Case Study Description of GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges
GoPro, Inc. was an American action camera and software manufacturer founded in 2002 by a young entrepreneur. The company introduced innovative action cameras and became a successful brand with the help of content marketing. It continued its innovative spree for more than a decade and was the market leader in the industry. However, in March 2017, the company faced challenges due to product failures and increased competition, and the introduction of new products in the market. GoPro's stock price dropped as a result of a loss of confidence by both consumers and investors. What strategies could the company adopt to regain its competitive strength and revive confidence in its brand? What could it do to be more innovative and successful, and in doing so, fend off the low-cost competition? Rishi Dwesar is affiliated with ICFAI Business School-Hyderabad.
Swot Analysis of "GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges" written by Rishi Dwesar, Geeta Singh includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Gopro Confidence facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Financial management, Innovation and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing commodity prices, wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
geopolitical disruptions, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Gopro Confidence, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Gopro Confidence 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 GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Gopro Confidence
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Sales & Marketing field.
4. Making a Sales & Marketing topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Gopro Confidence
Strengths GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Gopro Confidence in GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges Harvard Business Review case study are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Gopro Confidence in the sector have low bargaining power. GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Gopro Confidence to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Gopro Confidence 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 Rishi Dwesar, Geeta Singh 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Gopro Confidence 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 GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Gopro Confidence is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges 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 Gopro Confidence
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Gopro Confidence does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Digital Transformation in Sales & Marketing segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Gopro Confidence digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Gopro Confidence 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Gopro Confidence is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Gopro Confidence has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Gopro Confidence 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 GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges - 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
– Gopro Confidence has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges 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.
High brand equity
– Gopro Confidence has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Gopro Confidence to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Gopro Confidence 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 Gopro Confidence in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Gopro Confidence is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Gopro Confidence products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Gopro Confidence needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Gopro Confidence has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Gopro Confidence, firm in the HBR case study GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges 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 GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Gopro Confidence is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Gopro Confidence 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 Gopro Confidence 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 - GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Gopro Confidence 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. Gopro Confidence 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Gopro Confidence 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 GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges, is just above the industry average. Gopro Confidence 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 GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges, in the dynamic environment Gopro Confidence has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Gopro Confidence has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Opportunities GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges | 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 GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges are -
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Gopro Confidence has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Gopro Confidence to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges case study. Gopro Confidence can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Gopro Confidence 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 GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Gopro Confidence to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Gopro Confidence 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Gopro Confidence can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Gopro Confidence 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 Sales & Marketing segment.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Gopro Confidence 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 Gopro Confidence to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Gopro Confidence to increase its market reach. Gopro Confidence 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Sales & Marketing industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Gopro Confidence can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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 Gopro Confidence in the consumer business. Now Gopro Confidence 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 Sales & Marketing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Gopro Confidence 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. Gopro Confidence 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Gopro Confidence can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Gopro Confidence operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Gopro Confidence 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Gopro Confidence can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges are -
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 Gopro Confidence.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Gopro Confidence in the Sales & Marketing industry. The Sales & Marketing 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.
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. Gopro Confidence 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Gopro Confidence 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.
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 Gopro Confidence business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Gopro Confidence needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Gopro Confidence 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 Sales & Marketing industry regulations.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Gopro Confidence 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.
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 Gopro Confidence in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Gopro Confidence with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges, Gopro Confidence may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Sales & Marketing .
Increasing wage structure of Gopro Confidence
– 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 Gopro Confidence.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges 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 GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges 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 GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges 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 GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges 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 GoPro: The Disruptive Innovator Faces Challenges 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 Gopro Confidence needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
