Strategic Management; Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage at Hewlett Packard

Changing Market Conditions In the early 1990's, while technological innovation continued to drive the company's success, many business units were being forced to compete on other dimensions. In consumer product lines, low prices, broad availability and ease of use had become competitive requirements. Lew Platt, HP's current President and Chief Executive Officer, once acknowledged the importance of improving customer service and responsiveness, We're not doing as good a job in order fulfillment as we need to. In fact, it's where we get our lowest marks from customers. We have to be a lot easier to do business with. Improvement in order fulfillment will strengthen HP's competitiveness, increase customer satisfaction and reduce expenses, so this is an

HP did many things correctly when addressing the challenges for disruptive change. For instance, they organized a smaller team of “hungry” individuals from marketing, manufacturing, and research and development that moved the project away from the core group essentially acting as a small startup business. The smaller group was motivated to establish itself and prove their product was worthy of funding and upper management support. They also differentiated themselves by choosing team members that were uninterested in maintaining status in the company mainstream way of thinking. HP allowed a lot of leeway to the Kitty Hawk team in making decisions and providing financial backing to the project’s

Hewlett-Packard has a very interesting strategy that at the end is going to give them the respect of their clients. They say: “We believe in the talent and creativity of our people to develop and harness technology and services that can stimulate economies, elevate people from poverty and sickness, and help solve the world’s environmental challenges. We achieve this by fully integrating citizenship into our business strategy.”

Hewlett Packard is about extending beyond the limits of classical physics and provides a quantum leap in performance, reliability and security. With the ever changing world of technology and the high demand to stay ahead of the curve, HP Labs is inventing today and for the next generation a new line of HP products and solutions. HP focuses on partnering with you, the visionary customer by solving your enterprise issues. HP has the scale, ideas, expertise and unmatched portfolio of products and services to deliver end-to-end innovation and value. We believe diversity is a key driver of our success. Putting all our differences to work across the world is a continuous journey fueled by personal leadership from everyone in our company.

The value chain is one of the critical elements of a company’s strategy in today’s competitive world, because company’s profit depends on how the successful and efficient it runs its operations and how the end product appeals to the customers at a price that covers all the expenses of the company.

A value chain is an essential model for businesses that are trying to gain a competitive edge over their respective counterparts. “The purpose of the value chain is to sequentially link interdependent operational activities that create a value that exceeds the cost of producing or providing a product or service; thus creating a profit margin” (Porter, 1998). In order to measure and further develop the implemented value procedure, a value analysis should be conducted on the chain or system in place; solidifying it’s viability and potential profit growth. This methodology is not only recommended for profit-based businesses, but the same principle can be applied to a non-profit company.

Porter, Michael. 1998. “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.” 26 Dec, 2011. Free Press, 1998.

HP, an expert in the hi-tech industry understands the fiercely competitive environment where technological and innovative advancements could create turbulent

Business level strategy refers to the integrated set of actions a firm uses to gain a competitive advantage by exploiting core competencies in specific product markets. HP is trying to gain competitive advantage through differentiation by becoming a smaller more agile force in the industry that will bring more modernized systems such as cloud and digital systems vice using antiquated IT infrastructures. The HP Enterprise will differentiate from its competitors by providing services within four component areas; transform, protect, empower, and enable which are indicative of the way the market is headed and meets the customer need. An example of an HP intended and realized business strategy is acquiring Eucalyptus, a provider of open source software for building private and hybrid enterprise clouds. This acquisition is a realized result of a three year planned strategy. (HP,

According to Slack et al. The corporate strategy or business strategy is the guide lines for the whole corporation’s businesses in relation to its markets, customers, and the competitors (2007). In the same context, the same authors discussed the link between the corporate strategy and

Dell Computer Corporation was founded in 1984 by Michael Dell. From the early 1990s until the mid-2000s, Dell was ranked as a PC market leader relying on their distinctive marketing pattern “Direct Model” which undertook direct communication with customers and provided customized products. Recently, the PC industry is facing inconceivable worldwide competition, and Dell is gradually losing their competitive advantages by using its direct model in critical business segments. The company is facing shrinkage of growth, increasing competition, declining quality of customer service, and limitation of expansion. These issues have an enormous impact on Dell’s position as a technological giant in the PC industry.

Corporate Strategy has been defined by numerous authors. Grant (1995) claims corporate strategy deals with the way a corporation manages a number of different businesses. Lynch, R, in both his third and fourth edition books on corporate strategy refers to Penrose (1959) definition of corporate strategy as “the pattern of major objectives, purposes or goals and essential polices or plans for achieving those goals, stated in such a way as to define what business the company is in or to be in and the kind of company it is or to be”

Stability of environment and technology: “This involves the degree to which the organization’s environment and technology are changing” (Cummings & Worley, 2009, p. 204). A very important factor in any change strategy considered by HP is the rapidly changing environment of their industry. HP has consistently undergone many transitions throughout

Enterprises need to constantly assess the value of their existing product stakeholders/customers. Part of the paper involves how the product/service business security elements - this is usually not by business, but the actual final product is of vital importance and/or customer experience. Within the enterprise must realize the effective work of opportunities and challenges of the value chain, in order to ensure their business success. This report will discuss the definition of global value chains, and provide two examples about that. Also, There are four different examples of the elements of "value", so that the recipient to consider why and how to be described as valuable.

Patricia Dunn as the board chairman, made a decision that the board had to meet several times in a year, culminate in multi-day, off-site retreat that were held in January where the board was required to have review of the coming year plans and strategies. However, recently, the board had faced various issues related to turnover and turmoil. Some of the actions undertaken by the boards were to organize and assist the new technology committee to make some of the best recommendations towards the board’s scope, direction, quality, execution of HP strategies and investment levels.