Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton
Discusses the joint venture between two companies with different capabilities: 1) technology provider and 2) transportation agent. Discusses how to capture value from joint venture and biotechnology: 1) who are winners and who are losers; 2) how much value can/should be captured; 3) sustainability issues; 4) implications for agriculture/agchem industry/relationships between supply chain members. Delta & Pine and Monsanto are licensing a new technology cotton seed. They must decide how to do it and how to evaluate its success.
Swot Analysis of "Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton" written by Ray A. Goldberg, Charlotte Tasker includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Pine Cotton facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton casestudy better are - – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Pine Cotton, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Pine Cotton operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Pine Cotton
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Pine Cotton
Strengths Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Pine Cotton in Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton Harvard Business Review case study are -
Digital Transformation in Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Pine Cotton digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Pine Cotton has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Diverse revenue streams
– Pine Cotton is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Innovation driven organization
– Pine Cotton is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Pine Cotton is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Pine Cotton has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Pine Cotton are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Pine Cotton is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Pine Cotton is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Pine Cotton is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Pine Cotton to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Pine Cotton to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– Pine Cotton is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Pine Cotton in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High brand equity
– Pine Cotton has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Pine Cotton to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Training and development
– Pine Cotton has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Weaknesses Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton are -
Need for greater diversity
– Pine Cotton has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton, is just above the industry average. Pine Cotton needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Pine Cotton has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Pine Cotton has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Pine Cotton even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Pine Cotton is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Pine Cotton has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton, in the dynamic environment Pine Cotton has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Pine Cotton has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Lack of clear differentiation of Pine Cotton products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Pine Cotton needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Pine Cotton supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Pine Cotton vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Ray A. Goldberg, Charlotte Tasker suggests that, Pine Cotton is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Pine Cotton has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Opportunities Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton are -
Buying journey improvements
– Pine Cotton can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Pine Cotton can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Pine Cotton in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Pine Cotton to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Pine Cotton to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Pine Cotton is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Pine Cotton to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Manufacturing automation
– Pine Cotton can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Leadership & Managing People segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Pine Cotton to increase its market reach. Pine Cotton will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Pine Cotton can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Pine Cotton can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Pine Cotton has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Pine Cotton can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Pine Cotton can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Threats Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Pine Cotton has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Pine Cotton needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Environmental challenges
– Pine Cotton needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Pine Cotton can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Increasing wage structure of Pine Cotton
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Pine Cotton.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Pine Cotton in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Pine Cotton high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Pine Cotton business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Pine Cotton demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Pine Cotton needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Pine Cotton can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Pine Cotton with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Pine Cotton in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Delta & Pine Land: Measuring the Value of Transgenic Cotton is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Pine Cotton needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.