Midterm Questions Worksheet Group 1

1. Explain what is Competitive Advantage and provide an example.  Doing something better than any other organization,  doing something that other organizations can not do.  This advantage is usually short-term and belongs to the first movers.  Examples are United Airlines frequent flyers discounts,  and Sony mobile music players.  One example of a standing competetive advantage is Microsoft Operating sytems that still continue to hold the greatest market share.

2. Strategy formulation pertains to decisions made about your competition, product, market choices and strategy implementation pertains to choices that help to execute your product-market decisions.  Give an example that explains strategy formulation and strategy implementation.   The example can be real or hypothetical.   Apple Computer used strategy formulation to get into the music industry and chose to implement that strategy by creating the iPOD. 

3. List and briefly explain the three views of strategic management--the three ways that companies strategize about creating or maintaining a competitive advantage.  Three views:  The I/O view examines external forces.  The Resouce view examines internal forces. The Guerilla view examines the competive environment.   The I/O view uses comparitive analysis....how do we stand in the industry.  The Resource view uses analysis of how internally efficient and effective we are as an organization.   The Guerilla view is an analysis on how we adapt to the environment and how quickly and effectively we can keep our competetors off balance. 

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