Case Study: General Mills, Inc.,
CORPORATE BUSINESS STRATEGY
The pattern:
- Picking new industries to enter.
- Leveraging cross-business value chain relationships.
- Synergy between business units.
- Asking when it makes sense to diversify.
- Risks and returns of diversifying and impact on shareholder value.
- Industry attractiveness measures.
- GE's 9-cell attractiveness-competitive strength matrix: How does it work? How is it effective?
Readings
Use your textbook, Read the following:
Thompson, A. A., Peteraf, M. A., Gamble, J. E., & Strickland III, A. J. (2015). Crafting & Executing Strategy. "The Quest for Competitive Advantage". New York, New York, USA: McGraw-Hill Education.
o Chapter 8, "Corporate Strategy: Diversification and the Multibusiness Company."
Bremmer's 2014 article, "The New Rules of Globalization," in Harvard Business Review, volume 92, issue 1/2, pages 103-107.
Kaplan, Norton, and Rugelsjoen's 2010 article, "Managing Alliances with the Balanced Scorecard," in Harvard Business Review, volume 88, issue 1/2, pages 114-120.
TO SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETE THIS DISCUSSION UNIT, YOU WILL BE EXPECTED TO:
Preparation
Complete the assigned readings for this unit. Research and select a publicly traded, multi-business organization (MNC) to use as a case study for both this discussion and the second discussion in Unit 9. You must choose an organization that you have not already used as a case study in this course.
Discussion
Where do new strategy and innovation opportunities come from? Use the organization selected and apply the information from your assigned Unit 9 readings to complete the following:
- Evaluate the businesses of your MNC and how they fit on the 9-cell matrix illustrated in Chapter 8 of your text.
- What are the options for growth and then you'll be asked to apply it to an MNC and SBU of your CaseStudy?
- What is the fundamental direction we want to take, are you going to be anattack offensive strategy? or
- Are you already established and you're using a defensive end?
- First mover strategy for growth or better off being a Fast follower and doing imitation strategy for growth?
- Preemptive and that is the product obsolete their own product?
- Offensive strategies like what kind of combination makes sense?
- They do something called the gorilla action?
- Explain how this MNC has created or leveraged synergies between its SBUs.
Look closely at the research presented in the Journal of Strategy article:
o What stands out?
o Keys to success and failure?
o Risks and returns involved?
One tool to make alliances work effectively is the balanced scorecard (BSC) for managing alliances. We will use the concept of the BSC. This is a useful tool to manage risk and return in challenging strategy development of growth strategy through alliances.
Your discussion post should be a minimum of 1000 words and incorporate at least one scholarly reference along with citations from one of the required readings.
Sources: Must have three (3)Scholastics Source (last 3 years) out of:
- Business Journals Review, Wall Street Journal, Market Line, Hoovers, 10 K, Annual Reports, 7 A 1, 10 A 1
FORMAT:
- Introduction
- Definition and subject presentation
- BODY
- Perspectives
- Evaluate
- Conclusion Be sure you support your conclusions with validated references.
- References
Your post to this discussion should be a minimum of 100 words in length and incorporate at least one scholarly reference along with citations from one of the required readings. You may also include additional research you have done. Be sure to list your references in proper APA (Six Edition) format at the end of your post.
Use Tables and graphics BUT explain in a text the dynamics. Gives proper credits for graphics and tables.
REMINDER: Discussions activities are considered scholarly writing; do not use first-person pronouns.