1. Using any industry with which you are familiar, please analyze the industry using Porter’s Five Forces Model. Please explain your rationale.
2. From a strategic management perspective, examine the U.S. domestic automobile industry. Which of the influences in the broad (remote) environment do you see as having the greatest impact in the next 18 months? Why? Please explain your rationale.
3. Explain the relationship between a firm and the various levels of the external environment. Which stakeholder in the operating environment do you believe to be the most important? Why? Please explain your rationale.
4. How do we identify direct competitors and what are some of the common mistakes in identifying them? What tools are used to assist executives in examining direct competitors?
5. In Porter’s model we are asked to consider potential entrants and substitute products as additional competitors. On what basis do we judge whether a firm is a potential entrant? On what basis do we determine if a competing product is a substitute?
6. Please compare and contrast the terms environmental determinism, strategic choice, stakeholder approach, enactment, and adaptation.
7. What do we mean by saying a resource-based view of the firm? What are these resources and what makes them valuable?
8. Please compare and contrast Porter’s five forces model with the Blue Ocean perspective. Are these competing approaches? Please explain your rationale.
9. Compare and contrast the business (generic) level competitive strategies. In particular, when would each strategy be most effective and what do you perceive as the greatest limitation of each? Please give me a real-world example of a low-cost producer and a company that is competing by broad differentiation.
10. Please write SWOT analysis for any organization with which you are familiar.
11. Please list and explain an organization’s options as to growth strategies. Please give me an example of a company that is pursuing external growth strategies and another that is pursuing internal growth strategies.
12. Assume you’re approaching the marketplace with a differentiation strategy based upon speed. What might your value chain analysis look like?
13. How might the product life cycle impact your choice of competitive strategy? Please explain.
14. Compare and contrast the terms: market failure, taper integration, and quasi integration. Why might a firm consider violating the principle of market failure and pursue taper integration?
15. Compare and contrast the grand strategies of concentration, integration, and diversification. Focus on the strengths and limitations of each. Also, please give me an example of a firm for each of these corporate-level strategies.
