Individual Practical Assignment

Part 1. Introduction

You will be acting as a consultant for KLA TENCOR CORPORATION assigned to offer your top management team a set of recommendations that will sustain and improve the firm's competitive position in the next 5 years.

2. The key requirements
You will be analyzing the competitive position of your workplace vis-a-vis a key competitor in the same industry. The key competitor should be either a market leader or second to your workplace.

Make sure as early as possible in the selection process of the competitor that there is substantial information available about the firm. Look for financial data to backup your claim and consider firms that are listed/public.

3. The Project
The analysis of your two firms (your workplace and the main competitor) could include the following dimensions:

- Firm's positioning/competition strategies in the industry
- Firm's unique strengths and weaknesses (SWOT analysis/resources and capabilities analysis)
- Firm's financial performance
- Trends in competition both historically as well as over the next 5 years, for example:

o Entering new product/service markets;
o Reinventing or modifying industry structure and/or positions;
o Anticipating major disruptive technologies
o Changing the value proposition for the firm's portfolio of products/services;
o Reaching new geographies;
o Addressing significant changes in trade flows (e.g., China's joining WTO)
o Achieving growth rates higher than the industry average through either organic or acquisitive growth

Having analyzed each firm, you are expected to compare the strategies pursued by each to attain their position in the industry. In comparing these, please address the following questions:

- What can each firm learn from the other, if anything?
- What trends/changes at industry and firm level that could threaten their competitive position?
- How can these firms sustain their competitive position in the next 5 years?

The paper should conclude with some forward-looking recommendations for the next 5 year period. Please justify in your recommendation section:

- Why your recommendations are feasible and compelling and
- Why the frameworks you applied are appropriate.

The Individual practical assignment should not exceed 4,500 words using 11 point font, double spaced, including appendices.

After including/taking into account the dimensions I mention above, the assignment should be structured in the order of the general headings listed below. I also encourage you to use models/tools you have encountered over the Lboro program as well as any models/tools covered specifically in the Strategic Management course to structure and/or inform your analysis. This assignment is an opportunity to show what you have learned over the program as applied to two firms competing today.

The final report must be structured as follows:

I) Introduction
i) Provide an executive summary of the paper, and what your key learnings and conclusions are.

II) Industry Overview

i) Introduction to the industry, background on its structure, information on major competitors if these are in addition to your two candidates chosen, strategic developments at the industry level etc. Where possible data on industry size, market positions, potential growth areas, overall competitive challenges should be included.

III) Your Workplace

a) Background on your workplace: who is the firm, its history, its management and organizational structure, the firm's strategy/approach to compete, its current competitive position in its main market, its core resources and capabilities, and its recent performance etc.

b) Future challenges and recommendations, given your analysis of your workplace's current competitive position, products/services/solutions, competencies and capabilities etc.

IV) Key competitor

a) Background on the firm chosen: who is the firm, its history, its management and organizational structure, the firm's strategy/approach to compete, its current competitive position in its main market, its core resources and capabilities, and its recent performance etc.

b) Justification why the firm's strategies/activities/actions/policies as ‘exemplar like' in nature or worthy of study.

c) Future challenges and recommendations given your analysis of the firm's current competitive position, products/services/solutions, competencies and capabilities etc.

V) Synthesis and Integration

a) Comparison of the firms' strategies: summary of the approaches followed by each competitor, where they are similar, where do they differ, which is preferred, and why.

b) What does your research/study and analysis teach us about the management of firms in the business environment?

5. Citations of Sources

Whatever work you submit must be yours. Claiming work written by others to be your own is plagiarism, a serious academic offense which will not be tolerated. You are encouraged to use any source of information available but whenever you quote directly you must use quotation marks around your direct quote and insert a footnote and whenever you paraphrase another person's words, you must insert a footnote. In any case, your footnote must contain a full citation that enables the reader to find the source.

For example:
In the case of a book:
March, J. G. (1999) The Pursuit of Organisational Intelligence. Malden MA: Blackwell.
In the case of a journal paper:
Meyer, M. H. and Utterback, J. M. (1993) ‘The Product Family and the Dynamic of Core Capabilities', Sloan Management Review 34(3): 29-38.
In the case of a news paper:
Business Week "China Price" November 24, 2005.

All outside sources must be clearly and carefully referenced.

HARVARD STYLE REFERENCING