Competitive Advantage and Information Technology
Not what you're looking for?
The article "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy," from Harvard Business Review, presents a comprehensive view of how five major competitive forces shape the industry and strategic planning of businesses. Each force has specific ways that shape competition, which may influence strategy.
Please help with some ideas on the relationship between IT and a company's competitive advantage or strategy.
Identify and briefly describe five specific areas where IT represents a risk to a company's competitive advantage.
Identify and briefly describe five specific areas in which IT may support or promote a company's competitive advantage.
Select a disadvantage you identified, and provide a detailed scenario of how it would occur, and what steps might be taken to reduce the risk.
Select an advantage you identified, and provide a detailed scenario of how it could be leveraged to improve a company's competitive advantage.
Article used: The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy, by Michael E. Porter, Jan 01, 2008.
Purchase this Solution
Solution Summary
Discusses the impact of information technology on competitive advantage.
Solution Preview
Identify and briefly describe five specific areas where IT represents a risk to a company's competitive advantage.
Specific areas from competitive forces perspective where IT represents a risk to a company's competitive advantage include:
1) Information technology breeds innovation in an organization and can help competitors to imitate company's offerings and come up with cheaper alternatives or substitute products and thus, causing significant losses to the first mover. Competitor's own R&D enabled by IT can also lead to creation of superior competitive products. Hence, IT can cause risk to a company's competitive advantage by allowing competitor to perform better in terms of new product introduction or by allowing them to copy or imitate company's offerings.
2) Lack of proper IT infrastructure in an organization can lead to wastage and inefficiencies and can erode competitive advantage created due to innovative products and services. Operational inefficiencies have led to problems in many multinational corporations.
3) IT enabled e-commerce infrastructure can allow competitors and new entrants to reach target customers quickly and capture strong market share. Web and e-commerce have redefined the physical boundaries of trade and allowed smaller companies to compete with established ones by providing easy and cost effective access to markets. Take the case of Amazon leading its way to the top of book retailing with the help of its IT and e-commerce infrastructure.
4) The use of IT causes significant risks pertaining to privacy and security of data and compliance related issues. IT infrastructure needs to be secured and companies need to establish code of conduct and policies regarding use of IT infrastructure in order to avoid compliance related issues. Penalties, fines and compliance related issues can break down company's reputation and competitive advantage.
5) IT has empowered consumers in today's world and have made them more informed and demanding in ...
Education
- BCom, SGTB Khalsa College, University of Delhi
- MBA, Rochester Institute of Technology
Recent Feedback
- "Thank you. "
- "Thank you"
- "Thank you. I got 20/20 last week for my discussion you help me out with."
- "Thank you. Great Job. "
- "Thank you. Great Job. "
Purchase this Solution
Free BrainMass Quizzes
C++ Operators
This quiz tests a student's knowledge about C++ operators.
Inserting and deleting in a linked list
This quiz tests your understanding of how to insert and delete elements in a linked list. Understanding of the use of linked lists, and the related performance aspects, is an important fundamental skill of computer science data structures.
Basic UNIX commands
Use this quiz to check your knowledge of a few common UNIX commands. The quiz covers some of the most essential UNIX commands and their basic usage. If you can pass this quiz then you are clearly on your way to becoming an effective UNIX command line user.
Word 2010: Tables
Have you never worked with Tables in Word 2010? Maybe it has been a while since you have used a Table in Word and you need to brush up on your skills. Several keywords and popular options are discussed as you go through this quiz.
Basic Computer Terms
We use many basic terms like bit, pixel in our usual conversations about computers. Are we aware of what these mean? This little quiz is an attempt towards discovering that.