It is now recognized that new venture start-ups can offer a career choice that is a little sexier, a little wilder, and in the long run equally lucrative, to the consulting or banking jobs that typically dominate post-MBA career paths. The FrogPubs case describes two entrepreneurial bad boys who ten years ago chose a different path, forming a partnership to develop their own, traditional business start-up. In the case, the two entrepreneurs discuss the thrills and chills involved in writing and implementing their business plan, as well as the lessons they learned while building their successful business brick by brick. The case study is organized in a way that allows discussion based on natural focus points ranging from potential bankruptcy in the early days, to later issues of personnel management, joint-venture partnership and protecting and exploiting a unique but maturing business concept. Please visit the dedicated case website to access case videos and other support material.
Authors :: Randel Carlock, Elizabeth Florent-Treacy, Laurence Amand-Jules
Swot Analysis of "FrogPubs (A)" written by Randel Carlock, Elizabeth Florent-Treacy, Laurence Amand-Jules includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Frogpubs Brick facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in FrogPubs (A) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Growth strategy, Human resource management, Joint ventures and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the FrogPubs (A) casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, wage bills are increasing, technology disruption, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing commodity prices, there is backlash against globalization, geopolitical disruptions,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in FrogPubs (A) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Frogpubs Brick, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Frogpubs Brick 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 FrogPubs (A) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in FrogPubs (A) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Frogpubs Brick
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 Frogpubs Brick
Strengths FrogPubs (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Frogpubs Brick in FrogPubs (A) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Innovation driven organization
– Frogpubs Brick is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in FrogPubs (A) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Diverse revenue streams
– Frogpubs Brick is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in FrogPubs (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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the FrogPubs (A) 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Frogpubs Brick is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the FrogPubs (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.
Ability to lead change in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field
– Frogpubs Brick 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 Frogpubs Brick in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management
– Frogpubs Brick is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Frogpubs Brick 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 Frogpubs Brick is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in FrogPubs (A) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Frogpubs Brick 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Frogpubs Brick in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry
– FrogPubs (A) firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Frogpubs Brick to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Frogpubs Brick to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High brand equity
– Frogpubs Brick has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Frogpubs Brick to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Frogpubs Brick 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 FrogPubs (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.
Weaknesses FrogPubs (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of FrogPubs (A) are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Frogpubs Brick products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Frogpubs Brick needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study FrogPubs (A), it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
Frogpubs Brick 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, Frogpubs Brick 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Frogpubs Brick is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment. Frogpubs Brick needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Frogpubs Brick to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study FrogPubs (A), it seems that the employees of Frogpubs Brick 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Frogpubs Brick 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study FrogPubs (A), is just above the industry average. Frogpubs Brick 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Randel Carlock, Elizabeth Florent-Treacy, Laurence Amand-Jules suggests that, Frogpubs Brick is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Frogpubs Brick 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 - FrogPubs (A) should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As FrogPubs (A) HBR case study mentions - Frogpubs Brick 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 FrogPubs (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 FrogPubs (A) are -
Loyalty marketing
– Frogpubs Brick 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Frogpubs Brick can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Frogpubs Brick 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 Frogpubs Brick to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Frogpubs Brick is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. FrogPubs (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.
Buying journey improvements
– Frogpubs Brick can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. FrogPubs (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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Frogpubs Brick 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 FrogPubs (A) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Frogpubs Brick to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Frogpubs Brick 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 Frogpubs Brick in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Frogpubs Brick 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.
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 Frogpubs Brick 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Frogpubs Brick can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Frogpubs Brick operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Frogpubs Brick 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, FrogPubs (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.
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 Frogpubs Brick in the consumer business. Now Frogpubs Brick can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats FrogPubs (A) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study FrogPubs (A) are -
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.
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. Frogpubs Brick can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Frogpubs Brick business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Frogpubs Brick with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Frogpubs Brick 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 FrogPubs (A) .
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.
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. Frogpubs Brick 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Frogpubs Brick has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Frogpubs Brick 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.
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 Frogpubs Brick.
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. Frogpubs Brick needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing wage structure of Frogpubs Brick
– 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 Frogpubs Brick.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Frogpubs Brick 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Frogpubs Brick 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of FrogPubs (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 FrogPubs (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 FrogPubs (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 FrogPubs (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 FrogPubs (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 Frogpubs Brick needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
