Dennis Hightower: New Horizons SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Dennis Hightower: New Horizons
Named president of Disney TV and Telecommunications, Dennis Hightower has to yet again come in as an outsider and take charge. The magnitude of challenge is much larger than in 1987, and the situation facing him is subtly different.
Swot Analysis of "Dennis Hightower: New Horizons" written by Ashish Nanda includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Hightower Dennis facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Dennis Hightower: New Horizons case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Competitive strategy, Corporate governance, International business, Leadership, Marketing and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Dennis Hightower: New Horizons casestudy better are - – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
increasing energy prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Dennis Hightower: New Horizons
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Dennis Hightower: New Horizons case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Hightower Dennis, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Hightower Dennis 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 Dennis Hightower: New Horizons can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Dennis Hightower: New Horizons case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Hightower Dennis
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Hightower Dennis
Strengths Dennis Hightower: New Horizons | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Hightower Dennis in Dennis Hightower: New Horizons Harvard Business Review case study are -
Ability to lead change in Leadership & Managing People field
– Hightower Dennis 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 Hightower Dennis in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Dennis Hightower: New Horizons 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Hightower Dennis 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Dennis Hightower: New Horizons firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Hightower Dennis to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Hightower Dennis to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Hightower Dennis 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 Dennis Hightower: New Horizons - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Hightower Dennis 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 Dennis Hightower: New Horizons HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Hightower Dennis is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Dennis Hightower: New Horizons 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 Hightower Dennis
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Hightower Dennis does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Hightower Dennis in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Hightower Dennis 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 Hightower Dennis is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Dennis Hightower: New Horizons Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Hightower Dennis is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Training and development
– Hightower Dennis has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Dennis Hightower: New Horizons 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.
Weaknesses Dennis Hightower: New Horizons | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Dennis Hightower: New Horizons are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Dennis Hightower: New Horizons, it seems that the employees of Hightower Dennis 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 to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Hightower Dennis is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Dennis Hightower: New Horizons can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Hightower Dennis 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Hightower Dennis 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Dennis Hightower: New Horizons, is just above the industry average. Hightower Dennis 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 dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Dennis Hightower: New Horizons 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 Hightower Dennis 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 Hightower Dennis supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Dennis Hightower: New Horizons, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Hightower Dennis vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Hightower Dennis is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Hightower Dennis needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Hightower Dennis to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Hightower Dennis, firm in the HBR case study Dennis Hightower: New Horizons needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Dennis Hightower: New Horizons, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Leadership & Managing People 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Dennis Hightower: New Horizons, in the dynamic environment Hightower Dennis has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Hightower Dennis has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Opportunities Dennis Hightower: New Horizons | 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 Dennis Hightower: New Horizons are -
Loyalty marketing
– Hightower Dennis 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Hightower Dennis 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 Dennis Hightower: New Horizons - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Hightower Dennis to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Hightower Dennis in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Hightower Dennis 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Hightower Dennis 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 Hightower Dennis to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Hightower Dennis 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Hightower Dennis 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, Dennis Hightower: New Horizons, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Hightower Dennis 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 Leadership & Managing People segment.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Hightower Dennis 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. Hightower Dennis 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Hightower Dennis can develop new processes and procedures in Leadership & Managing People 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Hightower Dennis can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Hightower Dennis can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Leadership & Managing People industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Hightower Dennis can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Dennis Hightower: New Horizons External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Dennis Hightower: New Horizons are -
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 Hightower Dennis in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Hightower Dennis 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. Hightower Dennis can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Hightower Dennis in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Hightower Dennis 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. Hightower Dennis 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Hightower Dennis 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 Dennis Hightower: New Horizons .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Hightower Dennis with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Dennis Hightower: New Horizons, Hightower Dennis may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Leadership & Managing People .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Hightower Dennis is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Hightower Dennis
– 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 Hightower Dennis.
Regulatory challenges
– Hightower Dennis 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 Leadership & Managing People industry regulations.
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. Hightower Dennis needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Hightower Dennis 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Dennis Hightower: New Horizons 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 Dennis Hightower: New Horizons 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 Dennis Hightower: New Horizons 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 Dennis Hightower: New Horizons 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 Dennis Hightower: New Horizons 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 Hightower Dennis needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.