Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd
Civic challenges such as urban mobility and energy problems offer new corporate innovation opportunities. However, such challenges are wicked and difficult to tame. They require novel solutions that account for and integrate contradictory perspectives within the local innovation ecosystem of firms, governments, and citizens. This article presents a successful civic innovation crowdsourcing project case study, in which multinational firm Bombardier encouraged a global civic crowd to co-create visionary solutions to the challenge of future mobility in crowded cities around the world. Bombardier recruited a global crowd of 900 individuals and facilitated the citizen development of more than 215 solutions of unique firm value. We explore the process and outcome of this crowdsourcing project and derive actionable design principles for a three-phased civic innovation crowdsourcing process including: (1) crowd construction, (2) crowd knowledge acquisition, and (3) crowd knowledge assimilation. This process enables the crowd to integrate members' diverse and contradictory knowledge proactively at both the team and individual levels. Additionally, the crowd is able to balance extension of existing local solutions and exploration of path-breaking technologies and solution concepts.
Authors :: Sabine Brunswicker, Volker Bilgram, Johann Fuller
Swot Analysis of "Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd" written by Sabine Brunswicker, Volker Bilgram, Johann Fuller includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Crowd Civic facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd casestudy better are - – increasing transportation and logistics costs, technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, geopolitical disruptions, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Crowd Civic, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Crowd Civic 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 Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Crowd Civic
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 Crowd Civic
Strengths Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Crowd Civic in Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd Harvard Business Review case study are -
Training and development
– Crowd Civic has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Crowd Civic 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 Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Crowd Civic 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 Sabine Brunswicker, Volker Bilgram, Johann Fuller 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 Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Crowd Civic digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Crowd Civic 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Crowd Civic is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Crowd Civic is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Learning organization
- Crowd Civic 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 Crowd Civic is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Crowd Civic is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Crowd Civic 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Crowd Civic to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Crowd Civic to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Crowd Civic
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Crowd Civic does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Crowd Civic 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.
Weaknesses Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Crowd Civic 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd 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 Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Crowd Civic is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Crowd Civic, firm in the HBR case study Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Crowd Civic 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Crowd Civic products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Crowd Civic needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
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 Crowd Civic supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Crowd Civic vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd, is just above the industry average. Crowd Civic 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Crowd Civic has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd HBR case study mentions - Crowd Civic 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 Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd 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 Crowd Civic has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd 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 Crowd Civic 's lucrative customers.
Opportunities Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd | 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 Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd are -
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. Crowd Civic can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Crowd Civic 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Crowd Civic is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Crowd Civic can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Crowd Civic operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Crowd Civic 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, Crowd Civic 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Crowd Civic to increase its market reach. Crowd Civic 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Crowd Civic 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 Crowd Civic to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Crowd Civic 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Crowd Civic to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Crowd Civic can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Crowd Civic 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Crowd Civic has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Crowd Civic to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd case study. Crowd Civic can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Crowd Civic 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 Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd .
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Crowd Civic is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd, Crowd Civic 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 .
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Crowd Civic has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Crowd Civic needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People 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.
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. Crowd Civic needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
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. Crowd Civic 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Crowd Civic can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Crowd Civic business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Crowd Civic with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Crowd Civic 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Crowd Civic 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.
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 Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd 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 Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd 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 Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd 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 Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd 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 Taming Wicked Civic Challenges with an Innovative Crowd 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 Crowd Civic needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.