Strategy economics, ECON3501, individual learning miscellany

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Strategy Economics

ECON3501

Individual Learning Miscellany  

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Instructor :
Brendan O'Rourke

        INTRODUCTION :         

        This year, as an ERASMUS student, I completed my first academic semester at DIT. This is why I followed a module, “strategy economics". This course allowed me to acquire new knowledge and to deepen knowledge that I had already partially studied. Some chapter interested me more than others. Personally, I would like to work in the Marketing sector or to build my company. That's why I feel more challenged by the elements that make it possible to mount a marketing study or to make a business plan. The 3 points addressed in class that I most appreciated and which caught my attention are :

• the 5Ps of Mintzberg

• the SWOT strategy analysis

• the PESTEL analysis

In each of these points, I will share what I have learned in classe but also in my parallel personal research, and especially how I can reuse my knowledge in specific cases.

        PART ONE :

        I will begin by explaining what are the 5Ps. According to Mintzberg there are 5 Ps to define the notion of strategy. Each of these "Ps" acts in different ways on a company's strategy and understanding. These 5 Ps are : Plan, Pattern, Ploy, Position, Perspective.

What is the plan ?

This is the range of achievement between objectives and constraints into consideration the resources available within the company. The decision maker chooses the alternative that reflects this achievement range. The choice involves a decision rule for example profitability, priority, importance...

The plan represents 2 essentials characteristics:

-they are made in advance of the actions to which they apply

-they are developed consciously and purposefully

As plans, strategies may be general or they can be specific and a strategy can be a ploy, too, really just a specific "maneuver" intended to outwit an opponent or competitor.

What is the pattern ?

In the strategy economics, the pattern allows the establishment of the strategy at the level of the realization.

We can consider it as a guide or a framing of actions.

It is expected that the final result is not the same as the expected pattern. It is necessary to adapt the pattern to the situation.

What is the position ?

As says Henry Mintzberg : "Strategy is a position - specifically a means of locating an organisation in an "environment". By this definition strategy becomes the mediating force between organisation and environment, that is, between the internal and the external context."

The position represents the place that the company takes on the market. It can be a “niche”. A niche market is a very narrow market corresponding to a highly specialized product or service. Targeting a niche market often leads to less competition.

What is the perspective ?

In general, Strategy as a Perspective is a variety of concepts among lots of other strategies. Every strategy is an invention collective mind - united by common thinking and / or behavior

Perspective is the global Inspiration of the strategy

Psychologists refer to an individual's mind frame, cognitive structure, and a variety of other expressions for "relatively fixed patterns for experiencing”

What is a ploy ?

Concept which consists in finding a way to trouble and disturb competitors.

A recent study shows us that successful company are in general companies which are the most agressive with the concurrence by using ploys. (Potter 1994)

Markets concurrency’s are changing to an «super competition»

        PART TWO :

        Now, we’ll talk about a strategy analysis : the SWOT.

SWOT analysis (alternatively SWOT matrix) is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and is a structured planning method that evaluates those four elements of a project or business venture. A SWOT analysis can be carried out for a company, product, place, industry, or person. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieve that objective.  To illustrate and better understand this method, I will take the example of Facebook and do its SWOT analysis.

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