Lovas, B.and Ghoshal,S.(2000),Strategy as Guided Evolution

This is a thesis in Strategic Management Journal. The paper shows relation between strategic intent, top management, and human capital and social capital, organization and workers, and tries to make a model of it from an international company’s case study.

The model consists of follows;

・Objective Function(strategic intent)

・Source of Variation (all employees)
・Units of Selection (strategic initiatives, human and social capital)
・Agents of Selection and Retention (people working on strategic initiative)

・Administrative Systems (formal structure and organizational routines)

In this article, the model was inspected with the example of Oticon, Danish hearing aid company, and its reconstructing strategy and organization. The example is so interesting because it shows “Structure follows Strategy”. But it is so complex that author could not theorize the case sufficiently. I think studies of management became more difficult if more close it looks example. From the beginning, it is impossible to theorize activities of human beings. By the way, this thesis is hard to understand for me.


URL:www.thinkoticon.com/

Magretta,J.(1998),Fast, Global, and Entrepreneurial: Supply Chain Management, Hong Kong Style

This is a record of an interview with Victor Fung who is a chairman of the Li & Fung, which is said as “Hong Kong based multinational trading company”in his words. As the title, the interview focused on “Supply Chain Management” and demonstrates its importance for global company in twenty-first century dates back to the Li & Fung’s history.

The Li & Fung’s started as an interpreter and a broker which mediated businesses between Chinese factories and American merchants. However, the fee of intermediate became squeezed and it has started to change the business model in three stages.

In the first stage, it became “a regional sourcing agent”, which tells buyers when and where they should start buying. This is valuable for buyers because exports were controlled by government with quotas and information of other country is complex. In the second stage, it became “a manager and deliverer of manufacturing programs”; not introduce best provider of ready-made products, but organize production process of new goods. In the third stage, it expand second model globally and started “dispersed manufacturing”, not construct whole value-chain but separate and integrate parts of it.

This is different type of global company, which does not own value-chain but “configure” and “coordinate” them. I think it seems similar to Japanese governments because they want to control industries they taking charge of and collect more information about the industry than any other.

URL:http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=177167

Li & Fung: Beyond “Filling in the Mosaic”, 1998-1998(HBS Case 9-398-092)

This is a case of Li & Fung Group, a Chinese textile company which is run by two brothers who have Ph.D. at Business Economics at Harvard University or MBA at the Harvard Business School. The article describes the firms from its start up to 1998, when it has established and making strategy for twenty-first century.

Li & Fung’s business model is “a virtual factory” or “private label manufacturing program”, means it specializes providing product itself, not brand or promotion. Though there is big scale merit in production of textile industry, it is difficult each company has big factory because there are lots of competitors and fashion of the clothes are always changing. For company which has good talent of design or marketing, it is better not having its manufacturing and outsourcing it. This is why Li & Fung is needed from many customers and Li & Fung has developed the relation through its network to get the textiles at high speed and good quality in lowest cost.

Li & Fung’s strategy is the 4Cs;.
1,Connection
2,Communication
3,Control of quality
4,Consolidation of shipments

Its way of business is simple, developed good manager and construct reasonable evaluation, collect information and invest promising company. But most interesting for me is it made investing company, LFI, to find customer in future and collect money. In the twenty- first century information is important but collect information only is so costly. To have invest company is good strategy for other company, I think.


URL:http://www.lifung.com/eng/global/home.php

“the creators class"?

Today’s class was an open course, there were many people in the class room because today’s guest was Piers Fawkes, just a Trendspotter itself! I did not him so much, but expectations of my friends and the number of audience coming class told me how he is famous.

He has been running PSFK, which provide ideas of future or trend on Internet; blogs. The important point is that he earns money through PSFK this is why PSFK has activities such as consulting and workshops. Anyway, it is extremely difficult to keep running “Web2.0” as a business, I think.

His speech was organized by two parts, the first one was methodology and the second one was his view gotten from the method. About method, he explained how he have made PFSK’s blogs;

1, scanning and digesting ( search the fact, collect information a lot)
2, scout network (find interesting people and share visions with blogs, sometimes interview directly)
3, trend report (make report of trends)
4, ideation (work together and make plan)

(main parts are 1 and 2, 3 and 4,are for business, I think)

In the second part, his vision of future, he stressed corporations of creators, companies, and communities. In the Web2.0 world and Globalization, both of which are hard to define, everyone can become creator and can create a trend. This is amplified by community, groups of people have same mind, parties of creators. However, activities of communities are hard to maintain because they can not make money for keeping themselves running. Companies helps them and transfer a trend to a business trend, social big trend, the future.



I think his ideas themselves are not so novel, but valuable as his saying. One thing I cared was he said “the creators class” ,in the last part. This means in future, a few established people make the trend, future, the world. Even in future, however advanced IT, social structure would not change, I was felt by the lecture.

essay about “Finding a Coach in the Land of Oz”

Today’s class was ” In-class writing”, we only had a test, this is first one for me in SSE. The test was to write an essay about “Finding a Coach in the Land of Oz”, which we read in previous class. We had told a form of the test, which had 4 questions and we could choose one of them, but not told the questions. Of course, we could not bring the script in the exam.

In the test, I have finished early than I had expected. I think it is done because of two reasons. First, I had reread the text and prepared for the test in this morning, with making summery of the essay and answers to questions in course resume. Second, in first part of the test, I made structure of my essay and share number of words because essay had to have 300-400 words.

Next two classes, I can not attend because of a job ceremony in Japan. See you the week after the next!

Overcoming the Liability of Foreignness

Yesterday’s IBS lecture was about Hartford Part2, challenge and strategy of foreign country. The lecturer was also PhD student. The lecture was so systematic that we could easily tell how he would organize next. Some of my friends complained about that, but for me, it was good because it was easy to understand.

The conclusion is “Foreigner should understand how it are seen by host country, and exploit its advantages and mitigate its disadvantage”. Foreign firm usually have both of negative and positive image. Hartford success in Japan was archived by the reducing negative image such as unreliable by communication with government or compliance and using local network, and using its “innovative” image for partnership with Nikko and relationship to government which wanted to make its market more competitive.

Looking back on the case, it was so beautiful because its strategy was easy to understand and actually, the strategy has worked well. I think this was the reason why PhD student took this lecture.



URL:http://metacool.typepad.com/metacool/page/2/

(It is just "beautiful" image, does not directly relate this post)

"Cradle to Cradle"

Today's speaker was Christina Cheng and Magnus, of course guest was Christina. She is a business person who works mainly with food companies, and supports them to catch a trend. Thanks to her background lecture was rather practical than academic. She used many transparencies and told us some example of company.

“Cradle to Cradle”, I had never heard about that, was most interesting concept for me,












This is so nice! This is what I am considering because my major is agricultural economics! This city can self-produce sustainable food and energy.


Her Trendspotting steps is following:

1,Start on familiar ground
2,Make it their business
3,Go practice
4,Inspire to change
5,So what analysis