Tag Archives: Video

Human Capital: Spinning to the top

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While it is clear that human capital may be a source of competitive advantage, most of our discussion still centers around pay as a critical motivator. As important as that is, advertisers have long ago discovered that people have complex motivations that go well beyond pay (see the video below among others). How can firms take advantage of this to gain access to VRIN human capital? This topic has been explored more fully in my paper with Ben Campbell and Dave Kryscynski (Rethinking Sustained Competitive Advantage from Human Capital).

Contributed by Russ Coff

Nobody Knows the Bubbles I’ve Seen

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We tend to focus heavily on the value of capabilities in strategy. However, the very features that drive willingness to pay (and thus competitive advantage) may ultimately turn out to be a disadvantage. In other words, a core competence can become a core rigidity. When rivals use this against a firm, this might be thought of as a form of “judo strategy.” Below, the animated scrubbing bubbles, the rival’s differentiator, is reframed as “lewd” residue.

Contributed by Russ Coff

When Rivals Eat Your Lunch

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How do firms gain access to valuable resources and capabilities? Barney’s original discussion of strategic factor market theory focused on superior expectations or luck as drivers. This lunchables commercial illustrates how difficult that can be if the value of an asset is widely known. In class, it may lead to a nice discussion of when the value of a resource might not be known.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Softer Side of Sears: Its stock price…

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Hoping to unlock value, Sears has spun off its Lands’ End unit. Unfortunately, both the new unit and Sears’ parent company stock have dropped on the first day of trading. When do spin outs create value? When do related diversified firms create value? Here, the units are quite closely related and still the company could not create value together. For some recent studies of market reactions to spinouts, see Emilie Feldman’s work. The Sears commercial below foreshadows their need for better vision. This might also go nicely with the business combination scavenger hunt.

Contributed by Russ Coff

 

An Agent Who Lacks Principles…

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Often times students become quite disinterested when the topic of agency theory comes up, and they may not completely understand its implications. This short video does a nice job of presenting it in an interesting way in which the students can identify. The context is the relationship between a manager and his assistant, but the discussion can easily be extended to CEOs and the board of directors. Here is another video along similar lines.

Contributed by Tim Folta

Taking Customer Loyalty Too Far?

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Of course, we explore customer loyalty as a key element of differentiation. How far does loyalty go? This ONN story about Southwest airlines pushes that envelope by asking what customers will do for employees (like lying to the CEO’s wife about where he is). Of course, it’s a bit silly but there’s something useful in there too 😉

Contributed by Russ Coff

Rival Analysis: A whale of a problem

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Sometimes firms think they are the “hunter” only to find that their rivals are stronger than they thought. Firms may find that they are the prey rather than the hunter. After an especially cold winter, this video may help to drive home that point. In the context of judo strategy, it demonstrates the value of going undetected until you are stronger than rivals expect. Finally, the video is valuable to illustrate the general issue of managing under uncertainty.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Generic Brand Video

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This Advertising Age article touts the tongue-in-cheek generic brand video (below). All of the segments are taken from stock footage and could be used to promote almost any product. The underlying advertising formula is exposed. In this cliche environment, what does an effective differentiation strategy look like? One might send the class on a scavenger hunt for firm/products that are truly differentiated (and those that are trying but fall into these cliche traps)

Contributed by Russ Coff

Marshmallow Challenge

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This TED talk describes the marshmallow challenge exercise. This discussion has a nice twist to focus on team dynamics and the decision process. Interestingly, kindergarten students tend to do best on the exercise because they are more likely to iterate and prototype rather than separate planning and execution (as MBA students tend to do). Of course, this is similar to the Tinkertoy exercise but the team dynamics and decision-making message is quite distinct. You may also recognize this as a slightly altered version of the spaghetti challenge exercise that has been around for quite some time.

Contributed by Darren Dahl and Joann Peck

Exercise: Seed of an Idea

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Stanford’s Tina Seelig describes a classroom experiment (below) where students were given $5 of “seed” funding and 2 hours to make as much money as possible. The best teams made money by working outside of the stated constraints (e.g., ignoring the seed funding & timeframe). Understanding their human capital and unique resources was critical. This really simple exercise gets at the crux of entrepreneurial opportunity.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Ford Reintroduces the ’93 Taurus

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Going after the market niche of people who don’t want the glamour of a new car, this ONN feature describes Ford’s decision to reintroduce the 1993 Taurus (including a new Superbowl ad). This is simple & silly but it does get at the notion of a cost-based strategy…

Contributed by Russ Coff

Netflix “Browse Endlessly” Service

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Ok, here is another silly ONN segment on a Netflix “browse endlessly” service. It is only funny to the extent that many of us have experienced extreme indecision when faced with the many alternatives that are available to us. In class, this clip might trigger a nice discussion of bounded rationality – the very root of competitive advantage and almost every other aspect of strategy (see Simon, Models of Bounded Rationality).

