1. STRATEGY Leveraging organizational resources
Suggested Reading: Competing for the Future by Hamel and Prahlad and articles on strategic leverage

2. Leverage is doing more with less resources.
Strategy and Leverage
While strategy is long-term goal and deciding objectives related to marketing, procurement, financial, and selling areas,
Leverage is doing more with less resources.
Can you suggest a way to manufacture an I-Pod with limited resources?

3. Compared to your competitors, if you organization has more resources
Spends more research and development and
Has more trained employees,
Does that mean that you are likely to be strategically more successful?

4. Doing more with less is called Leverage
G.M. spends more on research than Honda Motors.
Honda has come out with greater quality products than G.M.
Philips spends more on research than Sony and yet, Sony is more innovative
Bullwhip effect is the distortion caused during information sharing.

5. Successful strategy
Is not assured because of availability of resources.
Resources reflect past successes and not future leadership.
Success depends more on: vision, better products, and compatible sub-strategies.

6. The common fallacy
Company with more resources: I have more resources than my competitors and therefore, I am more powerful is the mindset of larger companies.
Company with less resources: I have less resources and therefore, I must innovate more, offer the best products and compete better. I should outmaneuver rather than outpower.

7. Strategic differences
Resource-surplus firms: Spend much on technology, R&D, etc.
But, they do not match with employee training, technology-absorption, or new product introductions.
Result: Not only are resources wasted but, too much of the unwanted can lead to serious problems.

8. In contrast, less-resourced firm
Exploit opportunities – a niche market (Dell, Amazon)
Focus more on core-competencies and doing more with less.
Find alternative ways of doing things (Etrade, Dell), leaner manufacturing
Less confrontational than bigger firms.

9. What do we infer from this?
There are no abundant resources.
But, you can succeed by your own innovation (instead of imitation)
Do not try to match dollar-for-dollar with your larger competitors. But,
Work on other competitive advantages and
Find out how you can match existing advantages to become strategically more competitive.

10. Can a company offer a better product that
INNOVATE
Can a company offer a better product that
Reduces manufacturing time
Is less expensive to produce,
Has fewer features than its competitors
Just simple to operate and
Yet capture market share?

11. The message
There is nothing wrong in aiming high.
But, dreaming alone is not sufficient.
But, don’t also spread yourself thin and
Fall down.
Work on your strengths or
Ascertain where your strengths lie.

12. Now, what is strategic leverage
Doing more with less.
Creating strategic alliances (Wal-Mart)
Building customer bases (Amazon)
Transporting skills across business units.

13. Before we can discus strategic leverage, we must first understand what is resource-based view of a firm

14. Resource-based view of a firm
A firm’s resources does not only refer to its financial abilities but
A portfolio of resources that include
Financial
Technical
Human
And so on.
These portfolio of resources focus is called “Resource-based view of a firm.”

15. Importance of resource constraints
Resource constraints are not necessarily an impediment to achieving success nor does abundance a ticket to success.
Examples: Amazon, E-bay (success with limited resources), or GE, GM, Westinghouse (abundance of resources and yet could not sustain success)

16. What could explain the following
Dell challenged HP and IBM
Wal-Mart overtook Sears with limited resources
Honda stole market share from GM with its quality power train.
IBM challenged Xerox in copier business but failed.

17. Don’t measure success wrongly
Efficiency and success should be measured by profits, revenue (the numerator) and
Not by reducing investments (the denominator; e.g. cost cutting through layoffs)
Inefficiencies won’t go away. Find the cause and improve technology leadership, brand loyalty, and customer relationships (British airways)

18. The message
Laying off employees or selling assembly plants is not innovative; but
Improving customer relationships, supply chains, product introductions is creative and shows managerial success.
That is resource leverage is more important than resource allocation.

19. Indicators of resource leverage
A simple measure: ratio of market share to the relative share of investment or resources (Ford versus GM).
Revenue growth.
“It ‘s not enough to get to the future first, one must also get there for less.” Prahlad.

