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This note provides detailed instructions on finding resources for conducting industry analysis, with a special focus on resources available at Harvard Business School. It allows students to transition from doing a Five Forces analysis on the basis of a case, where all relevant facts are provided, to doing a Five Forces analysis in a work setting, without the benefit of a prepackaged case. Exhibits provide detailed information on top resources for industry analysis, instructions for accessing prominent databases, notes on using the Internet and other new media, and some publication-related tricks of the trade pertinent to each step in the industry analysis process.

Deliberate, emergent, and analogical approaches to finding the best strategy all have their advan-tages, depending on where an industry is in its life cycle. Be open to the best option at each juncture and wise enough to make the right call.

Introduces students to the technique of relative cost analysis, a core technique of strategists. Among the intricate quantitative analyses that strategists undertake, relative cost analysis may be the most common. The goal of a relative cost analysis is simply to estimate how a company's costs compare to a rival's. Companies examine relative costs for a host of reasons: to anticipate how a rival is likely to react to a price change; to predict how a price war may evolve; to test whether a cost advantage it believes it has is real and sustainable; to decide how low a company must bid in order to win a competitive contract from a rival; to identify opportunities for internal cost reduction; to estimate, in the context of an acquisition, how much the costs of an acquired company might be reduced and what a reasonable price might be for the company; and so forth.

An abstract is not available for this product.

An abstract is not available for this product.

In 2005, an executive vice president at Wal-Mart must decide whether to expand the retailer's selection of organic food. The decision is made in the context of wider attempts to move the giant retailer slightly upscale and to focus on environmental sustainability.

Introduces the Required Curriculum Strategy course to students at Harvard Business School.

The last of four module notes for students taking an advanced course on competitive strategy. Examines patterns that distinguish successful strategic change efforts from unsuccessful ones.

The third of four module notes for students who are taking an advanced course on competitive strategy. Examines how combinations of external threats and internal barriers to change lead to strategic failure.

The second of four module notes for students taking an advanced course on competitive strategy. Presents concepts and techniques to help students understand the origins of effective strategies.

The first of four module notes for students who are taking an advanced course on competitive strategy. Presents concepts and techniques to help students analyze the parts of a firm's strategy and understand how the parts fit together to form a coherent whole.

Supplements the (A) case.

Supplements the (A) case.

In 1998, the CEO of Whirlpool Corp. decides to change the company's strategy significantly to escape an increasingly unattractive "stalemate" in the appliance industry. The change he proposes involves a fundamental shift in the company's focus--from manufacturing to branding--and requires the development of altogether new organizational capabilities. Examines the full range of adjustments that the CEO must lead his management team to make throughout all the functions of Whirlpool. Distinguishes itself from other cases on strategic change by examining the challenge of change in a company that is not in crisis (yet).

Leaders tend to be so immersed in the specifics of strategy that they rarely stop to think how much of their reasoning is done by analogy. As a result, they miss useful insights that psychologists and other scientists have generated about analogies' pitfalls. Managers who pay attention to their own analogical thinking will make better strategic decisions and fewer mistakes. Charles Lazarus was inspired by the supermarket when he founded Toys R Us; Intel promoted its low-end chips to avoid becoming like U.S. Steel; and Circuit City created CarMax because it saw the used-car market as analogous to the consumer electronics market. Each example displays the core elements of analogical reasoning: a novel problem or a new opportunity, a specific prior context that managers deem to be similar in its essentials, and a solution that managers can transfer from its original setting to the new one. Analogical reasoning is a powerful tool for sparking breakthrough ideas. But dangers arise when analogies are built on surface similarities. Psychologists have discovered that it's all too easy to overlook the superficiality of analogies. The situation is further complicated by people's tendency to hang on to beliefs even after contrary evidence comes along and to seek only the data that confirm their beliefs. Four straightforward steps can improve a management team's odds of using an analogy well: Recognize the analogy and identify its purpose; thoroughly understand its source; determine whether the resemblance is more than superficial; and decide whether the original strategy, properly translated, will work in the target industry.

Abstract to follow.

Great strategists rely heavily on numbers as they go about their work. Offers an overview of the high- and low-brow quantitative tools that students encounter during the Strategy course. The class explores high-brow tools in detail; the focus here is on low-brow calculations. Such calculations come up often in class but because they seem so simple, they get little airtime or explanation. From past class experience, roughly 20% of the students in each section come into the course with the intuition and experience to do these simple calculations themselves. The other 80% understand the calculations after they see them and grasp their value, but don't spot the opportunities to do the math themselves, before class.

Supplements the (A) case.

Supplements the (A) case.

In the 'Delta Air Lines (A): The Low-Cost Carrier Threat' case, the top management of Delta Air Lines must decide how to respond to the threat posed by low-cost carriers such as Southwest and JetBlue. Among the options considered is the launch of a low-cost subsidiary by Delta itself. Prior efforts to launch a low-cost subsidiary, by Delta and by other full-service airlines, have failed. Can Delta devise a better response?