How to Win: Strategic Options Assessment and Recommendation

Title: How to Win: Strategic Options Assessment and Recommendation

“Strategy means making clear-cut choices about how to compete. You cannot be everything to everybody, no matter what the size of your business or how deep its pockets.”

– Jack Welch –

Congratulations! In your first executive brief, you generated some great insights about the playing field and competitors and how your own organization stacks up. Now you will transition from looking back to looking ahead. You will develop your “How to Win” strategy that will feature your game-winning move!

Your CEO has clarified that you need to think expansively and recommend a move that is transformative rather than incremental. To help with this, you have decided to consider each of the seven common winning moves outlined in the Week 6 Lecture Notes and pick one of them as your preferred game-winning move.

You know that your game-winning move will be a decisive choice for the company. But in choosing this move (as is the case with any strategic initiative), the company will risk money and resources. If your move is the right one, you will grow sales and profits and beat your competitors. If your move is the wrong one, you risk disappointing your investors and letting your competitors gain competitive advantage. Given the importance of this decision, you will evaluate each of the seven common winning moves and then do a deep dive into the attractiveness, feasibility and risks of your chosen strategy.

Your CEO is expecting your second executive brief in Week 8 to summarize your analysis of the strategy you believe offers the most potential and your recommendation for the game-winning move that you will be presenting in Week 10.

Your objective is to create a game-winning move, not just evaluate other people’s moves. For this assignment, do NOT recommend a move that is identical or very similar to a real-life move made by your company. For example, don’t recommend that Tesla/Apple/Google/Uber/etc. invest in self-driving car technology or recommend that CVS acquire Aetna as those are all in the public domain. Instead, recommend a move that is novel and innovative for your company.

Craft your second executive brief to include the following:

1. An opening paragraph summarizing the purpose and contentof the brief.

2. Rank Order Your Three Top Moves: Review the applicability and attractiveness of each of the 7 common winning moves (from the Week 6 Lecture Notes) for your organization and your competitive situation in your chosen playing field. List your top threemost attractive moves in order from most attractive to least attractive.

3. Detail your Recommended Move:For your most attractive move, provide details about what you would recommend as a part this move. For example, if you chose acquisition, who might you buy? If you chose geographic expansion, where would you expand? If you chose discontinuous innovation, what would the innovation be? Explain why you think it will generate financially attractive growth (which includes both incremental revenue growth and commensurate incremental profit growth).

4. Alignment of the Move to Organizational Strength and Weakness. How does this move address your key strength/weakness identified in your playing field assessment from Assignment 1?

5. Required Investments. Most strategic initiatives require an investment of resources and money. What are some significant investments that would be necessary to implement this move? Note, we are not looking for dollar figures; instead, we are looking for the key categories of investmentssuch as hiring people, investing in new capabilities, building new manufacturing plants, etc.

6. Risks and Risk Mitigation. Most game-changing moves are bold initiatives and have risks that need to be considered. What are the most significant risks and what is your recommended risk-mitigation plan?

7. Competitive Response:How do you think the competition will react to your move?

8. Concluding statement. Conclude with a brief a summary of your game-winning move and conclusions on the above topics. Consider how the move effectively balances investments and risks. How will the move position your company against the competition?

9. References:Include in-text citations for all data, assertions, and facts, and a corresponding reference list. Appendices are allowable if additional supplemental information is needed for the brief.