Assignment:
Review all required readings, including the Weekly Briefing, which provides additional guidance on how to complete the assignment.
Review your analysis of Trader Joe's from Week 3 and review your original research on the company and industry.
Conduct additional research on the U.S. food retailing industry to obtain some insights about future threats and opportunities in the industry.
Identify and review all relevant readings from the Capstone Program Bibliography.
Post a polished Key Success Factor analysis that responds to each of the prompts below:
1. Based on your projections for the implications of FUTURE five-forces of competition, P.E.S.T. (general environment), and stakeholder support (or stakeholder challenges), what essential skills, competencies, and capabilities will be CRITICAL in order for Trader Joe's to survive or thrive in the future? Why? Support your evaluation with evidence and reasoning linked to appropriate knowledge.
Note: These critical areas may be the same as in the past, BUT they may not. Think this through carefully and use your innovative and economic thinking skills from prior courses. You must become futurists to be good strategists, which means there IS some ambiguity about the bets you will be making (that's one of the responsibilities of senior leadership).
2. Identify critical gaps in the skills, competencies, and capabilities that Trader Joe's currently has versus what you think they will need in the future. Think about how Trader Joe's can bridge that gap. If Trader Joe's were to hire you as consultant to provide strategic direction in what specific skills, competencies, and capabilities the company should invest in or acquire (and how), which would you emphasize as critical and why?
APA format
Readings:
1. Trader Joe's
By David L. Ager and Michael A. Roberto
2. The Great Repeatable Business Model
By Chris Zook and James Allen