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MGT 576 Wk 2 - Practice: Formative Assessment
Which of the following creative methods involves having participants write down
ideas several times a day?
Multiple
•
method
Which of the following was not discussed in the text as a breakthrough
Multiple
•
innovations are described as:
Choice
• having the least disrupting influence on established consumption patterns.
• having some disruptive influence on established consumption patterns.
• having no disruptive influence on established consumption patterns.
• having to establish new consumption patterns due to the creation of a previously unknown product.
In what stage would it be most beneficial to use conversational interviews?
stage
stage
In which stage of the product planning and development process would it be appropriate to give product samples to a panel of potential customers?
Multiple
stage
stage
All of the following statements concerning opportunity assessment plans are except:
Multiple Choice
• the first major section of the opportunity assessment plan develops a time line indicating what steps need to be take to successfully launch the venture.
• an opportunity assessment plan is not a business plan.
• the second major section of the opportunity assessment plan focuses on the market.
• an opportunity assessment plan has four sections—two major sections and two minor sections.
Concerns regarding roads, electricity, banking facilities, communication, and educational systems have to do with a country's:
Multiple Choice
• infrastructure.
• balance of payments.
• political climate.
• economics.
Which of the following statements is true?
Multiple Choice
• Most countries have laws and court procedures protecting intellectual property such as those in the United States.
• Civil laws tend to be relatively nonspecific.
• Laws of a country regulate the manner in which business transactions are executed.
• Global entrepreneurs cannot specify in the contract that any contract disputes will be heard in the courts of another country.
McDonald's acquiring its store franchises is an example of what type of merger?
•
According to the text, the most prevalent reason for mergers is: Multiple Choice
taxation.
economies of scale.
currency fluctuations.
to combine complementary resources.
MGT 576 Wk 2 - Apply: Signature Assignment: Adding Value
to the Organization
Assess the external environment for the organization you researched in Week 1.
Based on your assessment and the organization’s strengths and weaknesses you identified in Week 1, evaluate opportunities for that organization to add economic, social, and environmental value.
Recommend an opportunity that best capitalizes on the organization’s valuable, rare, and hard-to-imitate resources, is least impacted by the organization’s weaknesses, and will take best advantage of the external environment.
Create a PowerPoint presentation to present your assessment, evaluation, and recommendation. Include the following sections in your presentation:
cover slide
agenda
A description of the organization (1 slide with speaker’s notes).
A summary of the strengths and weakness of the organization (2 slides with speaker’s notes)
Key aspects of your assessment of the external environment that present opportunities for adding value, such as trends, unmet needs, unsolved problems, underserved consumer groups, etc. (2-3 slides with speaker’s notes)
An evaluation of opportunities to add economic value (1 slide with speaker’s notes)
An evaluation of opportunities to add social value (1 slide with speaker’s notes)
An evaluation of opportunities to add environmental value (1 slide with speaker’s notes). Note: Some opportunities may appear on more than 1 slide. For example, you may find an opportunity that adds economic, social, and environmental value.
A recommended opportunity to pursue first, with a rationale that shows how the opportunity capitalizes on the organization’s valuable, rare, and hard-to-imitate resources, is not much impacted by the organization’s weaknesses, and takes advantage of the external environment (1 slide, with speaker’s notes)
conclusion
Support your Statements: Include citations in the speakers notes. Format your citations and references according to APA guidelines. Submit your assignment.
This short case details Mayo Clinic’s assessment of its external environment.
Read the case below and answer the questions that follow. Very often when organizations project environmental trends into the future they see a bleak picture. Such “gloom and doom” scenarios, however, might actually be the result of a tendency to be selective about what we see or, even more often, our inability to see possible opportunities in what might seem like unrelated or peripheral developments.
