College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact
To maximize their effectiveness, color cases should be printed in color.College Summit, a nonprofit organization "committed to the day when every student who can make it in college makes it to college," was faced with an important strategic decision. After growing rapidly at more than 30% a year for the last several years, Founder and CEO J.B. Schramm, Chief Strategy Officer Mora Segal, and the College Summit team must now decide whether or not to dramatically redefine their organization's theory of change. College Summit could continue to "get results and grow real fast" or make the bold choice to re-conceptualize its strategy to focus on system-level change. While there were numerous risks to pursuing the alternative strategy, for Schramm and Segal, the possibility of helping redefine the purpose of secondary education might be too significant to ignore.
Swot Analysis of "College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact" written by Stacey Childress, Geoff Marietta includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Summit College facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Entrepreneurship, Growth strategy, Social responsibility and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact casestudy better are - – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, there is backlash against globalization, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing commodity prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Summit College, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Summit College 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 College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Summit College
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 Summit College
Strengths College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Summit College in College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact Harvard Business Review case study are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Summit College in the sector have low bargaining power. College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Summit College to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High brand equity
– Summit College has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Summit College to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Summit College is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Organizational Resilience of Summit College
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Summit College does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Innovation driven organization
– Summit College is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Summit College in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Summit College 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 College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Analytics focus
– Summit College 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 Stacey Childress, Geoff Marietta 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.
Digital Transformation in Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Summit College digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Summit College 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.
Training and development
– Summit College has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Summit College 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.
Weaknesses College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact HBR case study mentions - Summit College 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 dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact 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 Summit College has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
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 Summit College supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Summit College vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact, it seems that the employees of Summit College 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Summit College 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. Summit College 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, Summit College 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Summit College 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Summit College, firm in the HBR case study College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Summit College 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Summit College 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Summit College products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Summit College needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Opportunities College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact | 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 College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact are -
Buying journey improvements
– Summit College can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Summit College 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 Summit College to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Summit College 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, College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Summit College 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Summit College 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.
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 Summit College 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Summit College 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Summit College to increase its market reach. Summit College 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Summit College 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 College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Summit College to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Summit College 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 Summit College can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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. Summit College 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. Summit College 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Summit College 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.
Threats College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Summit College is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Summit College needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry regulations.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Summit College 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.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact, Summit College may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Innovation & Entrepreneurship .
Increasing wage structure of Summit College
– 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 Summit College.
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. Summit College can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Summit College has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Summit College 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Summit College 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, Summit College 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 College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact .
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Summit College 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.
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. Summit College 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 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact 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 College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact 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 College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact 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 College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact 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 College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact 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 Summit College needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
