SINE: Building a Team of the Willing SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of SINE: Building a Team of the Willing
An academic research group, providing services to medical device companies, had studied most of the new materials on the market and under development. They found a new approach for solving known issues related to the mending of damaged living tissue. The lab head and the research group leader knew this would be an opportunity to help a lot of patients and decided to patent the invention. Initial private investment in exchange for 50% IP rights allowed preclinical evaluation. Initial talks with large medical device companies indicated there was interest, but they needed clinical proof first. In collaboration with the University's TTO (technology transfer office), a start-up business plan was devised and venture capital (VC) funding was obtained, which allowed the new technology to get through the first clinical assessment. Dr. Gerard Bouchier, Research Group Leader, December 2008. Spirits were high that 15th of December morning. Gathering for coffee, the team went through their company presentation a last time. All hopes were set upon the meticulously planned VC syndicate meeting that could finally mean a step forward in starting up their medical device company. Having spent the last two years preparing the case, Gerard knew he was prepared. Unfortunately, despite the excellent reception of the case and the positive spirit around the table, none of the VC funds wanted to take the lead. Worse, about two weeks later the Great Financial Crisis hit the region and all funds pulled out of the discussion. What now? learning objective: 1/ How to set up and secure a motivated team of managers. 2/ How to organize the fund raising at an initial stage of development of a company, how to execute a strategic initiative, how to set the course and schedule the right resources, how to quickly adapt strategies in relation to changing environments. 3/ Applying leadership concepts and in particular organizational dynamics.
Swot Analysis of "SINE: Building a Team of the Willing" written by Jim Pulcrano includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Gerard Vc facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in SINE: Building a Team of the Willing case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Organizational structure, Strategy execution and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the SINE: Building a Team of the Willing casestudy better are - – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, geopolitical disruptions, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing energy prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of SINE: Building a Team of the Willing
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in SINE: Building a Team of the Willing case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Gerard Vc, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Gerard Vc 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 SINE: Building a Team of the Willing can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in SINE: Building a Team of the Willing case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Gerard Vc
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 Gerard Vc
Strengths SINE: Building a Team of the Willing | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Gerard Vc in SINE: Building a Team of the Willing Harvard Business Review case study are -
Strong track record of project management
– Gerard Vc is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Gerard Vc 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 Gerard Vc is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in SINE: Building a Team of the Willing Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Gerard Vc 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 SINE: Building a Team of the Willing HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to lead change in Strategy & Execution field
– Gerard Vc 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 Gerard Vc in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Analytics focus
– Gerard Vc 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 Jim Pulcrano 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Strategy & Execution industry
– SINE: Building a Team of the Willing firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Gerard Vc to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Gerard Vc to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Gerard Vc in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– Gerard Vc is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in SINE: Building a Team of the Willing Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Digital Transformation in Strategy & Execution segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Gerard Vc digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Gerard Vc 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Gerard Vc is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in SINE: Building a Team of the Willing 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Gerard Vc 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 SINE: Building a Team of the Willing - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Training and development
– Gerard Vc has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in SINE: Building a Team of the Willing 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.
Weaknesses SINE: Building a Team of the Willing | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of SINE: Building a Team of the Willing are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study SINE: Building a Team of the Willing, it seems that the employees of Gerard Vc 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Gerard Vc 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study SINE: Building a Team of the Willing, in the dynamic environment Gerard Vc has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Gerard Vc has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Gerard Vc 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As SINE: Building a Team of the Willing HBR case study mentions - Gerard Vc 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Gerard Vc is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study SINE: Building a Team of the Willing can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study SINE: Building a Team of the Willing, 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Gerard Vc 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study SINE: Building a Team of the Willing 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 SINE: Building a Team of the Willing can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Gerard Vc is planning to shift buying processes online.
Lack of clear differentiation of Gerard Vc products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Gerard Vc needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study SINE: Building a Team of the Willing 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 Gerard Vc 's lucrative customers.
Opportunities SINE: Building a Team of the Willing | 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 SINE: Building a Team of the Willing are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Gerard Vc 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Gerard Vc can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Gerard Vc operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Strategy & Execution sector.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Gerard Vc 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 Gerard Vc to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Gerard Vc 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.
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. Gerard Vc 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. Gerard Vc 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 Gerard Vc 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Gerard Vc 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Gerard Vc to increase its market reach. Gerard Vc 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Gerard Vc is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. SINE: Building a Team of the Willing 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
– Gerard Vc 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. Gerard Vc can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Gerard Vc 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, SINE: Building a Team of the Willing, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– Gerard Vc 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 SINE: Building a Team of the Willing External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study SINE: Building a Team of the Willing are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Gerard Vc 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.
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. Gerard Vc 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.
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 Gerard Vc in the Strategy & Execution sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Gerard Vc 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 dependence on third party suppliers
– Gerard Vc 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.
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. Gerard Vc can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Gerard Vc needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Strategy & Execution industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Gerard Vc 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. Gerard Vc can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study SINE: Building a Team of the Willing, Gerard Vc 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 .
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.
Increasing wage structure of Gerard Vc
– 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 Gerard Vc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Gerard Vc is facing in Strategy & Execution sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of SINE: Building a Team of the Willing 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 SINE: Building a Team of the Willing 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 SINE: Building a Team of the Willing 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 SINE: Building a Team of the Willing 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 SINE: Building a Team of the Willing 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 Gerard Vc needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.