Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation
Based on actual historical events, this case presents the narrative of when the Idaho Fish and Game Department decided to transplant beavers from a rapidly growing area of human habitation by catching them in live traps, flying the beavers to a more hospitable environment via airplane, and parachuting the caged beavers to the ground. Students are asked to evaluate the wisdom of this plan from ecological, economic, and ethical perspectives. This case is intended for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course in sustainable business practices, environmental management, business ethics, and/or wildlife conservation.
Swot Analysis of "Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation" written by Mark White includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Beavers Wildlife facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation casestudy better are - – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, technology disruption, increasing energy prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, geopolitical disruptions,
customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Beavers Wildlife, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Beavers Wildlife 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 Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Beavers Wildlife
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 Beavers Wildlife
Strengths Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Beavers Wildlife in Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation Harvard Business Review case study are -
Training and development
– Beavers Wildlife has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Beavers Wildlife in the sector have low bargaining power. Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Beavers Wildlife to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Beavers Wildlife 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 Mark White 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Beavers Wildlife 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 Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation - 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
– Beavers Wildlife has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Beavers Wildlife 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
– Beavers Wildlife 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 Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation 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 Beavers Wildlife 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 Strategy & Execution field
– Beavers Wildlife 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 Beavers Wildlife in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Beavers Wildlife 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Beavers Wildlife in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Organizational Resilience of Beavers Wildlife
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Beavers Wildlife does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Beavers Wildlife 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 Beavers Wildlife is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Beavers Wildlife 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 - Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation HBR case study mentions - Beavers Wildlife 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation, 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation 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 Beavers Wildlife 's lucrative customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Beavers Wildlife 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Beavers Wildlife 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Beavers Wildlife 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. Beavers Wildlife 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Beavers Wildlife 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Mark White suggests that, Beavers Wildlife 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Beavers Wildlife 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation, is just above the industry average. Beavers Wildlife 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.
Opportunities Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation | 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 Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation are -
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 Beavers Wildlife in the consumer business. Now Beavers Wildlife can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Beavers Wildlife 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Beavers Wildlife 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Beavers Wildlife 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.
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 Beavers Wildlife 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Beavers Wildlife is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Beavers Wildlife can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Beavers Wildlife operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Strategy & Execution sector.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Beavers Wildlife 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Beavers Wildlife 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.
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. Beavers Wildlife 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. Beavers Wildlife 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Beavers Wildlife 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, Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Beavers Wildlife 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 Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Beavers Wildlife to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Buying journey improvements
– Beavers Wildlife can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation 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.
Threats Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation are -
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. Beavers Wildlife 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Beavers Wildlife 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 Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation .
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 Beavers Wildlife.
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.
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. Beavers Wildlife needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Strategy & Execution industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation, Beavers Wildlife may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Strategy & Execution .
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Beavers Wildlife 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.
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 Beavers Wildlife in the Strategy & Execution sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Beavers Wildlife 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Beavers Wildlife is facing in Strategy & Execution sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Beavers Wildlife 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.
Environmental challenges
– Beavers Wildlife 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. Beavers Wildlife can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation 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 Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation 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 Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation 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 Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation 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 Flying Beavers: An Innovative Approach to Wildlife Conservation 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 Beavers Wildlife needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
