Good day to everyone.

My name is Jet and I will present to you my reaction/reflection to our Chapter

4, particularly the 3 Types of Strategies.

In this task I was asked to choose and present to you the following:

1. Trends of the type of strategies

2. Present situation of the strategies
3. Cite study or research to 3 Types of Strategies

Corporate Strategy first discussed by Alvin takes a portfolio approach to

strategic decision making by looking across all of a firm’s businesses to
determine how to create the most value.  In order to develop a corporate
strategy, firms must look at how the various business they own fit together,
how they impact each other, and how the parent company is structured in
order to optimize human capital, processes, and governance.  Corporate
Strategy builds on top of business strategy, which is concerned with the
strategic decision making for an individual business.

For trend, corporate strategy now made up of 4 pillars.

Namely: Allocation of resources, Organizational Design, Portfolio Management

and strategic trade off.

1. The allocation of resources at a firm focuses mostly on two resources:

people and capital.  In an effort to maximize the value of the entire firm,
leaders must determine how to allocate these resources to the various
businesses or business units to make the whole greater than the sum of
the parts.

2. Organizational design involves ensuring the firm has the necessary

corporate structure and related systems in place to create the maximum
amount of value.  Factors that leaders must consider are, the role of the
corporate head office (centralized vs decentralized approach and the
reporting structure of individuals and business units (vertical hierarchy,
matrix reporting, etc.).
 3. Portfolio management looks at the way business units complement each
other, their correlations, and decides where the firm will “play” (i.e. what
businesses it will or won’t enter).

4. Strategic trade off. One of the most challenging aspects of corporate

strategy is balancing the tradeoffs between risk and return across the
firm.  It’s important to have a holistic view of all the businesses
combined and ensure that the desired levels are risk management and
return generation are being pursued.

Formulate a Winning Business Strategy, Model, Strategic Framework

How to Develop Business Strategy and Measure Strategic Impact in 5 steps

Business Encyclopedia ISBN 978-1929500109 © 2020 Solution Matrix Ltd All Rights Reserved

What is Business Strategy?

Company business strategy explains how a firm differentiates itself from competitors, how it generates revenues, and where it earns
margins.

In competitive industries, each firm formulates a strategy it believes it can exploit.

Textbooks sometimes define business strategy simply as a firm's high-level plan for reaching
specific business objectives. Strategic plans succeed when they lead to business growth, a strong
competitive position, and strong financial performance. When the high-level strategy fails,
however, the firm must either change its approach or prepare to go out of business.

The brief definition above is accurate but, for practical help, many businesspeople prefer instead
a slightly longer version:

Business strategy is the firm's working plan for achieving its vision, prioritizing objectives,
competing successfully, and optimizing financial performance with its business model.

The choice of objectives is the heart of the strategy, but a complete approach also describes
concretely how the firm plans to meet these objectives. As a result, the strategy explains in
practical terms how the firm differentiates itself from competitors, how it earns revenues, and
where it earns margins.

Strategies Reflect the Firm's Strengths, Vulnerabilities, Resources, and Opportunities. And, They
also Reflect the Firm's Competitors and Its Market.

Many different strategies and business models are possible, even for companies in the same
industry selling similar products or services. Southwest Airlines (in the US) and Ryan Air (in
Europe), for instance, have strategies based on providing low-cost transportation. The approach
for Singapore Airlines focuses instead on brand image for luxury and quality service. In
competitive industries, each firm formulates a strategy it believes it can exploit.

Formulating Strategy Is All About Meeting Objectives (Goals)

In business, the strategy begins with a focus on the highest level objective in private
industry: Increasing owner value. For most companies that is the firm's reason for being. In
practical terms, however, firms achieve this objective only by earning profits. For most firms,
therefore, the highest goal can be stated by referring to "profits." The generic business strategy,
therefore, aims first to earn, sustain, and grow profits.

Functional business strategies seek to improve implementation of business and

corporate strategies. Functional strategies include marketing strategies and human
resources strategies. Often they concern specifics such as resource allocation,
operating expense efficiencies and product improvement.

Implementation of Functional Strategies

 The functional strategy level is immediately concerned with fashioning and
implementing strategies that improve function in specific departments.

 Functional purchasing and materials management strategies include improving

quality of purchases at lower cost, negotiation practices with vendors, and analyzing the
performance of purchasing staff.  
 Functional production and operations strategies include marketing concepts, refining
produce mix, and managing product life cycles
 Other functional strategies concern development of new products and services,
distribution strategies, product positioning, packaging and advertising.

How Can We Do Better?

The underlying purpose of all functional strategies is to answer the question "How Can
We Do Better?" It's at this level that businesses correct emerging or continuing
problems and develop new ways of moving specific aspects of the business forward.

Google's New 2017 Functional Strategy

In 2017, for example, Google addressed two complaints, one primarily from
advertisers and the other from customers. Advertisers complained that their ads were
appearing on the same screen with content they felt put the company in a bad light
(soft porn clickbait and on white supremacist videos on Google's YouTube).
Customers complained that their search inquiries were exposing them to fake news
sites, and they were growing increasingly discontent with the way in which their
personal information was being used to develop sellable information to other
companies.

In response, Google gave advertisers more control over where their ads appeared,
purged objectionable political and sexual content from YouTube, and removed
egregious sexual and political content from search results.

Problems at the Functional Level Can Require a New

Corporate Strategy 
Problems that become apparent at the functional strategic level sometimes require
new business and corporate strategies. In such cases, functional strategies drive
larger strategy changes, although more often functional strategies implement business
and corporate strategies.

When Marissa Meyer, a highly visible and successful Google executive was hired to
turn around a struggling Yahoo, investors originally believed she would succeed, but
she didn't. In the opinion of other CEOs and entrepreneurs, many of her problems had
to do with not understanding how the company functioned operationally and in
underestimating the resistance of lower level Yahoo employees to Meyer's proposals
to change corporate and business strategies.

Eventually, in response to her lack of success in changing the company, she

determined the best available solution was to sell it. In 2016, Meyers sold what was
once a $135 billion company to Verizon for $5 billion. Meyer's vision for the company,
incorporated in the corporate strategies she planned, failed because the company
proved incapable or unwilling to carry out those strategies at the functional level.
Eventually, this required Meyer's revised corporate strategy of selling off the
company's assets to Verizon.