Executive portion: An Executive Summary is a one-page document that outlines the purpose, process, findings, discussion, and findings of a report submitted to management. CEOs often read and assess an Executive Summary before deciding to read the entire report, so this must be high quality narrative that demonstrates the significance of the work undertaken, the objectivity of research and analysis underpinning the report, and the credibility of the resulting conclusions.

For this Individual Project you will analyze publicly available information about a Fortune 500 Company and develop an assessment of the corporate strategy and its ability to increase competitive advantage.

Your analysis should include an in-depth review of the Company's most recent SEC Form-10k Annual Report and Form DEF-14A Proxy Statement. These SEC filings can be found at the SEC Edgar Database located at the URL

http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html .

Pay particular attention to the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) sections of the SEC Form 10-K and the DEF-14A Proxy statement. Direct competitors are identified in the "Comparator Group" section of the DEF-14A Proxy Statement. ) These SEC filings also contain information relative to external and industry analysis that will be helpful in your assessment of the Company's strategy and competitive position.

A thorough analysis requires evaluation of various external stakeholders:

Competitors

Industry

Vendors

Customers

Governmental entities

Communities

Internal stakeholders that should be considered in the analysis include:

Shareholders

Board of Directors

Management

Employees

A comprehensive SWOT analysis should be performed relative to the Company's ability to improve its competitive advantage.

The comprehensive analysis should include both qualitative and quantitative elements, leveraging information available in SEC Filings, business databases, and peer-reviewed articles.

Your work should demonstrate your ability to:

Apply critical thinking skills to analyze business situations.

Apply principles of quantitative and qualitative research to business cases.

Describe the opportunities provided by technology for businesses.

Appropriately use effective communication techniques.

Apply the standard of APA style to all research and writing tasks.

You will prepare a report presenting the findings of your comprehensive analysis examining the Company's corporate strategy and its ability to increase competitive advantage. The written report will have a body length of 10-12 pages excluding title, abstract, references and appendices. Quotation limits should be Not more than 10% of the body of the paper can be quotations, all of which must be properly attributed in APA format.