A New Vision for the Stratford Festival SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of A New Vision for the Stratford Festival
In January 2016, the executive director of Canada's Stratford Festival, one of North America's largest repertory theatre companies, was considering the festival's long-term outlook and the role the organization played in the community. The 2015 season had been successful, and she would be able to report a small surplus to the board at the upcoming annual general meeting. But the long-term outlook wasn't as secure. Annual attendance had dropped below previous levels of more than 500,000, which was the attendance needed to ensure long-term operational sustainability. The festival had returned to its creative roots during a period when the Canadian dollar had been in decline, but it had not been enough to ensure that the organization would survive its next economic tempest. The festival needed a long-term, innovative strategy to generate sustainable growth and strengthen it sufficiently to weather future economic downturns and exchange rate fluctuations.
Swot Analysis of "A New Vision for the Stratford Festival" written by Gerard Seijts, Robert Way includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Festival Stratford facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in A New Vision for the Stratford Festival case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Leadership, Strategy and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the A New Vision for the Stratford Festival casestudy better are - – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing commodity prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
geopolitical disruptions, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of A New Vision for the Stratford Festival
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in A New Vision for the Stratford Festival case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Festival Stratford, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Festival Stratford 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 A New Vision for the Stratford Festival can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in A New Vision for the Stratford Festival case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Festival Stratford
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Organizational Development field.
4. Making a Organizational Development topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Festival Stratford
Strengths A New Vision for the Stratford Festival | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Festival Stratford in A New Vision for the Stratford Festival Harvard Business Review case study are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Festival Stratford has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Festival Stratford 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.
High brand equity
– Festival Stratford has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Festival Stratford to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Festival Stratford is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the A New Vision for the Stratford Festival are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Ability to lead change in Organizational Development field
– Festival Stratford 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 Festival Stratford in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Festival Stratford in the sector have low bargaining power. A New Vision for the Stratford Festival has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Festival Stratford to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the A New Vision for the Stratford Festival 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.
Digital Transformation in Organizational Development segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Festival Stratford digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Festival Stratford 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Festival Stratford 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 A New Vision for the Stratford Festival - 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
– Festival Stratford has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in A New Vision for the Stratford Festival 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Festival Stratford is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Organizational Development industry
– A New Vision for the Stratford Festival firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Festival Stratford to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Organizational Development industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Festival Stratford to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Festival Stratford
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Festival Stratford does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses A New Vision for the Stratford Festival | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of A New Vision for the Stratford Festival are -
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study A New Vision for the Stratford Festival, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Organizational Development 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As A New Vision for the Stratford Festival HBR case study mentions - Festival Stratford 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
Festival Stratford 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Festival Stratford 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 Festival Stratford 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 - A New Vision for the Stratford Festival should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the A New Vision for the Stratford Festival 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 Festival Stratford has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study A New Vision for the Stratford Festival 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 A New Vision for the Stratford Festival can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Festival Stratford is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Festival Stratford is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study A New Vision for the Stratford Festival can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Festival Stratford 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.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Festival Stratford supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - A New Vision for the Stratford Festival, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Festival Stratford vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study A New Vision for the Stratford Festival, is just above the industry average. Festival Stratford needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Opportunities A New Vision for the Stratford Festival | 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 A New Vision for the Stratford Festival are -
Loyalty marketing
– Festival Stratford 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.
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 Festival Stratford in the consumer business. Now Festival Stratford can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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 Festival Stratford 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Festival Stratford 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Festival Stratford in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Organizational Development segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Festival Stratford 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 A New Vision for the Stratford Festival - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Festival Stratford to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Festival Stratford has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Festival Stratford to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the A New Vision for the Stratford Festival case study. Festival Stratford can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Organizational Development industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Festival Stratford 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. Festival Stratford 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Festival Stratford to increase its market reach. Festival Stratford 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.
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. Festival Stratford can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Festival Stratford can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Festival Stratford operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Organizational Development sector.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Festival Stratford 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, A New Vision for the Stratford Festival, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Festival Stratford is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. A New Vision for the Stratford Festival 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.
Threats A New Vision for the Stratford Festival External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study A New Vision for the Stratford Festival are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Festival Stratford has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Organizational Development industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Festival Stratford needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Organizational Development 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.
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 Festival Stratford business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Festival Stratford 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Festival Stratford with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Festival Stratford 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. Festival Stratford can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Organizational Development industry.
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. Festival Stratford 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Organizational Development field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Festival Stratford can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Festival Stratford 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 A New Vision for the Stratford Festival .
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. Festival Stratford needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Organizational Development industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Festival Stratford 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
– Festival Stratford 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of A New Vision for the Stratford Festival 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 A New Vision for the Stratford Festival 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 A New Vision for the Stratford Festival 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 A New Vision for the Stratford Festival 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 A New Vision for the Stratford Festival 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 Festival Stratford needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.