comparitve analysis
Lecture Notes for Competitive Strategies in Technology Management
(Note: these notes, intended to supplement your class notes, are excerpts from a larger chapter on the same subject, which contains other frameworks and a detailed example. This is a draft document: so please report any “typos”, and other errors; feedback is also welcome.)
1. Introduction
“Successful and unsuccessful strategies shape a company’s destiny” – R.A. Burgelman, Strategy is Destiny
Technology firms generally perform three important and inter-related activities: strategy, planning, and operations, each having a different intent and time horizon. The function of strategy, which has a time horizon of years, is, in general, to set the long-term direction or position of the firm, for example define the technology, product, or service that the firm intends to develop, and determine the intended market for the product or service. The function of planning, which, in general, has a time horizon of several months to years, is to translate long-term strategy into medium-term activities, e.g., the portfolio of projects that the firm should execute the time-phased planning of these projects, and resource allocation. The function of operations, which has the time-horizon of days to months, is, in general, to translate medium-term planning activities into short-term product design, development, and delivery activities such as prototyping, manufacturing, product release, and shipment. In this chapter we address strategy.
There are several different types of strategy, including competitive strategy, technology strategy, product market strategy, financial strategy, and supply-chain strategy. For a technology company to be successful all these strategies need to be aligned with each other, and with the business goals of the firm. Competitive strategy, which is the focus of this chapter, is the highest level of strategy in the firm, and is intimately related to the mission and vision of the firm and also
(Note: these notes, intended to supplement your class notes, are excerpts from a larger chapter on the same subject, which contains other frameworks and a detailed example. This is a draft document: so please report any “typos”, and other errors; feedback is also welcome.)
1. Introduction
“Successful and unsuccessful strategies shape a company’s destiny” – R.A. Burgelman, Strategy is Destiny
Technology firms generally perform three important and inter-related activities: strategy, planning, and operations, each having a different intent and time horizon. The function of strategy, which has a time horizon of years, is, in general, to set the long-term direction or position of the firm, for example define the technology, product, or service that the firm intends to develop, and determine the intended market for the product or service. The function of planning, which, in general, has a time horizon of several months to years, is to translate long-term strategy into medium-term activities, e.g., the portfolio of projects that the firm should execute the time-phased planning of these projects, and resource allocation. The function of operations, which has the time-horizon of days to months, is, in general, to translate medium-term planning activities into short-term product design, development, and delivery activities such as prototyping, manufacturing, product release, and shipment. In this chapter we address strategy.
There are several different types of strategy, including competitive strategy, technology strategy, product market strategy, financial strategy, and supply-chain strategy. For a technology company to be successful all these strategies need to be aligned with each other, and with the business goals of the firm. Competitive strategy, which is the focus of this chapter, is the highest level of strategy in the firm, and is intimately related to the mission and vision of the firm and also
References: Burgelman, R.A., “Strategy is Destiny”, The Free Press, New York, 2002. Chopra, Sunil, and Peter Meindl, “Supply Chain Management, Strategy, Planning, and Operations”, Third Edition, Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2007. Clark, K. B., and S.C. Wheelwright, Managing New Product and Process Development, Text and Cases, The Free Press, New York, 1993. Edwards, Cliff, “Intel”, Business Week, March 8, 2004, Pages 56-64. Ghemawat, Pankaj, Strategy and the Business Landscape, Text and Cases, Addison Wesley, 1999. Mintzberg, Henry and Bruce Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel, Strategy Safari, The Free Press, New York, 1998 Porter, Michael, Competitive Strategy, New York, The Free Press, 1980 Porter, Michael, Competitive Advantage, The Free Press, New York, 1985 Glossary Substantive Strategy (also see generic competitive strategy). Substantive strategy is the implementation of the company’s generic strategy in a particular product-market domain (Burgelman, 2002).