How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
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Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth
This case accompanies a collection of business press articles and two video clips. Registered Premium Educators at hbsp.harvard.edu also have access to a teaching note and lecture slides. While the case and articles are assigned as pre-reading, the video clips and lecture slides can be shown in the classroom by the instructor.
Authors :: W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne, Oh Young Koo
Swot Analysis of "How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth" written by W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne, Oh Young Koo includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Slides Clips facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Growth strategy, Innovation, Organizational culture and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth casestudy better are - – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing commodity prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
there is backlash against globalization, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Slides Clips, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Slides Clips 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 How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Slides Clips
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 Slides Clips
Strengths How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Slides Clips in How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth Harvard Business Review case study are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Slides Clips 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Slides Clips 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 How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Slides Clips has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Slides Clips 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.
Organizational Resilience of Slides Clips
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Slides Clips does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth 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.
Digital Transformation in Strategy & Execution segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Slides Clips digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Slides Clips 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Strategy & Execution industry
– How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Slides Clips to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Slides Clips to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Slides Clips is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth 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.
Ability to lead change in Strategy & Execution field
– Slides Clips 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 Slides Clips in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Slides Clips 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Slides Clips in the sector have low bargaining power. How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Slides Clips to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Slides Clips in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth are -
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Slides Clips has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
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 Slides Clips supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Slides Clips vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Lack of clear differentiation of Slides Clips products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Slides Clips needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Slides Clips 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 - How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Slides Clips 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Slides Clips, firm in the HBR case study How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Slides Clips 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Strategy & Execution 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
Slides Clips 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth, is just above the industry average. Slides Clips 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth 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 Slides Clips has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Opportunities How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth | 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 How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth are -
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Slides Clips can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Slides Clips operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Strategy & Execution sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Slides Clips 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Slides Clips 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Slides Clips is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Slides Clips 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Strategy & Execution industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Slides Clips can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Slides Clips can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Slides Clips to increase its market reach. Slides Clips 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Strategy & Execution industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Slides Clips 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. Slides Clips 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Slides Clips 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.
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 Slides Clips 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Slides Clips 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 How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Slides Clips to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Slides Clips 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.
Threats How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Slides Clips 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
– Slides Clips 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Slides Clips 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.
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. Slides Clips can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Slides Clips 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.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Slides Clips 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 Slides Clips with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Slides Clips 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 How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth .
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.
Environmental challenges
– Slides Clips 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. Slides Clips can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Slides Clips 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.
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. Slides Clips 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth 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 How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth 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 How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth 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 How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth 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 How Apple's Corporate Strategy Drove High Growth 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 Slides Clips needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.