Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues
Crowdsourcing is typically associated with the incorporation of company-external stakeholders such as customers in the value creating process. This article proposes a framework for a company-internal application of crowdsourcing methods. It presents a set of five goals companies can pursue employing internal crowdsourcing. The practical approach of an Austrian medium-sized technology company is described in detail, including insights on software design and appropriate procedures.
Authors :: Daniel Stieger, Kurt Matzler, Florian Ladstaetter-Fussenegger, Sayan Chatterjee
Swot Analysis of "Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues" written by Daniel Stieger, Kurt Matzler, Florian Ladstaetter-Fussenegger, Sayan Chatterjee includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Crowdsourcing Dialogues facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Innovation, Internet and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues casestudy better are - – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is increasing trade war between United States & China, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing transportation and logistics costs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
technology disruption, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Crowdsourcing Dialogues, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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 Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Crowdsourcing Dialogues
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 Crowdsourcing Dialogues
Strengths Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Crowdsourcing Dialogues in Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues Harvard Business Review case study are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues 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.
High brand equity
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Crowdsourcing Dialogues to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Crowdsourcing Dialogues in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Crowdsourcing Dialogues in the sector have low bargaining power. Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Crowdsourcing Dialogues to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Training and development
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Strong track record of project management
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to lead change in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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 Crowdsourcing Dialogues in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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 Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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 Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues are -
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues, in the dynamic environment Crowdsourcing Dialogues has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Crowdsourcing Dialogues has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Crowdsourcing Dialogues, firm in the HBR case study Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Crowdsourcing Dialogues products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Crowdsourcing Dialogues needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues, is just above the industry average. Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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 decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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. Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues 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 Crowdsourcing Dialogues has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues 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 Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Crowdsourcing Dialogues is planning to shift buying processes online.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues, 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues, it seems that the employees of Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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.
Opportunities Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues | 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 Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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 Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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, Crowdsourcing Dialogues can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Crowdsourcing Dialogues operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector.
Buying journey improvements
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Crowdsourcing Dialogues can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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 Crowdsourcing Dialogues in the consumer business. Now Crowdsourcing Dialogues can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Crowdsourcing Dialogues can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Crowdsourcing Dialogues has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Crowdsourcing Dialogues to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues case study. Crowdsourcing Dialogues can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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.
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. Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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. Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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.
Threats Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Crowdsourcing Dialogues demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
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 Crowdsourcing Dialogues.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Crowdsourcing Dialogues with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
High 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. Crowdsourcing Dialogues needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Crowdsourcing Dialogues business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Crowdsourcing Dialogues in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Crowdsourcing Dialogues
– 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 Crowdsourcing Dialogues.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Crowdsourcing Dialogues has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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.
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. Crowdsourcing Dialogues 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Crowdsourcing Dialogues is facing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues 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 Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues 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 Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues 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 Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues 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 Democratizing Strategy: How Crowdsourcing Can Be Used for Strategy Dialogues 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 Crowdsourcing Dialogues needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
