Case Study Description of The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty
Supplement to case W16178. Alaska's economy had struggled for many years; however, in spring 2014, the Pebble Mine presented an opportunity to revitalize it. There was just one catch; the Pebble deposit was located in the headwaters of one of the richest salmon hatcheries in the world. Corporations, government agencies, and public interest groups clashed during the first few months of 2014 concerning not only whether the Pebble Mine should be developed but also who had the authority to make that decision.
Swot Analysis of "The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty" written by Alan Krause, Lisa Johnson includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Pebble Mine facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Strategy and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty casestudy better are - – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is backlash against globalization, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Pebble Mine, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Pebble Mine 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 The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Pebble Mine
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 Pebble Mine
Strengths The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Pebble Mine in The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty Harvard Business Review case study are -
Analytics focus
– Pebble Mine 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 Alan Krause, Lisa Johnson 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Pebble Mine is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Pebble Mine is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty 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 Pebble Mine 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Pebble Mine 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 The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Pebble Mine has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Pebble Mine to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Pebble Mine in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Pebble Mine 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 Pebble Mine is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Pebble Mine 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.
Digital Transformation in Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Pebble Mine digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Pebble Mine 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
– Pebble Mine has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Pebble Mine is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty 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.
Weaknesses The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty are -
Need for greater diversity
– Pebble Mine 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 The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty, is just above the industry average. Pebble Mine 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty, 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Pebble Mine 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. Pebble Mine 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Pebble Mine 's lucrative customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty, in the dynamic environment Pebble Mine has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Pebble Mine has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty 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 The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Pebble Mine is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Alan Krause, Lisa Johnson suggests that, Pebble Mine 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty, it seems that the employees of Pebble Mine 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Pebble Mine is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Pebble Mine needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Pebble Mine to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Pebble Mine, firm in the HBR case study The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Opportunities The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty | 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 The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Pebble Mine 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Pebble Mine to increase its market reach. Pebble Mine 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.
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. Pebble Mine can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Pebble Mine is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty 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
– Pebble Mine can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty 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.
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. Pebble Mine 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. Pebble Mine 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Pebble Mine can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Pebble Mine operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Loyalty marketing
– Pebble Mine 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.
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. Pebble Mine can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Pebble Mine has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Pebble Mine to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty case study. Pebble Mine can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Manufacturing automation
– Pebble Mine can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Leadership & Managing People 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Pebble Mine 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 The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Pebble Mine to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Pebble Mine 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.
Threats The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty are -
Regulatory challenges
– Pebble Mine 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.
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 Pebble Mine business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Pebble Mine 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Pebble Mine is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Pebble Mine.
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. Pebble Mine 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 wage structure of Pebble Mine
– 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 Pebble Mine.
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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Pebble Mine 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.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty, Pebble Mine 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 .
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Pebble Mine with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Pebble Mine 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 The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty 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 The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty 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 The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty 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 The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty 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 The Pebble Mine (D): Northern Dynasty 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 Pebble Mine needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
