Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk
This is a Darden case study.Although breast milk is recognized by doctors, public health officials, and scientists as the best first food for an infant, it is not pure. Many synthetic chemicals released into the environment, intentionally or not, can be found in breast milk. Chemicals such as famous "bad actors" like dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), as well as less well-known substances such as flame retardants (polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs), have been detected in human breast milk around the world. Many of those synthetic chemicals are known or suspected causes of cancer, and they have been linked to other health problems such as diabetes, reproductive disorders, and impaired brain development. The health benefits of breastfeeding far outweigh the possible negative effects of chemical contaminants in breast milk, but the presence of those chemicals remains a cause for concern among health officials, individuals, and the companies whose products or manufacturing process release toxins into our environment.
Swot Analysis of "Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk" written by Andrea Larson includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Breast Milk facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Ethics, Health, Innovation, Manufacturing and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk casestudy better are - – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing energy prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Breast Milk, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Breast Milk 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 Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Breast Milk
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field.
4. Making a Innovation & Entrepreneurship topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Breast Milk
Strengths Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Breast Milk in Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk Harvard Business Review case study are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry
– Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Breast Milk to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Breast Milk to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Breast Milk 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 Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Breast Milk is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk 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 Breast Milk 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.
Digital Transformation in Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Breast Milk digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Breast Milk 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.
Organizational Resilience of Breast Milk
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Breast Milk does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High brand equity
– Breast Milk has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Breast Milk to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Breast Milk has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Breast Milk 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.
Learning organization
- Breast Milk 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 Breast Milk is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Breast Milk is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk 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.
Training and development
– Breast Milk has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk 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.
Weaknesses Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk are -
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Breast Milk 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 dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk 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 Breast Milk has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk, in the dynamic environment Breast Milk has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Breast Milk has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Breast Milk 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk 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 Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Breast Milk is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Breast Milk needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Breast Milk 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. Breast Milk 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Breast Milk has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Breast Milk is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk, is just above the industry average. Breast Milk 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk HBR case study mentions - Breast Milk 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.
Opportunities Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk | 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 Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Breast Milk 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, Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Breast Milk 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Breast Milk has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Breast Milk to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk case study. Breast Milk can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Breast Milk 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 Breast Milk to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Breast Milk can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Developing new processes and practices
– Breast Milk can develop new processes and procedures in Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Breast Milk 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 Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Breast Milk to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Breast Milk can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Breast Milk operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Breast Milk 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 Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Breast Milk is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Breast Milk 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. Breast Milk 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Breast Milk 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Breast Milk 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 Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Breast Milk 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.
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 Breast Milk business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Breast Milk in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. The Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Breast Milk can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Breast Milk needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Breast Milk 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.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Breast Milk is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Breast Milk 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.
Environmental challenges
– Breast Milk 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. Breast Milk can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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. Breast Milk 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Breast Milk has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Breast Milk needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk 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 Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk 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 Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk 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 Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk 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 Environmental Health: Chemicals in Breast Milk 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 Breast Milk needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.