Take the case of Mayo Clinic, the internationally known notfor-profit hospital based in Rochester, Minnesota. Back in the
1980s, when they undertook an analysis of the future, what they saw was a depressing picture with an aging population, decreasing Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, and ever-increasing losses in their emergency room operations. Thus, both the economic and demographic trends looked bleak. However, Dan Burris, a consultant, discovered a number of significant hard trends occurring that many hospitals typically did not consider when making future plans. These technological trends included: - Continuing declines in the prices of PCs - Increasing speed and computing power of PCs - Huge increases in the capacity to store, distribute, and search for information
- Increasing presence of PCs in virtually every home in the U.S. and outside
Being a leading research hospital, the Mayo Clinic had developed over the years an enormous amount of
knowledge about how to diagnose, manage, and cure a variety of diseases and health conditions. Although this knowledge was developed primarily to treat patients, Dan Burris saw a huge opportunity for the Mayo Clinic to derive revenue from this knowledge by selling this information to a public that is hungry for reliable medical information written in an accessible fashion. The result was a CD that it sold to customers for $100. With this CD, the users could access information that would help them to determine, for example, whether their child’s rash or fever was something they could treat with an ibuprofen or something that needed an immediate trip to the emergency room. In the first year, 670,000 CDs were sold!
In addition to the extra revenue that the CD generated, Mayo’s entry into the knowledge market had many unanticipated positive benefits. For example, the popularity of the CDs established the Mayo brand as a leader in healthcare, a name millions around the world would instantly recognize. Second, it helped Mayo transform itself from just another organization that delivers on-site healthcare to a
that delivers health-related
and expertise all around the world. Today, when one visits
they see their slogan “Tools for healthier lives,” which it claims draws on the expertise of more than 3,300 physicians, scientists, and researchers. The website lets one search for information on a wide variety of topics, including diseases and conditions, symptoms, drugs and supplements, and first aid. It also includes new and updated information on such topics as 2012 trends
survivors, options for dealing with adversity,
take action when
Support your Statements: Include citations Format your citations and references according to APA guidelines. Submit your assignment.
MGT 576 Wk 4 - Practice: Formative Assessment
India and the Diamond of National Advantage
The remarkable success of Nigeria’s film industry is described in this case. Emphasis is placed on the various country-level factors that affect the Nigerian film industry as a whole. The success of Nigeria’s film industry can be well explained by the National Competitive Advantage framework (also known as Porter’s Diamond). The key lesson of this case focuses on the role of specific country-level factors that affect the growth of a given industry.
Read the case below and answer the questions that follow.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy and the most populous nation. It is estimated that the Nigerian film industry,
commonly dubbed as Nollywood, surpassed Hollywood as the world’s second largest movie industry by volume sometime around 2009. According to data released by the Nigerian government in 2014, Nollywood was a $3.3 billion sector (Bright, 2015). However, critics note that while Nollywood has volume, it lacks production value, and African actors have yet to breakout globally. “The truth is key players in the global movie industry still have little idea what Nollywood is about,” said Nigerian producer Kunle Afolayan. “The volume won’t matter until we can connect the art to the money with better content and profits.” The volume, however, attests to the tremendous demand for Nigerian movies, even at its current sub-optimal quality. Yet, financial investments to improve film quality remain inadequate. According to Jason Njoku, founder of Nollywood’s video-on-demand (VOD) platform iROKO, “The revenue is already there, it’s just scattered. If stakeholders can invest in Nollywood and make back profits, it will lead to larger budgets and better quality content.”
Pirating of Nollywood productions is a big problem in Nigeria and throughout Africa. According to data published by Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, Nollywood’s greatest shortcoming is its severe revenue bleed. Less than 1 percent of the 3 billion dollars of revenue was tracked from official ticket sales and royalties! In other words, over 99% of the revenues came from pirated reproductions sold by unauthorized vendors. In such a situation, producers and financiers hardly see any of the economic value of their creative productions.
As recently as 2015, Nigeria’s film regulatory agency merely posted online the existing laws, enforcement actions, and arrest details for film copyright infringement. Industry insiders find such measure woefully inadequate, and they have pressed for stronger copyright laws. They have even led a campaign to expose violators, including posting photos and films of alleged pirating operations.
African digital content startups are trying to change this equation with the use of subscription-based VOD. For example, a company called iROKO Partners licenses and
streams Nollywood content to global subscribers for a fee of $1.50 a month per subscriber. In Jason Njoku’s words, “The focus is to take this popular movie industry, digitize it, and put the right framework around it to capture the proper value.”
