What key strengths, weaknesses, distinctive competencies, or sustainable distinctive competencies can it call upon and exploit for future benefit and growth? Can the firm sustain its competitive advantage?How will the firms weaknesses affect its future performance? What role will stakeholders preferences play in the future for this firm? How financially healthy is the firm? These are all questions you should consider when examining the current health and strength of the company.
How to Write This Section? The objective of an internal assessment is to determine what the company can do in the future.
(a) Definition of Business. First, provide a definition of the business of the company in the first paragraph succinctly. Be sure
to name the business of the company, major business segments, and geography.
(b) VRIO Analysis.
Second, use Barneys VRIO framework to uncover a firms key weaknesses, strengths, distinctive competencies, and sustainable distinctive competencies. Again the critical part is not to identify but to analyze and synthesize. As you write this section, think of top three key strengths, weaknesses, distinctive competencies or sustainable distinctive competencies (S/W/DC/SDC). Write one paragraph on each of them, clearly revealing whether the selected resource/capability is valuable, rare, and inimitable and WHY? Be sure to give the rationale in the text. Also, address whether the firm has the organization (structure) and complementary resources to take advantage of the resource/capability being discussed in the paragraph. Also be sure to mention whether the resource/capability is a weakness, strength, distinctive competence, or sustainable distinctive competence. Therefore, it is better to focus on one S/W/DC/SDC in each paragraph.
A special note about weaknesses. Students often ask whether they should bring up a weakness or not. Our response is: Bring it up if it is a strategic weakness that you think is important for the
top management to address for their strategy to be successful in the next five years. If you do bring it up, keep it mind that you should analyze whether or not it can become strength, distinctive competency, or sustainable distinctive competency, if the company invests in it. Also, be sure to come up with ways to make up the weakness as part of your strategy when you are building the strategic alternatives!
In the text, you will raise the top three items for strengths, weaknesses, distinctive competencies, and sustainable distinctive competencies.
Note: In the text, you are expected to bring no more than three items in total for strengths, weaknesses, distinctive competencies, and sustainable distinctive competencies. Keep in mind two points: (1) We are NOT asking for three items for strengths, three item for weaknesses, three items for distinctive competencies, and three items for sustainable distinctive competencies. That is, we are not looking for a total of 12 items; we are only looking for a total of three items. (2) The three items do not have to include one item from each category (categories being strengths, distinctive competencies, and sustainable distinctive competencies). They could all be strengths, distinctive
competencies, or sustainable distinctive competencies. As mentioned above, students may include strategic weaknesses as well but the total number of items must not exceed three.
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