Design: More Than a Cool Chair SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Design: More Than a Cool Chair
This introduction to the Design industry includes definitions, and industry statistics, as well as descriptions of geographic clustering, design education, organizational roles of designers, how designers work and get paid, and the growing role of design in management.
Authors :: Robert D. Austin, Silje Kamille Friis, Erin E. Sullivan
Swot Analysis of "Design: More Than a Cool Chair" written by Robert D. Austin, Silje Kamille Friis, Erin E. Sullivan includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Design Designers facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Design: More Than a Cool Chair case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Design, Product development, Sales and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Design: More Than a Cool Chair casestudy better are - – wage bills are increasing, increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, technology disruption, there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Design: More Than a Cool Chair
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Design: More Than a Cool Chair case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Design Designers, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Design Designers 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 Design: More Than a Cool Chair can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Design: More Than a Cool Chair case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Design Designers
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Organizational Development field.
4. Making a Organizational Development topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Design Designers
Strengths Design: More Than a Cool Chair | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Design Designers in Design: More Than a Cool Chair Harvard Business Review case study are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Design Designers is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Design: More Than a Cool Chair are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Design Designers has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Design: More Than a Cool Chair - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Design Designers 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.
Ability to lead change in Organizational Development field
– Design Designers 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 Design Designers in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- Design Designers 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 Design Designers is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Design: More Than a Cool Chair Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Design: More Than a Cool Chair Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Analytics focus
– Design Designers is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Robert D. Austin, Silje Kamille Friis, Erin E. Sullivan can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
High brand equity
– Design Designers has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Design Designers to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Design Designers has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Design Designers has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Design Designers 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 Design: More Than a Cool Chair HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– Design Designers has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Design: More Than a Cool Chair 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Design Designers is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses Design: More Than a Cool Chair | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Design: More Than a Cool Chair are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Design Designers 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. Design Designers 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Design: More Than a Cool Chair has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Design Designers 's lucrative customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Design Designers has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Design: More Than a Cool Chair should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Design: More Than a Cool Chair, is just above the industry average. Design Designers 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Design Designers is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Organizational Development segment. Design Designers needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Design Designers to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Design Designers 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Design Designers products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Design Designers needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Design: More Than a Cool Chair, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Organizational Development strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
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 Design Designers supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Design: More Than a Cool Chair, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Design Designers vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Design Designers, firm in the HBR case study Design: More Than a Cool Chair needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Robert D. Austin, Silje Kamille Friis, Erin E. Sullivan suggests that, Design Designers 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.
Opportunities Design: More Than a Cool Chair | 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 Design: More Than a Cool Chair are -
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Design Designers can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Design Designers 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 Design Designers to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Design Designers 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Design Designers 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Design Designers to increase its market reach. Design Designers 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.
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 Design Designers 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Design Designers has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Design Designers to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Design: More Than a Cool Chair case study. Design Designers can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Organizational Development industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Design Designers can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Design Designers can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Design Designers can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Design Designers can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Organizational Development segment.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Design Designers is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Design: More Than a Cool Chair 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Organizational Development industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Design Designers can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Design Designers to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Threats Design: More Than a Cool Chair External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Design: More Than a Cool Chair are -
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.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Design Designers.
Increasing wage structure of Design Designers
– 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 Design Designers.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Design Designers can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Design: More Than a Cool Chair .
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Design Designers with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Design Designers 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Design Designers needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Organizational Development industry regulations.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Design Designers is facing in Organizational Development sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Design Designers will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Design Designers in the Organizational Development industry. The Organizational Development 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.
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 Design Designers business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Organizational Development field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Design Designers can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Design: More Than a Cool Chair 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 Design: More Than a Cool Chair 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 Design: More Than a Cool Chair 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 Design: More Than a Cool Chair 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 Design: More Than a Cool Chair 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 Design Designers needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.