Assignment With Peer Review: Five-Forces and Blue Ocean Strategy Analysis for Your Organization

Now it is time to apply lessons learned from this week's case analysis and Discussion about competitive force assessment, this week's readings, and other resources, to help you think about how you might answer the question, how will you win? (How will you create unique value?)

To prepare for this Discussion:

Review all required readings, including the Weekly Briefing, which provides additional guidance on how to complete the Assignment.

Review this week's case study and peer discussion and reflect and make notes on the following: What insights did you gain, and what did you learn from this week's resources your case analysis and peer discussion that you can apply to your Strategy Playbook for your chosen organization? What conceptual and strategic differences are important between the case example and your organization (focus on the concepts analyzed this week)? What assumptions do you need to make in order to use the strategy concepts appropriately?

Identify and review all relevant readings from the MBA Capstone Program Bibliography. Given your chosen organization, what concepts, tools, and readings from the Program Capstone Bibliography are most relevant to helping guide how you might recommend improving the company? How and why are they relevant?

Locate and maintain access to publicly available information about your organization.

By Day 5, post a polished and synthesized entry into the discussion area, which will also be the basis for an entry into the final draft of your Strategy Playbook for Extraordinary Results. At minimum you should add the following to your discussion post and Strategy Playbook:

An evidence-based and cohesive set of specific and actionable recommendations for actions (based on application of this week's strategy concepts), that your selected organization can take that will clearly enable your organization to achieve its strategic goals, sustain and grow its business, and remain viable and healthy.

HINT: You should provide a preliminary argument that defends your recommendations. Consider why your recommendations are SMART-- specific, measurable, achievable (that is realistic and feasible, and timely (relevant and important).
A related set of metrics that will enable your selected organization to measure the effectiveness of your recommended actions.

HINT: These metrics could then be used in the comprehensive final draft of your strategy playbook diagram, which is part of your final Strategy Playbook.

General Guidance: Your original discussion post for the Capstone Forum will typically be 1 to 1 ½ single-spaced pages, excluding references. Refer to the Week 5 Discussion 2 rubric for grading elements and criteria. Your Instructor will use the rubric to assess your work.

Note: After you receive input from your colleagues in the next few days, you should revise your original post to reflect input that you think is helpful and strengthens your position. This final revised version from this week's Capstone Forum will become the fourth formal entry into your Strategy Playbook appendix.

Title this section "Competitive Force Analysis for XYZ [Starbucks]," and be sure to keep a version of your response in your Strategy Playbook template. As a best practice you should plan to review your playbook throughout the course as you continue to build your components. You may find that you have new ideas and items that further improve your work.