International business
Strategy concepts
5 steps in strategy:
1) Define prupose with stakeholders: known stakeholders, managed, governance models installed
2) External analysis: industry forces, market attractiveness, steeple, cycle analysis, disruptor analysis
3) Internal analysis: core competences & people, competitive strength, financial strength, reputation,
portfolio overview, how strong are we?
4) Define strategy: strategic options are analyzed, strategy is defined, strategy is translated into
vision, mission
5) Implementation: implementation program, results monitored, plans adapted when results deviate
Stakeholders analysis: all these people will define your road to success
Clear purpose can be business or social related (Old school investment, philanthropy)
Loss $$$ → Profit $$$ Add value to community → destruction of community
First step: CSR = corporate social responsibility Second step: impact investment
1. Determine the meaning of ‘corporate citizenship’ in each country where you operate and across all of
the firm’s international operations
2. Assess each CSR initiative in terms of its joint contribution to ‘doing well’ and ‘doing good’, and
evaluate the longer term business opportunities that CSR activities can create for the firm in host
countries
3. Improve working conditions and labour standards at your factories and your suppliers’ by effectively
implementing CSR activities
4. Rethink your pricing decisions by trading off profit maximization against fulfilling obligations to
society
5. Align your CSR activities to your host country business objectives and the host country socio-
economic and institutional context
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,UN Sustainable Development 17 Goals
Impact investment = Investing money in companies that also do good for society
You hope that an investment will bring a financial return, but you don't know if its environmental or
social ramifications. Impact investing marries the best of these two approaches by combining the
rigorous analytics of financial investing and the heart of philanthropy ultimately, impact investors seek a
double bottom line return, both a financial and a social return.
Greenwash = do what you did before but now say that you are ‘green’
The act of providing the stakeholders with misleading/false info about the environmental impact of a
company’s products and operations
Green is fashionable, being green often comes from a marketing perspective and not from the CEO, not
genuine -> Greenwash (=presenting as environmentally responsible for the public image)
Example: Belfius. Suddenly new advertising campaign “We invested your money maximally in Belgian
society, in Belgian companies…” We are a good bank because we do this. They do nothing differently
than 50 years ago, only now they are advertising. Is it greenwash of genuine? Little bit of both.
Trying to do the same thing in the market with a different angle (eco-friendly, fair-trade)
External factors porter 5 forces
Regulation is missing, because porter was
from the US and there they don’t have
regulation
External factors:
STEEPLE -> market attractiveness External factors: KPMG innovation lab methodology
Way to look at the position you’re working
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,Company vs ecosystem:
Companies will be more and more ecosystems or part of an ecosystem. They can’t do it on their own
they need to work with other companies. Ecosystem : a purposeful business arrangement between two
or more entities (the members) to create and share in collective value for a common set of customers
External factors GE McKinsey -> look at internal & external factors for market attractiveness
Market size -> market growth rate -> market profitability -> pricing trends -> rivalry -> overall risk of
returns in the industry -> opportunity to differentiate products & services -> demand variability ->
segmentation -> distribution structure
External factors: Capability maturity model
1. Initial -> chaotic process, lack of documentation and rapid product changes, uncontrolled
2. repeatable -> some processes are repeatable with consistent results.
3. defined -> defining & documenting the process, identify potential problems & risks
4. managed -> process is managed (collecting data) to measure effectiveness of the process.
5. optimised -> process is constantly being improved through innovations
Business cycles: for if you want to invest in a company
BCG matrix -> dynamic model
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, Internal factors: Core competences
3 questions to judge whether a core competence really is a core competence:
- Provides potential access to variety of markets?
- Benefits perceived by the end customer?
- Difficult to imitate?
Characteristics of core competence:
- difficult for competitors to imitate (internal coordination and learning)
- provides potential access to wide variety of markets
- makes a significant contribution to perceived customer benefits from the end products
- the loss of a core competence would have an important negative effect on the firm’s present
and future performance, in terms of value creation and satisfying stakeholder objectives
Internal factors: GE McKinsey
Internal factors that affect competitive strength:
Strength of assets & competences Relative cost position
Relative brand strength Relative profit margins
Market share Distribution strength & production capacity
Market share growth Record of tech & innovations
Customer loyalty Access to financial resources
Internal factors: how to measure corporate reputation
- Vision and leadership; excellence
- Products and services; innovation
- Financial performance; strong future growth
- Social responsibility; support good goals
- Workplace environment; good place to work
- Emotional appeal; good feeling about company
External & internal factors combined
Portfolio overview
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