Category Archives: Strategy

Best Buy’s discovery-based innovation model- Ideating from the ground-up

Best Buy used Strategos Innovation Practitioners to create a disruptive innovation model. Strategos laid out a model based on discovery and rapid-prototyping that Best Buy adopted after pulling in 35 different senior managers and directors from various parts of the … Continue reading

Posted in Innovation, Leadership, Strategy | Leave a comment

Strategy models: Resource-based and Dynamic Capabilities

Resource-based Strategy This strategy approach focuses on the rents accruing to a firm that owns scarce resources rather than the economic profits from product market positioning. In this view, the competitive advantages lie upstream of product markets, and rest on … Continue reading

Posted in Strategy | Leave a comment

Strategy models: Five Forces and Game Theory, a narrative in comparison

Competitive Forces The dominant strategy paradigm in the 1980s, the competitive forces approach pioneered by Michael Porter views the essence of competitive strategy formulation as relating a company to its industry in which it competes, the strategic group it is … Continue reading

Posted in Economics, Game Theory, Strategy | Leave a comment

Notes from Porter’s Competitive Strategy: buyers, suppliers, structural analysis

Strategy toward Buyers and Suppliers Buyer selection “different purchasing needs are one reason why buyers have different structural bargaining power.” “the costs of servicing individual buyers differ..as a result.. buyer selection- the choice of target buyers- becomes an important strategic … Continue reading

Posted in Strategy | Leave a comment

Notes from Porter’s Competitive Strategy: profiling, signaling

A Framework for Competitor Analysis “There are four components to a competitor analysis: future goals, current strategy, assumptions and capabilities.” The competitor response profile “The first step is to predict the strategic changes the competitor might initiate.” “a move that … Continue reading

Posted in Strategy | Leave a comment

Notes from Porter’s Competitive Strategy: structure, generic strategies

I have been reading the book for a few months now, albeit at a rather lethargic pace. In my defense, a lot has been going on at professional, academic and personal fronts. Here is a compilation of highlights from the … Continue reading

Posted in Strategy | Leave a comment

Business Strategies: Vertical Integration Vs. Ecosystems

James Moore defined a business ecosystem as a network of organizations and individuals that co-evolve their capabilities and roles and align their investments so as to create additional value and improve efficiency. I attempt to evaluate here whether this form … Continue reading

Posted in Strategy | 3 Comments

Strategy for Security: A Pure Bargaining Model

The Stalemate Strategy development can be thought of as a form of bargaining in my opinion, where security and audit, each with a stake in the successful implementation of the strategy, arrive at the table with specific agenda, putting forth … Continue reading

Posted in Game Theory, Strategy, Technology | Leave a comment

Analysis of Precedent Transactions for M&A

Recently, for an M&A assignment I did an analysis of precedent transactions for NetSuite’s acquisition by Oracle. A precedent transactions analysis is designed to imply a value of a company based on publicly available financial terms and premiums paid for … Continue reading

Posted in Accounting, Finance, Mergers & Acquisitions, Strategy | Tagged | Leave a comment

Rackspace: scenario analysis

Posted in Accounting, Finance, Strategy | Tagged , | Leave a comment