Introduction to the Course

• The course will focus on creating effective strategies in a dynamic and disruptive world.
• It will explore the challenges of disruptive innovation and new competitive landscapes.
• Disruption's impact on organizational structures, processes, and corporate culture will be examined.

Objectives and Skills

• The course will address how companies cope with evolving business landscapes.
• Disruptive innovations and their value to customers and organizations will be explored.
• The course will analyze how emerging disruptive trends affect organizations and industries.
• Future scenarios and how leaders should deal with them will be discussed.

A New Paradigm

• A single approach to business strategy is no longer sufficient in today's world.
• Many companies arise from disruption, aiming beyond traditional strategic plans.
• These companies often lack traditional business plans and ROI/market research.
• They instead focus on problem detection, solution seeking through technology, and embracing unconventional approaches.

The Strategic Landscape

• The strategic landscape encompasses four levels: self, chessboard, mountain, and star (from Hardin Tibbs).
• Self: Organizational resources, capabilities, skills, values, and attributes as a strategic player.
• Chessboard: Competitive positioning and dynamics within the industry.
• Mountain: Issues, challenges, and major goals/objectives facing the organization.
• Star: Enduring social, transformative, or economic purpose.

The "Strategic Landscape" (continued)

• The strategic landscape provides the psychological reality of the future.
• The Self: Values, attributes, and strategic roles of the organization as a player.
• The Mountain: The organization's overarching goals and desires for the future.
• The Chessboard: Current issues and challenges the organization faces in the foreseeable future.
• The Star: Long-term goals and enduring roles the organization aims to play in the future.

Strategic Intent

• Strategic intent is a vision of an organization's future.
• It involves building a sense of urgency and personalizing challenges for employees.
• The goal is to provide individuals with the right skills to tackle these challenges.
• Establishing clear milestones is crucial for progress.
• Strategic intent is likened to a marathon sprint: maintaining a focus despite challenges and setbacks.

Video & Debate

• The video discusses SpaceX's Mars aspirations and strategic intent.
• It also introduces the concept of strategic landscape and identifying the 4 levels within it.

The New Scenario for Incumbent Companies

• Incumbents are industry leaders with significant market share and influence.
• The course explores how incumbents can respond to disruption in the business world.
• It introduces methods such as analyzing current business models, exploring options in Canvas/VRIO, and using frameworks like Five Forces to assess future directions.
• The impact of technology on operational effectiveness and strategic positioning for incumbents is investigated.

Technology Strategic Positioning

• Sustainable competitive advantage stems from operational effectiveness (doing things better) or strategic positioning (creating unique value).
• Strategic positioning is highlighted in a diagram.

The Impact of Technology on Strategy

• Digital transformation and its exponential impact on industries are explored.
• Industry structure and sustainable competitive advantage are discussed.
• This includes intensified competitive rivalry, decreased entry barriers, and shifting buyer power.

Five Forces Framework

• The profitability of an industry is driven by five sources of competitive pressure.
• These pressure points include the threat of entry, rivalry from within the industry, substitutes, and the bargaining power of suppliers and customers.

How the Internet Influences Industry Structure

• The internet disrupts existing industry structures by reducing entry barriers, influencing supplier and channel power, changing competitive positioning, and affecting customers.
• The resulting value network and complementors are explored.

How Technology Changes Strategic Environment

• The development of core competencies, creation of business ecosystems, and value innovation are three concepts used to adapt to the changing environment.
• Using frameworks such as "Blue Ocean Strategy" to generate innovative business models is explored.
• Networked value chains are considered as essential for business adaptability.
• The importance of global sourcing, loose coupling of business processes, and productive collaboration in creating and leveraging capabilities is stressed.

Position within the Network

• Companies can be specialists, integrators or platforms, each with different roles in a network.
• Specialists offer a selected range of services to a broad client base.
• Integrators coordinate multiple services from diverse partners.
• Platforms bring together multiple user groups, facilitating access to services or transactions.

Management of Relationships within the Network

• Different types of relationships (ownership, equity, alliances, contracts, markets) have different degrees of strength, coordination, dependency, and value capture.  

Business Model Innovation

• Business model innovation (BMI) refers to changing a business model to adapt to current issues or create new approaches to business.
• Factors such as intense competition, pressures on prices, new competitors in unexpected markets, and evolving talent mismatches are recognized.
• The presentation delves into three game-changing moves (beating competition, extending a business model, extracting brand value).

Strategic Principles for Competing in the Digital Age

• Digitalization is reshaping competitive dynamics.
• Opportunities for businesses include enhancing interactions, improving decision-making with big data, and enabling new business models.
• Key disruptive trends re-defining competition and decision-making are identified. 

Homework-Methodology 

• Student groups will analyze a disruptive exponential technology within an industrial sector.
• The final submission will be a 6-7 minute video in two phases covering the state-of-the-art technology and the technology's impact on the industry within the next 10 years.

Disruptive Trends

• Various disruptive trends are listed, including (but not limited to) genetics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, quantum computing, metaverse, artificial intelligence, decentralized finance, anti-aging, regenerative medicine, space exploration, and various digitalization concepts (wallets, trading, and financial services).

Apple's Study Case Background

• Apple's history, including key developments and challenges, is discussed.
• The period from 1976-1985 to 1996-1997 marked stages of innovation, challenges, and eventually, renewal for Apple.
• The company's struggles with transitioning to newer technologies and the resulting business model transformation are explored.
• Apple's turnaround, their strategies and the lessons learned on adapting to market changes.

Discussion Topics

• Questions about the history and challenges Apple faced are posed, notably related to business model disruptions. 

The Apple Turnaround

• The Apple turnaround is examined from various viewpoints: internal workings and leadership, technological disruptions, and changes in business model architectures.

This quiz covers essential concepts in competitive analysis and business strategies, focusing on frameworks like Porter's Five Forces, the Business Model Canvas, and the VRIO framework. It explores how various factors impact competition and the sustainability of businesses in dynamic environments.