Graeff´s Blog

07:00 it rains again, so just a short run

09:00 strategic management

Today we´re talking mainly about two case studies. About the win of new zealand against america in the america´s cup 1995 – which was managed by Sir Peter Blake, and later on about Amazon.com and Jeff Bezos

From the theory side we walked through the 7S framework, the VIRO framework developed by Jay Barney and started to get into contact with the work of Gary Hamel und C.K. Prahalad – together with a video about Swatch Watches.

At the end we did another nice video case study done by Gery Robinson – this time about Country Linn Laundry.

07:00 rain, therefor no jogging

09:00 strategic Management

The theories about Michael Porter are today in the center of my studies. Strategy is about finding a sustainable competitive advantage.

We see a nice case study about Ivory Soap Bar – it is a story about how to to change the SCA of a product without loosing customers.

Later on we are talking about value chain and a case study about cochelar. Last case study is about morgan car

07:00 I take a short run around stein and the danube bank back to the university.

09:00 strategic management – we play today a strategic management game – the beer game.

after a great start I choose the wrong demand curve modell and sooner then later we have a lot of unused inventory.

19:00 assignment preparation

07:00 get up for jogging, 5km through the nice old town of krems

09:00 strategic management – professor stockport

We are doing a nice case study about airtransport deregulation efforts in australia during the late 1980´s.

We´re doing a 5 forces analysis – a toolset developed by michael porter – of this case study. there are two issues with that toolset, first of all it is static in time, and second of all there is an issue with business boundries.

An important outcome for me is the following sentence:

Price is never an strategic issue, it is only a variable of marketing costs.

Next Theory we´re playing with is game theory – it´s all about PARTS. we go through different models like egocentric and allocentric games. Great ideas about changing the game from playing win – loose games to win – win situations like cooptition.

We learned that price wars are not a good option for capturing the value – so it´s better sometimes to

Raise the fog

After looking onto a nice Michael Porter Video about his 5 Force Analysis we´re getting again to the core of strategic management, it´s all about

Creating Value and capturing it.

if the businesses are not capable of capturing it, it is a industry which is not favourable and we should focus on a strategy for improving this. For example frequent flyer programs of airlines or credit card programms are solutions for getting out of the price war trap.

we finished with a video about apricot computer, which has three different lines of business but one of them is in a quite bad shape.

Business is very often about killing your favorite child to save the family.

a hard lesson to learn.

20:30 Weingut Nigl – after a hard day some nice food.

great day, it starts to get really cold here – 1° celsius and some snowrain.

07:45 business english

09:00 again professor stockport

The Art of Strategy is to maken it happen.

Donald Sull

• find the right anchor
• secure the anchor
• realign the people

today we are talking about the strategic Proces and the Management of the key stakeholders.

Strategic Process

• Plan – Andrews SWOT / Ansoff / Argenti
• Crafting /Learning Henry Mintzberg / Peter M. Senge
• culture – Edgar H. Schein -  stratey process is about culture
• political – Jeffrey Pfeffer – power in organisations
• entrepreneurial – Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn – it´s about leadership and vision
• environment – michael porter – 5 forces analysis, hamel + pralahad / hamel skills competences, ressources
• stakeholders – stockport