Assignment:
he Genzyme Mini-case "Genzyme's Focus on Orphan Drags" may be found in the first five pages of Schilling (2013), assigned for this week, and is strongly related to concepts like market segmentation, opportunity and competitive analysis, stakeholder analysis, as well as the various frameworks for strategic analysis that are discussed in the Lecture and/or the required readings such as the Schilling chapter.
We would like you to use one or more concepts from these various materials to better understand how Genzyme came to its unique focus on orphan drugs, and how this kind of analysis may also lead to recommendations on practical issues such as what a company like Genzyme should do in its future.
You might start your look at the Genzyme Mini-case by trying to address in some way one or two of the five discussion questions on the fifth page of this Mini-case that would allow you to make explicit use of the traditional strategy tools emphasized in the Lecture and in Chapter 6 of Schilling (2013) such as Porter's Five Forces to try to understand why this company focused on orphan drugs, and using the concept of PESTEL and the idea of looking at core competencies in trying to figure out what Genzyme should do next.
Note that there is some overlap in business concepts, you can sometimes use a screwdriver as a hammer, or as some might say there are many roads to the truth, so SWOT Analysis, Porter's Five Forces analysis, PESTEL, competitive analysis, discussions or core competencies, segmentation, business model development and so forth all have some elements in common, such as opportunity analysis. The important thing is to get practice in pushing ahead and using concepts as tools to understand things better.