Case Study Description of Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation?
Bayer Group needed to reassess its strategies regarding intellectual property, as well as its emphasis on research and development. The Indian government had ruled against Bayer by granting a compulsory licence to a local generic drug manufacturer that allowed them to distribute a copy of Bayer's blockbuster cancer drug at a fraction of the original price. This ruling demonstrated that pharmaceutical innovation could not be effectively protected by conventional intellectual property rights in emerging markets. As a result, the core of the pharmaceutical industry's business model was called into question: If ideas and inventions could not be protected, was the there any incentive for firms to innovate? Would this victory for generic drug manufacturers trigger similar rulings elsewhere? Would the prevailing patent-centric IP strategies need to be adapted to emerging markets? Or would innovator companies finally have to withdraw from markets with weak IP protection? Authors Peter M. Bican and Quynh Nhu Truong are affiliated with WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management.
Swot Analysis of "Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation?" written by Peter M. Bican, Quynh Nhu Truong includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Bayer Intellectual facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? casestudy better are - – increasing energy prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions, increasing commodity prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Bayer Intellectual, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Bayer Intellectual 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 Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Bayer Intellectual
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Strategy & Execution field.
4. Making a Strategy & Execution topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Bayer Intellectual
Strengths Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Bayer Intellectual in Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? Harvard Business Review case study are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Bayer Intellectual in the sector have low bargaining power. Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Bayer Intellectual to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Bayer Intellectual is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Bayer Intellectual has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Organizational Resilience of Bayer Intellectual
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Bayer Intellectual does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Bayer Intellectual has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Bayer Intellectual 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
– Bayer Intellectual 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 Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Bayer Intellectual in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in Strategy & Execution segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Bayer Intellectual digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Bayer Intellectual 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Bayer Intellectual 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 Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Learning organization
- Bayer Intellectual 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 Bayer Intellectual is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Bayer Intellectual is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Diverse revenue streams
– Bayer Intellectual is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? 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.
Weaknesses Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? are -
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Peter M. Bican, Quynh Nhu Truong suggests that, Bayer Intellectual 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation?, is just above the industry average. Bayer Intellectual 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Bayer Intellectual 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. Bayer Intellectual 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Bayer Intellectual is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Strategy & Execution segment. Bayer Intellectual needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Bayer Intellectual to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? HBR case study mentions - Bayer Intellectual takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation?, in the dynamic environment Bayer Intellectual has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Bayer Intellectual has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Bayer Intellectual has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? 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 Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Bayer Intellectual is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Bayer Intellectual needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Need for greater diversity
– Bayer Intellectual 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Bayer Intellectual, firm in the HBR case study Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Opportunities Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? | 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 Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Bayer Intellectual has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Bayer Intellectual to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Developing new processes and practices
– Bayer Intellectual can develop new processes and procedures in Strategy & Execution industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Bayer Intellectual 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Bayer Intellectual in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Strategy & Execution segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Loyalty marketing
– Bayer Intellectual 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Bayer Intellectual 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.
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. Bayer Intellectual can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Bayer Intellectual is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Bayer Intellectual has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Bayer Intellectual to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? case study. Bayer Intellectual can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Bayer Intellectual 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 Bayer Intellectual to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Bayer Intellectual in the consumer business. Now Bayer Intellectual can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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 Bayer Intellectual 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Bayer Intellectual 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 Strategy & Execution segment.
Threats Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Bayer Intellectual 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 Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Bayer Intellectual is facing in Strategy & Execution sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Bayer Intellectual with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Bayer Intellectual.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Strategy & Execution field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Bayer Intellectual can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Bayer Intellectual
– 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 Bayer Intellectual.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Bayer Intellectual 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.
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. Bayer Intellectual needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Strategy & Execution industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Bayer Intellectual in the Strategy & Execution industry. The Strategy & Execution 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.
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 Bayer Intellectual in the Strategy & Execution sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Bayer Intellectual 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Bayer Intellectual 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 Strategy & Execution industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? 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 Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? 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 Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? 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 Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? 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 Bayer in India: Intellectual Property Expropriation? 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 Bayer Intellectual needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.