Notwithstanding the rise of VOD as a platform for Nollywood content, an ongoing concern has been the reliability of the internet in Nigeria. New solutions are emerging as well: iROKO has challenged its developers to create smaller Nollywood movie files and more direct download options. Another Nigerian startup, SOLO, is bridging the device and broadband gap by offering entry level smartphones (around $75) and its View App that allows customers to buy and rent digital content at download hotspots throughout the country. According to Bright (2015), “Competition in African digital entertainment is heating up. In 2014, Africa Magic, a Naspers owned South African satellite TV channel, announced its $8 a month Africa Magic Go VOD package. Then there’s Kenyan startup Buni.tv’s new Buni+, a $5 a month streaming movie service. Each has a heavy focus on
consumers of Nigerian content. Meanwhile, YouTube is also becoming a competitor. Taking a cue from U.S. disruptors like Netflix, Africa’s digital film platforms are already creating proprietary programming. iROKOTV is now directing its own productions through its ROK Studios. So too is Nairobi based Buni.tv.” “Nollywood’s popularity across Africa and the diaspora certainly demonstrates the capacity of the films to travel,” says Nigerian film producer and financier Yewande Sadiku. Nigerian movies are not merely demanded by other African markets, but have already proven to have a global reach.
Source: Bright, J. 2015. Meet ‘Nollywood’: The second largest movie industry in the world. Fortune, June 24. Retrieved from: http://fortune.com/2015/06/24/nollywood-movieindustry/ Which part of the Diamond Framework is the strongest in Nigerian film industry?
Choose 1 country that the organization you’ve been working on in this course could consider expanding into.
Read the selected article from the University Library.
Analyze that potential international market by considering the 4 aspects of the Diamond of National Advantage: industry rivalry, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, and factor endowments
Analyze the forces (in the home market and international market) that will help the organization succeed with its expansion, and the forces that may act as barriers to that expansion. Refer to your analysis of strengths and weaknesses completed in Week 1, the Porter’s Five Forces worksheet from Week 3, and your analysis of the Diamond of National Advantage.
Evaluate the 4 adjustments leaders must make when expanding internationally (Burkus, 2012). Recommend 1 specific leadership action for each adjustment, such as developing a global mindset, developing sensitivity to cultural differences, decentralizing, deciding on the level of involvement, etc.
Recommend whether the organization should expand into the chosen country and explain your rationale.
Create a PowerPoint presentation to present your analysis and recommendation. Include the following sections in your presentation:
slide
Identification of the country you have chosen (1 slide, with brief speaker’s notes)
slide for analysis of each of the elements of the Diamond of National Advantage (4 slides, with speaker’s notes)
summary of analysis of the forces that will help the organization succeed in the new country (1 slide, with speaker’s notes)
summary of analysis of the forces that will hinder the organization’s success in the new country (1 slide, with speaker’s notes)
actions required to make the 4 adjustments identified by Burkus (2012)
rationale (1 slide, with speaker’s notes)
Support your Statements: Include citations in the speakers notes. Format your citations and references according to APA guidelines. Submit your assignment.
MGT 576 Wk 5 - Practice: Formative Assessment
Environmental Sustainability at 3M
3M has been a leader in environmental sustainability efforts for many years. Dating back to the 1970s, its 3P program has helped it not only reduce its environmental footprint, but become more efficient and profitable as a result.
Environmental sustainability continues to be an issue important to both society and organizations. Effectively leading an organization to develop environmental sustainability efforts and practices is essential. This case discusses how 3M has been able to see this challenge as an opportunity.
Read the case below and answer the questions that follow.
Vision and creative change are not solely domains of the CEO. Take former vice president of environmental engineering and pollution control at 3M, Joe Ling, as an example. In 1975, Mr. Ling oversaw 3M’s efforts to comply with new legal pollution requirements. Years ago, 3M focused on lowering its environmental impact through, for instance, placing scrubbers on smokestacks, treating effluence before releasing wastewater, and segregating solid waste. While this prevention strategy allowed 3M to comply with legal requirements, Mr. Ling’s vision went much further. Instead of seeing environmental concerns as a necessary evil, he asked whether 3M could prevent pollution altogether and profit from doing so. He thought 3M could, and he started 3M’s famous Pollution Prevention Pays (or 3P) program that survives to this day. While it is challenging to introduce creative change into any organization, Mr. Ling did not shy away from setting challenging goals. Any idea that would reduce pollution must also save money for 3M. Executives at 3M stick to this ideal and reiterate that “anything not a product is considered a cost.” This sustainability strategy is firmly grounded in the
3P philosophy that everything that increases 3M’s footprint is not just pollution or waste, but also a sign of operational inefficiency. 3P not only encourages top executives to rethink products and processes, but also empowers lower-level employees to generate sustainability improvements. Mr. Ling’s vision to embed 3P in 3M’s corporate culture has grown to phenomenal success, culminating in more than 6,300 sustainability projects and 2.6 billion pounds of pollutants saved. Consistent with 3P’s mantra that pollution prevention is instrumental to 3M’s financial success, the company achieved over $1 billion in first-year project savings.
