240126 Strategy Tools for Competitive Advantage (Coffee Shop Simulation)

A company’s competitive environment is placed in the stakeholder diagram

- SWOT analysis can be used to analyse the company in the context of a dynamic
work environment, really targeted to our organization
- Five Forces: industrial level analysis. How do we relate to others in our sector?
- PEST(LE): macro level analysis (political, economic, social, technological, legal,
environmental)

Five Forces example Spotify

SWOT analysis
- Opportunities and threats are external to the company
- Strengths and weaknesses are internal
- We don’t just list stuff, we need to understand our environment and figure out what
resources we have to respond to them. If they have the resources to address an
opportunity, it’s a strength. If not, it’s a weakness

Generic Strategies for competitive advantage, from Porter

- The part where you’re “stuck in the middle” (see his slides) is when you’re not doing
any strategy properly, this is to be avoided
- OR: you find an entire new market (blue ocean), Porter’s generic strategies are for
existing markets
Sustained Competitive Advantage ← we should think about this for business canvases
- Relies on resources being “VRIN”. Resources is anything you control or you can
access
- Valuable. Netflix eg has lots of series. But others have access to that too, so
not a sustained advantage
- Rare. Netflix has its own name and some own series
- Inimitable. Resources that can’t be obtained by others. Eg when Netflix has
exclusive rights to stuff
- Nonsubstitutable. Netflix has much more data and content, this gives them an
enduring competitive advantage