What role can top management play in helping a company achieve superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness to customers?

QUESTION 1 What role can top management play in helping a company achieve superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness to customers? QUESTION 2 Why is it important to understand the drivers of profitability, as measured by the return on invested capital? QUESTION 3 What are the strengths of formal strategic planning? What are its weaknesses? QUESTION 4 From what perspective might innovation be called the single most important building block of competitive advantage? QUESTION 5 What do you think are the sources of sustained superior profitability? QUESTION 6 Is it possible for a company to be the lowest cost producer in its industry and simultaneously have an output that is most valued by customers? QUESTION 7 Under what environmental conditions are price wars most likely to occur in an industry? What are the implications of price wars for a company? How should a company try to deal with the threat of a price war? QUESTION 8 When is a company’s competitive advantage most likely to endure over time? QUESTION 9 Which is more important in explaining the success and failure of companies: strategizing or luck? QUESTION 10 Evaluate the accuracy of the following statement: Formal strategic planning systems are irrelevant for firms competing in high-technology industries where the pace of change is so rapid that plans are routinely made obsolete by unforeseen events. What role can top management play in helping a company achieve superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness to customers? Explain the process by which increased production volume leads to lower costs. Give an example from a real or hypothetical firm. Can the process apply to a service organization, as well as a manufacturing one? Is so, give an example. If not, tell why not. Chapter 5: For each of the generic strategies-cost leadership, differentiation, and focus-describe one advantage and one disadvantage. How can companies pursuing cost-leadership and differentiation lose their place on the value frontier? In what ways can they regain their competitive advantage? Chapter 6: What advice would you give to a manager of a business in a fragmented industry about how to successfully compete? About how to achieve industry consolidation? (fragmented industry = industry dominated by a small number of large companies or by one company – they are in a position to determine industry prices) Chapter 7: Describe the advantages and disadvantages of being a first mover or a follower in a high-tech industry. In your opinion, which strategy is preferable, and why? Give an example of an industry that has recently undergone a technological paradigm shift. What impact did the shift have on established companies? On new entrants to the industry?