CORPORATE COMPETITIVE STRATEGY

Reading Time: 2 minutes

This week’s discussion requires you to watch a lecture video produced by Harvard Business School Executive Education. This lecture video references Porter’s Five Forces, Resource-based view of the firm, competitive advantage, and other key business and corporate-level strategy concepts.

The reference to the video is below. Those familiar w/ the WU electronic library can use this citation to find the video. For those less familiar, there are instructions on how to locate the video in this week’s “Readings and Resources” folder. Students can view the video and also have access to a pdf file lecture transcript.

Montgomery, C. A. Harvard FSS: Resources and Corporate Strategy. (2005). (Accession Number: 1568c. Lecturers: Montgomery, Cynthia A.. Document Type: Video; Transcript. Publication Type: Video). Harvard Business School Faculty Seminar Series. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Discussion Board Question:

In this video, the professor discusses a number of topics relating to firm resources, Porter’s Five Forces, corporate strategy, and competitive advantage.

The instructor points out that there are three types of resources that are available to firms:

  1. Tangible Assets – Ones that are on the “balance sheet”, such as “physical plants”, “distribution channels”, and any items that can be assigned a definitive “accounting value”.
  2. Intangible Assets – These include items such as “brand name”, “reputation”, or even “technical know-how”.
  3. Capabilities – These include items such as “speed of product development”, “marketing” and “product innovation”.

Please answer the following questions for your assigned Porter paper company. UNDER ARMOUR

  1. What are your firm’s top 3 tangible assets, top 3 intangible assets, and top 3 capabilities?
  2. Which of these resources do you believe to be most important? Why?
  3. What of these resources do you believe is least important? Why?

Be sure to address #2 and #3, in detail, with support. Your analysis is to incorporate key points from the video.

NOTE: 1 PAGE OR 1.5 PAGE. PLS ADDRESS THE QUESTIONS AS NUMBERED