Outrageous Ambition: Duke University SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Outrageous Ambition: Duke University
Duke University had grown from an one room school house in rural North Carolina in 1859 to one of the leading research universities in the U.S. and the world. Since the late 1950s, Duke's leaders had consciously used the process of strategic planning to guide the development of the university as a whole, building up programs in interdisciplinarity and initiating ambitious projects in internationalization. Under the leadership of President Richard Brodhead, Duke first built a medical school in Singapore in collaboration with the National University of Singapore, then embarked on a journey to build a university on American standards in the People's Republic of China with its own four year liberal arts curriculum. Will Duke realize its many "outrageous ambitions" as it transitions to a new president?
Swot Analysis of "Outrageous Ambition: Duke University" written by William C. Kirby, Yuanzhuo Wang includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Duke Outrageous facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Outrageous Ambition: Duke University case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Business history, Change management, Growth strategy, Organizational culture, Organizational structure, Strategic planning and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Outrageous Ambition: Duke University casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing commodity prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Outrageous Ambition: Duke University
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Outrageous Ambition: Duke University case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Duke Outrageous, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Duke Outrageous 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 Outrageous Ambition: Duke University can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Outrageous Ambition: Duke University case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Duke Outrageous
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Duke Outrageous
Strengths Outrageous Ambition: Duke University | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Duke Outrageous in Outrageous Ambition: Duke University Harvard Business Review case study are -
Analytics focus
– Duke Outrageous 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 William C. Kirby, Yuanzhuo Wang 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Duke Outrageous has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Duke Outrageous 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Duke Outrageous 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 Outrageous Ambition: Duke University - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Duke Outrageous is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Outrageous Ambition: Duke University Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
High brand equity
– Duke Outrageous has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Duke Outrageous to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Duke Outrageous 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 Outrageous Ambition: Duke University HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– Duke Outrageous has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Outrageous Ambition: Duke University 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Duke Outrageous 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.
Digital Transformation in Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Duke Outrageous digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Duke Outrageous 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Duke Outrageous in the sector have low bargaining power. Outrageous Ambition: Duke University has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Duke Outrageous to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Outrageous Ambition: Duke University 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Duke Outrageous in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses Outrageous Ambition: Duke University | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Outrageous Ambition: Duke University are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Duke Outrageous products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Duke Outrageous needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– Duke Outrageous 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Duke Outrageous 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Duke Outrageous 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 - Outrageous Ambition: Duke University should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Duke Outrageous 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Outrageous Ambition: Duke University, it seems that the employees of Duke Outrageous don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, William C. Kirby, Yuanzhuo Wang suggests that, Duke Outrageous 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Outrageous Ambition: Duke University, in the dynamic environment Duke Outrageous has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Duke Outrageous has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Duke Outrageous, firm in the HBR case study Outrageous Ambition: Duke University needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Outrageous Ambition: Duke University HBR case study mentions - Duke Outrageous 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Outrageous Ambition: Duke University 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 Duke Outrageous has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Opportunities Outrageous Ambition: Duke University | 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 Outrageous Ambition: Duke University are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Duke Outrageous 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Duke Outrageous has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Duke Outrageous to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Outrageous Ambition: Duke University case study. Duke Outrageous can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Duke Outrageous to increase its market reach. Duke Outrageous 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Duke Outrageous in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Duke Outrageous can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Duke Outrageous 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Duke Outrageous 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 Leadership & Managing People segment.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Duke Outrageous can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Duke Outrageous operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Duke Outrageous is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Outrageous Ambition: Duke University 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Duke Outrageous 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.
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 Duke Outrageous in the consumer business. Now Duke Outrageous can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Duke Outrageous 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. Duke Outrageous 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.
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 Duke Outrageous 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.
Threats Outrageous Ambition: Duke University External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Outrageous Ambition: Duke University are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Outrageous Ambition: Duke University, Duke Outrageous may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Leadership & Managing People .
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. Duke Outrageous needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of Duke Outrageous
– 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 Duke Outrageous.
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 Duke Outrageous business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Duke Outrageous 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Duke Outrageous can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Duke Outrageous with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Duke Outrageous has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Duke Outrageous needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
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. Duke Outrageous 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Duke Outrageous 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.
Environmental challenges
– Duke Outrageous 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. Duke Outrageous can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Duke Outrageous 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 Outrageous Ambition: Duke University .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Outrageous Ambition: Duke University 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 Outrageous Ambition: Duke University 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 Outrageous Ambition: Duke University 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 Outrageous Ambition: Duke University 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 Outrageous Ambition: Duke University 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 Duke Outrageous needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.