What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Global Business
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A)
This is a Darden case study.In 1999, Lesotho, a tiny African country about the size of Maryland or Belgium, faced a huge undertaking. The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), one of the world's biggest engineering and infrastructure projects. Slated to benefit the country in many ways, it was beset by allegations of corruption. At the center of this scandal was Lesotho official Masupha Ephraim Sole, accused of taking bribes during the first years of the project from numerous companies involved in the construction. In addition to prosecuting Sole, Lesotho was considering the almost unthinkable: mounting a criminal prosecution against the multinational companies--in a Lesotho court--that allegedly had bribed Sole. This would, in every way, be a Sisyphean task. This is a four-case series, labeled A through D, UV1142 through UV1145.
Authors :: Pat Werhane, Jenny Mead, Mollie Painter-Moreland
Swot Analysis of "What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A)" written by Pat Werhane, Jenny Mead, Mollie Painter-Moreland includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Lesotho Sole facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Emerging markets, Ethics and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) casestudy better are - – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing commodity prices, geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Lesotho Sole, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Lesotho Sole 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 What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Lesotho Sole
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Global Business field.
4. Making a Global Business topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Lesotho Sole
Strengths What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Lesotho Sole in What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Global Business industry
– What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Lesotho Sole to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Global Business industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Lesotho Sole to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Lesotho Sole 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 What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Lesotho Sole in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Lesotho Sole 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Lesotho Sole is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) 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.
Learning organization
- Lesotho Sole 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 Lesotho Sole is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Lesotho Sole 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Lesotho Sole is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Strong track record of project management
– Lesotho Sole is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Digital Transformation in Global Business segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Lesotho Sole digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Lesotho Sole 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Lesotho Sole 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 What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Lesotho Sole 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 Pat Werhane, Jenny Mead, Mollie Painter-Moreland 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.
Weaknesses What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) are -
Need for greater diversity
– Lesotho Sole 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A), in the dynamic environment Lesotho Sole has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Lesotho Sole has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Lesotho Sole, firm in the HBR case study What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Lesotho Sole 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) 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 Lesotho Sole has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A), it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Global Business 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.
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 Lesotho Sole supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A), it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Lesotho Sole vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Lesotho Sole 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 - What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Lack of clear differentiation of Lesotho Sole products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Lesotho Sole needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A), it seems that the employees of Lesotho Sole 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) 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 What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Lesotho Sole is planning to shift buying processes online.
Opportunities What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) | 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 What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Lesotho Sole 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 Global Business segment.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Lesotho Sole has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Lesotho Sole to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) case study. Lesotho Sole can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Global Business industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Lesotho Sole can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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. Lesotho Sole can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Global Business industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Lesotho Sole 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. Lesotho Sole 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 Lesotho Sole to increase its market reach. Lesotho Sole 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, Lesotho Sole is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Lesotho Sole 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Lesotho Sole can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Lesotho Sole 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, What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A), to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Lesotho Sole can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Lesotho Sole in the consumer business. Now Lesotho Sole can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Manufacturing automation
– Lesotho Sole can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Global Business 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.
Threats What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) are -
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Lesotho Sole 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Lesotho Sole is facing in Global Business sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Lesotho Sole with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Lesotho Sole in the Global Business industry. The Global Business 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.
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. Lesotho Sole needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Global Business industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Lesotho Sole 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 What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) .
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Lesotho Sole 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.
Increasing wage structure of Lesotho Sole
– 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 Lesotho Sole.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A), Lesotho Sole may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Global Business .
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Lesotho Sole has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Lesotho Sole needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Global Business 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.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Lesotho Sole 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. Lesotho Sole can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Global Business industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) 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 What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) 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 What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) 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 What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) 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 What Can a Mosquito Do to an Elephant? (A) 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 Lesotho Sole needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.