Contributed by Russ Coff

Adaptation on Rugged Seascapes?

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We teach strategy formulation in a dynamic world and yet many of our analytic tools may seem more static if we aren’t careful. For example, 5 forces offers an industry snapshot unless students know to explore how the forces evolve. I tend to introduce scenario planning, decision trees, and monte carlo simulations to incorporate the qualitative and quantitative dimensions of strategy formulation under uncertainty. This brief video provides a fairly graphic view of how it feels to managers. Of course, the seascape metaphor is a play on Levinthal’s classic article (adaptation on rugged landscapes)…

Contributed by Russ Coff

Tesla Strategy Sparks Cusiosity

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Melissa Schilling notes that, despite extensive automation (video below), labor usage is quite high. “There are 3000 workers in the plant, and Tesla produced a little over 20,000 cars in 2013. That’s about 7 cars per worker in a year (assuming the workers are full time). However, the GM Lordstown plant made 70 cars per worker last year (thanks Linos Jacovides for this stat), and in the well-known Renault-Nissan HBS case it reports that Nissan’s productivity was 101 cars/worker/year, and Renault’s was 77 cars/worker/year.” Given the automation, the workers are probably highly skilled (and, thus, well paid). Is Tesla at a huge economies of scale disadvantage? What might be the strategy? They are still 3 years away from selling a cheaper model so it will be a while before they can generate volume from a mid-market product. In the meantime, one possible solution may be found in Chinese sales of electric cars.

Contributed by Melissa Schilling

Do MBAs destroy value?

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MBA programs help students gain general human capital which may give them a feeling that they can solve problems in a broad range of contexts. Some have lamented how this can result in arrogant behaviors that make them hard to work with. Scott Adam captures this problem admirably below. It might make sense to use this to imbue students with a sense of caution as they enter the workforce.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Dogbert on Bureaucracy

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Dogbert writes a new management text and defines bureaucracy as when “a hundred people think ‘A’ but compromise on ‘B’.” One wonders how firms can create any value at all. This might spur a strategy process discussion of how satisficing results in suboptimal outcomes.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Homer’s Oddity: A Human Capital Chip

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The Simpson’s clip below illustrates how human capital can be co-specialized with other assets to create an advantage. The Intel chip, once paired with Homer, becomes a strategic asset in the pastry sciences. In this way, human capital becomes industry and firm-specific and can be a source of competitive advantage especially if rivals have no substitutes. This is also related to Lazear’s skill weights model where unique combinations of general human capital form highly idiosyncratic knowledge bases. Could Homer be a source of advantage for Dunkin Donuts? Who would reap the gains?

Contributed by Russ Coff

BIC Pens “For Her”

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This is an actual product. However, customers have thought it rather odd to market a pen specifically for women. This has led to an array of hilarious product reviews. Here is an article about the reviews (try not to fall off your chair while reading). It is an interesting case of differentiation and segmentation gone awry — definitely worthy of class discussion. Below is a segment that Ellen Degeneres did on the product (including her proposed commercial). In the end, I’m guessing that the publicity has led to some unanticipated sales…

Contributed by Phil Bromiley

Zappo’s Zaps Mgrs: A whole holacracy

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Zappos is moving to a holacracy whereby managers and job titles go by the wayside (see this CNET article among others). This is a real kick in the head to bureaucracy and hierarchy. How does this organizational design mesh with their strategy of customer service and innovation? Another nice example is Valve — see the Valve post on this site. These examples can seed a discussion of strategy, structure, and organizational design as well as a critical analysis of many practices taught in business schools. Such radical forms can be very hard to design and implement. One problem that Foss explores in a recent Organization Science paper is incentives, motivation, and the tendency of managers to meddle in tasks that they say they have delegated. Here is an entertaining Zappo’s commercial to ease into the topic (though one of the many Dilbert videos would be quite compatible as well).

Contributed by Russ Coff

Task Force on Bad Decision Processes

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My university (along with many others) has a “committee on Committees.” It’s as if Scott Adams designed the process himself. How often do firms have poor or haphazard processes but expect consistent superior outcomes from them? Along these lines, David Croson reminded me about the Ig Nobel Prize winning government Report on Reports. This Dilbert video seems like a decent starting point for a discussion of strategy process…

Contributed b Russ Coff