business policies and strategies 3

Part 1 Due in 2 days

Write 500–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas:

You know that your team will be travelling to all of the different divisions of the corporation to assist in that division’s strategic planning. You want to impress on this young group of planners how important the concept of competitive advantage is, and why it is even more important now than it was in the past.

Discuss the following specific points:

·  In your own words, what is competitive advantage?

·  Why is it important for a company to have one or more sources of competitive advantage?

·  What are three examples of sources of competitive advantage for a firm in the pharmaceutical industry?

· 

Part 2 Due 5 days’ 9-12 slides excluding Title and Reference slides (minimum of 2 references); Speaker notes 250-300 words  

to test your team members’ ability to think strategically and apply what you have taught them to real businesses, you asked each one to create a presentation on a particular industry, addressing the following:

·  What is (are) the major strategic issues that the industry faces? 

·  What strategic options does it have to address those specific issues?

·  For each option, what changes in information systems (internet, telecommunications and networks, software, hardware, data, simulations, eLearning) may be needed?

·  What strategic option do the team members recommend? Include support for the recommendation using available descriptive and inferential statistics. What is its probability for success?

·  What are the risks of implementing that chosen option? Write a hypothesis and null hypothesis for each risk and describe how it will be tested.

You are to choose a company from one of the following industries:

·  The current market leader in the car rental industry

·  The current market leader in the U.S. hotel industry

·  The market leader in the fast food industry