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Google strategy

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Google is one of leaders in innovation management. What are some of its best practices?
Google’s Executive Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt provides us with some insights
(reported in Manyika 2008):

EES&OR483 Strategy and Marketing Primer (version 3.0)

This set of "crib notes" is a review of marketing and strategy tools and concepts that you may find useful for your project in EES&OR 483. The intention is not to give you more work or reading material, but rather to provide you with an aid and reference in formulating and analyzing your problem.

All of the concepts covered in lecture and the assigned readings are reviewed here. You might find the summaries a helpful reminder of what the concepts are and how …show more content…

With the idea of activity mapping, Porter (1996) builds on his ideas of generic strategy and the value chain to describe strategy implementation in more detail. Competitive advantage requires that the firm 's value chain be managed as a system rather than a collection of separate parts. Positioning choices determine not only which activities a company will perform and how it will configure individual activities, but also how they relate to one another. This is crucial, since the essence of implementing strategy is in the activities - choosing to perform activities differently or to perform different activities than rivals. A firm is more than the sum of its activities. A firm 's value chain is an interdependent system or network of activities, connected by linkages. Linkages occur when the way in which one activity is performed affects the cost or effectiveness of other activities. Linkages create tradeoffs requiring optimization and coordination.

Porter describes three choices of strategic position that influence the configuration of a firm 's activities:
• variety-based positioning - based on producing a subset of an industry 's products or services; involves choice of product or service varieties rather than customer segments. Makes economic sense when a company can produce particular products or services using distinctive sets of activities. (i.e. Jiffy Lube for auto lubricants only)

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