Rocket Internet Case Study: Resources, Competences, and Strategic Analysis

Read the Case Study: Rocket Internet – Will the Copycat be imitated? in the text Exploring Corporate Strategy, pp 102 – 104. Complete the questions listed below.

1. What are the company’s resources and competences, as outlined in the case?

2. What are the company’s threshold, distinctive and dynamic capabilities?

3. Carry out a VRIO analysis for Rocket Internet. What do you conclude?

Write the results of your analysis in a 1200 word report. Make sure you support your conclusion with evidence from the case and additional external research. It is essential to avoid general, unsupported statements. Reference all material used – both in-text and at the end of the report. References must follow the Harvard referencing style. Refer to the Academic Learning Skills handout on Report writing. Please see Academic Learning Skills staff for assistance with this, or any assessment.
A statement of % contribution of each group member must be included on the Title Page.

Submit your final report for grading, through Moodle. The report MUST be submitted electronically in Microsoft Office format. Please be aware that any assessments submitted in other formats will be considered LATE and will lose marks until it is presented in Microsoft Office format.
Part B – Class presentation

Present a summary of your analysis in class in Week 6, using a maximum of 6 PowerPoint slides. Each group member is to present one of the 3 questions. Total time allocation: 12 minutes.

Introduction

The report depicts the importance of Rocket Internet in recent business strategies of Rocket Internet Company (Rocket Internet 2016). The company is headquartered in Berlin and it provides valid platforms to builds online startup businesses. The company is founded in the year of 2007, and the founders of the company are Marc, Oliver and Alexander Samwer. The number of employees currently working for the company is around 30,000. It gives office space to new companies.

The resources used by the company and the other competences outlined in the given case study will be discussed in this report additionally, the threshold of the company and in a parallel manner the distinct and dynamic capabilities of the company are also going to be discussed in this report brief. The report will also provide a VRIO analysis for Rocket internet. The company is maintaining their traditional business strategic model but currently the organization is trying to improve their business framework. 
1.0 Resources and competences of Rocket Internet outlined in the case

From the detail analysis of the case study it has been defined that, though Rocket internet has enough financial skills for their venture capital firm but still they are trying to obtain promising technical platform in order to gain development.

Resources of Rocket Internet: There are several expert teams that play a supportive role for the company (Wilson and Boldeman 2012). The expert team is not only in the sector of marketing management but also exists in customer management team, business intelligence and operation team. Rocket internet does not recruit only regular staffs but also for global venture development expert team is also recruited (Matthews and Brueggemann 2015). The employees generally recruited by the company have analytical skills along with entrepreneurship management ideas. Based on the structure of Silicon Valley entrepreneurial support and head of the Human Resource department are selected. The co founder and the managing director of the company are collaboratively working for the business development. Due to financial development they generally recruits extraordinary and MBA level knowledgeable people for their company.  Not only this, but also the company uses best of the business models. The founders of the company were inspired from the entrepreneurial culture and especially from eBay (Wilson and Boldeman 2012). However from the critic’s point of view it has been defined that the company is a complete copycat that does not have any innovative ideas rather it only steals ideas from other business organizations.

Competences of Rocket Internet: Though, Rocket internet is referred to as one of the successful companies, but the concept of the business is just a revolution of previously planned business models used by other organizations. The business strategy of the company is framed at the head office of the company (Mitchell 2013). Apart from this, they launched an internal novel business model. Additionally, the distributive business model framed by the company support multiplying business models and also it has been illustrated rapidly for online business models. It provides a combination of talented employee and high standard approaches in terms of systemized platform.