Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy
In the 2018 Digital Business Report, MIT SMR and Deloitte find that digitally maturing organizations encourage distributed leadership and a healthy appetite for experimentation.
Authors :: Gerald C. Kane, Doug Palmer, Anh Nguyen Phillips, David Kiron
Swot Analysis of "Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy" written by Gerald C. Kane, Doug Palmer, Anh Nguyen Phillips, David Kiron includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Digitally Smr facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy casestudy better are - – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, technology disruption, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Digitally Smr, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Digitally Smr 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 Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Digitally Smr
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 Digitally Smr
Strengths Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Digitally Smr in Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy Harvard Business Review case study are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Digitally Smr to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Digitally Smr to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Training and development
– Digitally Smr has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Digitally Smr is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Digitally Smr 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Digitally Smr 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 Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Digitally Smr in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Diverse revenue streams
– Digitally Smr is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy 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)
– Digitally Smr 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 Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Digitally Smr is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Organizational Resilience of Digitally Smr
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Digitally Smr does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High brand equity
– Digitally Smr has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Digitally Smr to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Digitally Smr 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 Digitally Smr is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy, it seems that the employees of Digitally Smr 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Digitally Smr 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy, is just above the industry average. Digitally Smr 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy, in the dynamic environment Digitally Smr has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Digitally Smr has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Digitally Smr 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. Digitally Smr even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Digitally Smr is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Digitally Smr needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Digitally Smr to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Digitally Smr 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy 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 Digitally Smr 's lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy 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 Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Digitally Smr is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Gerald C. Kane, Doug Palmer, Anh Nguyen Phillips, David Kiron suggests that, Digitally Smr 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Digitally Smr products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Digitally Smr needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Opportunities Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy | 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 Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy are -
Manufacturing automation
– Digitally Smr can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Leadership & Managing People segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Buying journey improvements
– Digitally Smr can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Digitally Smr to increase its market reach. Digitally Smr 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, Digitally Smr is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Digitally Smr has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Digitally Smr to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy case study. Digitally Smr can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Digitally Smr can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Digitally Smr 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Digitally Smr can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Digitally Smr 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Digitally Smr 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.
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. Digitally Smr 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. Digitally Smr 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Digitally Smr can develop new processes and procedures in Leadership & Managing People 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Digitally Smr 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.
Threats Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy are -
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. Digitally Smr can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Digitally Smr.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Digitally Smr 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 Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy .
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 Digitally Smr business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Digitally Smr
– 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 Digitally Smr.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy, Digitally Smr 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 .
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Digitally Smr has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Digitally Smr 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Digitally Smr 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 Leadership & Managing People industry regulations.
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. Digitally Smr 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.
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.
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 Digitally Smr in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Digitally Smr 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Digitally Smr is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy 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 Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy 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 Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy 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 Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy 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 Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy 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 Digitally Smr needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
