Purchase Solution

Implementation of a strategic plan

Not what you're looking for?

Ask Custom Question

Please provide answers to the following three questions:

1. Put on your customer hat. Identify a well-known company that we all recognize and suggest one grand strategy that you believe would be practical for the company and would support your interest as a customer. Describe the specific characteristics of that grand strategy in the context of the change you seek. Offer and support an alternate grand strategy for that company from your customer perspective.

2. Implementation of a strategic plan includes consideration of three components: leadership, structure, and culture. Identify one of these three and describe a personal experience or an observation in which the organization was either strengthened or weakened by the component you select.

3. Respond to the following scenario: You are the manager of a company that has pioneered a new kind of hot sauce for chicken that has taken the market by storm. The hot sauce's differentiated appeal has been based on a unique combination of spices and packing that has allowed you to charge a premium price. Over the past three years, your hot sauce has achieved a national reputation, and now major food companies such as Kraft and Nabisco, seeing the potential of this market segment, are beginning to introduce hot sauces of their own, imitating your product.
"Identify and describe one factor of the industry environment that applies to this situation. As the manager, what do you think is the best strategy to pursue?" (Note: All five factors in the industry environment can apply to this situation....just select one and support your argument. Similarly, there are multiple possible grand strategies that may apply...select and argue one).

Purchase this Solution

Solution Summary

Implementation of a strategic plan is considered.

Solution Preview

1. Put on your customer hat. Identify a well-known company that we all recognize and suggest one grand strategy that you believe would be practical for the company and would support your interest as a customer. Describe the specific characteristics of that grand strategy in the context of the change you seek. Offer and support an alternate grand strategy for that company from your customer perspective.
The selected company is 3M. This company represents innovation and growth. 3M formula for project development - recruit the right people, provide them with the right environment to work and let them do their things - resulted in around 55,000 products and over thousands of patents for the company. 3M, internationally established in 1951, is a $16 billion multinational company with its headquarters in Minnesota, U.S.A., with operations in more than 60 countries, and products sold in nearly 200 countries. 3M offers products and services to the transportation, graphics and safety, healthcare, industrial, consumer and office, electro and communications, and specialty markets.
The grand strategy that I am suggesting is that there should be a degree of centralization. This company has been encouraging 'innovation' by allowing different departments to grow around the products that have been 'discovered' from the perspective of the customer this is very problematic, because I have to deal with a myriad departments even though I am dealing with one company. In addition, even when I am making purchases over the Internet, different divisions have set up different websites. The difficulty is that different websites are designed differently and to wade through different websites is very difficult and that also of one company!. So the suggestion is that one common global data warehouse be constructed for the company 3M so that one customer can make all his purchases through one website. This should have all the information about its customers, brands, accounting information, inventory, and finance from all divisions.
An alternate grand ...

Purchase this Solution


Free BrainMass Quizzes
Understanding the Accounting Equation

These 10 questions help a new student of accounting to understand the basic premise of accounting and how it is applied to the business world.

Lean your Process

This quiz will help you understand the basic concepts of Lean.

Social Media: Pinterest

This quiz introduces basic concepts of Pinterest social media

Organizational Behavior (OB)

The organizational behavior (OB) quiz will help you better understand organizational behavior through the lens of managers including workforce diversity.

Marketing Management Philosophies Quiz

A test on how well a student understands the basic assumptions of marketers on buyers that will form a basis of their marketing strategies.