Research and analyze the company more deeply

1. List the top management of the firm and note what experience and leadership skills they bring to the firm. If a larger conglomerate, list both corporate and business managers.

2. What is the principal business model of the firm?
(How does the firm make most of its profits?)

3. Identify the major goals of the company. Does the firm seem to have any longer-term challenging or stretch goals that would serve as its strategic intent?

4. Trace any changes in strategy that you can identify over time. Try to determine whether the strategic changes of your selected firm are a result of intended strategies, emergent strategies, or some combination of both.

5. How dynamic is the industry in which your company is based? Is there evidence that industry structure is reshaping competition, or has done so in the recent past?

6. A good place to start with an internal firm analysis is to catalog the assets a firm has. Make a list of the firm's tangible assets. Then, make a separate list of the intangible assets you can identify.

7. Identify the core competencies that are at the heart of the firm's competitive advantage. (Remember, a firm will have only one, or at most a few, core competencies, by definition.)

8. Based on information in the annual reports or published on the firm's website, summarize what the firm views as the reasons for its successes (either past or expected in the future). Search for both quantitative and qualitative success factors provided in the report.

9. Does the firm seem most focused on the economic, accounting, or shareholder perspective of its competitive advantage? Give quotes or information from these sources to support your view.

10. What suggestions do you have to improve the firm's business strategy and strategic position?

11. Is your firm highly vertically integrated?

12. Use the preceding vertical value chain to identify the corporate strategy of the firm. In other words, where within the industry has the firm chosen to compete?

13. Has your firm participated in any mergers or acquisitions in the past three years? What was the nature of these actions? Did they result in a consolidation of competitors?

14. Research what strategic alliances your firm has entered in the past three years. Based on company press releases and business journal reports for each alliance, what do you find to be the main reason the firm entered these alliances?

15. Do you think each of the three alliances achieves the original intent, and therefore is successful? Why or why not?