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B2B_Strategy_Competition

Page history last edited by Paul Knott 14 years, 4 months ago

 

INTEREST GROUP – PILOT PROJECT PROPOSAL:

 

Strategy Competition as a Research Experiment


SUMMARY:

Which is a greater, ego or fear? What can we learn about the cognitive relationship between a firm’s strategy creation process and its content expertise and experience? What are the significant trade-off’s, constraints or limitations that matter and why? How loosely or tightly coupled should this relationship be for a firm’s respective structure to optimize for maximum agility or performance? These are just a few examples on the class and types of questions that can be addressed with the right experiments. Therefore, proposed is a pilot project that integrates a competition and an experiment to be held as a pre-conference activity at the next SMS conference in Rome, 2010.

First, the competition: In order to increase membership of and participation from the spectrum of (A)cademics, (B)usiness and (C)onsultants, proposed is the first ever multi-industry, global “Strategy Case Competition”. This competition will select a few global firms competing in complex markets to compete against each other on “how” they do strategy rather than on “what” they do strategy on; specifically, the intent is to abstract away from their respective industry content expertise and test their process expertise. This event will be sponsored by, none other than, the SMS. The Practice of Strategy Interest Group will “program manage” the design, development and deployment of the overall activity; including the recruiting of companies, recruiting the judges, and facilitiating the event.

Next, the experiment: The design and structure of the competition process will address a set of research topics/questions and utilize it to capture data before, during and after the activity. The data will then be analyzed, conclusions drawn and a paper will be composed. This paper will be proposed for submission into various journals, such as the SMJ. SMJ and other editors of the same level will be consulted with to see what parameters would make a paper compelling for strong consideration.  

 

SCOPE:

Overall, the scope is yet to be finalized. So far, there are several significant elements that are listed below but are very much Work In Progress. The idea is to iterate these until they are good enough to start recruiting five compelling firms to participate.

·         Define the “Real-Life” Problem/Challenge for the teams to compete on:

o   Specific Meta-Question(s): TBD

o   Span(s): International/governmental in nature

o   Theme(s): Universal; ie, Health care, Education, Poverty, etc.

o   Identify “Stakeholder” that cares about the solutions/recommendations enough to show up on Game Day for report out’s

·         Design the Length and Structure for F2F competition; 1 full day event as pre-session

o   Process/Details TBD

·         Determine Competitor Teams:

o   At least (5) for-profit, company teams with 5-7 members per team

o   Categories: Per industry, member heirarchy, experience, geo?

·         Judging:

o   66% - F2F Performance:

§  70% - At least (6) judge panel: two per Academia, Business, Consulting

§  30% - Qualified Audience?

o   34% - Pre-Game input/Performance

§  Details TBD

·         Define formal recruitment/submission process for firms - $??K fee per submission

·         Complete of the Design the Design of the Experiment:

o   Gain input/feedback from experts

o   Capture data before/during/after

o   Relevant (research) questions/topics: TBD

·         Benefits

o   “Bragging rights” for winner – an announcment in WSJ/Financial Times

o   Video/filming for later web casting on SMS and/or other websites

o   Prize money for companies

o   Complimentary conference pass for final competing firms

o   Complimentary memberships for final competing firms

o   Paper is produced by A’s from the experience for distribution to all SMS members and ralted B-schools/classrooms

o   More here later

 

RESOURCES:

·         Logistics - Program Manager and Core team lead/drive activities; Intern/co-op to assist project managing relevant activities with input from IG members

·         $ - Prize money, marketing

·         Large room w/ A/V and web-casting for session day or two before SMS in, Rome

·         Selected/final competitors agree to pay their travel air/hotel; they are given complimentary conference attendance and SMS membership

 

 

SCHEDULE:

·         Q4, 2009:

o   OCT: Iterate Scope

o   NOV: Iterate Scope

o   DEC: Finalize Scope and start marketing/recruiting companies to participate

§  Wall Street Journal/Financial Times advertisement?

·         Q1, 2010:

o   JAN: Go/No-Go Decision (need at least 5 companies to commit and agreement by SMS to “bless it”)

o   FEB:

o   MAR: Teams submit Round 1 (11%)

·         Q2, 2010:

o   APR:

o   MAY:

o   JUN: Teams submit Round 2 (11%)

·         Q3, 2010:

o   JULY:

o   AUG:

o   SEP: Team submit Round 3 (12%)

·         Q4, 2010:

o   OCT: F2F Game Day (66%)

o   NOV:

o   DEC:

 

QUALITY:

·         IG A’s architect DOE to be “publishable”; discussion with SMJ editors agree to frame parameters for successful publication

·         SMS Board - Progam Manager gets initial buy-in/blessing and sends monthly reports (wiki?)

 

NEXT STEPS:

·         Finalize core working group from IG and related recurring meeting times/dates

·         Present/brief the SMS board for “proposal” – gain Go/No-Go decision

·         Identify/recuit participation (start off w/ people at SMS conference):

o   Participants may include firms who are already in attendance and/or who presented in panels such as: Intel, Vodaphone, Infosys, Tata, GE, etc.

o   Judges may include: CK Prahalad, Mark Spelman, Pankaj Ghemawat, etc

·         More here

 

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