20. How to achieve resource leverage
Five basic items to focus:
On concentrating resources on key strategic goals
By accumulating resources efficiently,
On efficient use by complementing one resource with another;
On conserving resources where possible; and,
Earn resources back by spread between outflows and inflows.

21. Concentrating resources on key strategic goals
Every individual, function, and unit within an organization must concentrate on the same organizational goal.
Everyone should know and understand core competencies, investment programs and organizational direction.
Multiple goals and conflicting goals would undermine goals.
Similarly, multiple focus will undermine strategy.

22. The Komatsu example Komatsu’s strategy: quality drive.
Komatsu pointed out: quality improvement comes at a cost (at least in the short-run), investment in production equipment, training, technology and so on.
After it twice won the Deming price, it continued its focus on quality while increasing focus on product development, cost management, and value engineering.

23. Remember: Focus
Is not an excuse for concentrating on one item while ignoring the others.
It is more on setting priorities and putting resources to its best use.
It is a preventive against diluting and dissipating resources.
By focusing, Motorola established a 6-sigma quality and reduced defects from 60 per million to 40 per million.

24. Accumulating resources
Learning from experience (the fourth quadrant of balanced scorecard).
Firms that constantly learn and could pick the gem from the pile of garbage succeeds.
Just because your company is older and has been there longer, does not mean your firm is more productive and efficient.
Often, an older dog does not learn new tricks.
Compare Honda to GM or Ford. Honda is younger and offers far fewer variety than either GM or Ford. Honda being smaller helped it in learning more (less garbage to search from). In other words, a firm must consider each new experience, each success or failure as an opportunity to learn (Angarai – exit interviews).

25. Borrow Resources to improve strategic leverage
Borrowing – joint ventures, alliances, sub-contractors, outsourcing (we will discuss these more during strategic implementation).
“In the West, they cut down trees and we build houses.” A Japanese Manager.
Sony built the transistor while Bell Labs pioneered it.
Amazon knew what to do with the Internet.

26. Complimenting Resources
Another attribute of strategic leverage.
Combine different types of resources to multiple the value – technology, HR, financial and so on.
Why couldn’t GM or Ford create a power train than Honda in spite of their resource advantages?
Possessing resources is different from blending those resources to advantage.

27. Complimenting resources
Whether it is product innovation or cost management, blending becomes essential.
Example: technology and business process analysis.
Other examples: Sony combines headphone and tape recorder to produce Walkman
Another example: In the early 1970s, EMI, a British company invented CAT scan. EMI’s CAT was technologically superior but EMI lacked the marketing and distribution skills and consequently EMI could not capture and hold on to its CAT market share. Much of what EMI created became money spinners for GE and other competitors.
EMI is a classic example of many of the smaller technology firms; they know much about technology but very little about strategic positioning and leverage.
Look at Seagrams, Guiness or IDV, suppliers of famous drink products such as Smirnoff, Johnny Walker or Chivas Regal. These firms realized that having a good product is not adequate but it is also necessary to have a good distribution system. Consequently, these firms began to buy or acquire distributors around the world.

28. Complimenting Resources
Many small companies with good products have these weaknesses.
They are strong on product quality but weak on distribution or lack strategy, a good distribution arrangements, the marketing structure, etc.
Although they can partner with firms having these resources, they will be better of developing them internally (greater control and bargaining power).

29. Last but most important for resource leverage
Reduce the time between expenditure outflow and revenue inflow
A rapid recovery is a resource multiplier.
In simple arithmetic, a firm with rapid recovery is twice better than its competitors.
Example: Detroit car makers (8 years to introduce a new model while Japanese, 4.5 years).
Japanese manufacturers could recover their investments sooner than its US counterparts.

30. The lessons we learnt
Resources are scarce and use them with care.
More resources does not mean more success.
Multiply the limited resource base through creative approaches.
Strategic leverage provides answers to many of these issues.