3P has been an integral part of 3M’s corporate strategy in an increasingly global marketplace. One could imagine that sustainability cost savings would show up in increased profitability, yet 3M’s profit margins are roughly the same as 30 years ago. Yet 3M operates in increasingly competitive industrial businesses, reducing operating margins and making operational efficiency programs such as 3P crucial to 3M’s long-term success. Therefore, it comes as no surprise
that 3M continues to challenge its employees with high sustainability standards. Over the past two decades, 3M has slashed toxic releases by 99 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by 72 percent. This makes 3M the only company that has won the EPA’s Energy Star Award every year since the prize has been awarded, and it has saved costs and stayed competitive while doing so.
Sources: Esty, D.C. & Winston, A.S. 2009. Green to Gold. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley: 106–110; Anonymous. 2012. 2015 Sustainability goals: Sometimes our toughest challenges are the ones we put on ourselves. www.3m.com, June 10: np; and Winston, A.S. 2012. 3M’s sustainability innovation machine. www.businessweek.com, May 15: np. What does "3P" stand for in the 3P Program?
MGT 576 Wk 5 -
and
Review the 6 key elements of a learning organization (Ch. 11 of Strategic Management, by Dess).
epitomizes each of the 6
MGT576_v1_Wk5_Learning_Organizations_and_Value_Creation.docx
the mark must have been used on goods that are already traded.
It takes approximately ________ to obtain a trademark. Multiple Choice
12 months
13 months
14 months
18 months
Trade secrets can be protected for: Multiple Choice
an unlimited period of time.
20 years according to federal law.
14 years according to state law.
50 years if renewed to the maximum allowed, five 10year renewable terms.
The depth and detail of a business plan depend on:
Multiple Choice
• the target audience.
• the size and scope of the new venture.
• the experience of the entrepreneur.
• the amount of capital needed.
Which source of financial information is a compilation of 260,000 financial statements of banking customers with ratios and benchmarks?
Multiple Choice
• RMA eStatement Studies
• Market Share Reporter
• U.S. Census Statistical Abstracts
• Encyclopedia for American Industries and Mintel Reports
An assessment of external uncontrollable variables that may impact the business plan is known as:
Multiple Choice
• an environmental analysis.
• a description of the venture.
• a trend analysis.
• an executive summary.
Which of the following is not a common reason why business plans fail?
Multiple Choice
• Objectives are not measurable
• No customer need was established
• The entrepreneur has no experience in the planned business
• The promotional strategy was not taken seriously
•
that already exists is called:
Multiple Choice
• secondary data.
• primary data.
•
data.
• target data.
Which of the following is not a major question that should be addressed by the marketing plan?
Multiple Choice
• Where have we been?
• Where do we want to go in the short term?
• Where do we want to go in the long term?
• How do we get there?
All efforts to develop an effective social media plan start with: Multiple Choice
• Google.
• the company website.
Facebook.
Twitter.
Which of the following is true of budgeting the marketing strategy?
Multiple Choice
• The marketing budget will depend on one factor—the size of the business.
• Budgeting the marketing strategy is easier for new ventures than for established companies.
• A marketing budget should be somewhere between 12 and 20 percent of projected overhead costs.
• The budgeting of marketing action and strategy decisions will be useful in preparing the financial plan.
•
MGT 576 Wk
Memo
Write a 2- to 3-page memo to the CEO of the company you’ve been assessing throughout the course, outlining your plan to create economic, social, and environmental value. In your memo, include the following items:
executive summary of the memo
summary of the organization’s strengths and weaknesses, and recommendations for converting weaknesses into strengths
summary of your Wk 3 findings on Porter’s Five Forces
summary of your Wk 4 findings on the Diamond of National Advantage
summary of your Wk 5 analysis of the firm as a learning organization
recommendations based on your previous work in this course. Include the opportunity identified in Wk 2, the move into the country identified in Wk 4, and any recommended moves toward being a learning organization. Provide a rationale for each recommendation.
references to support your assignment.
Format your citations according to APA guidelines. Submit your assignment.