Client

CEO Mark Crouse – The Logic Factory

Report Brief

Students will have a unique opportunity to develop a real-life strategy for The Logic Factory – a MNE
operating in Netherlands, UK, India and USA.

The company CEO, Mark Crouse, has assigned you the responsibility to develop the Global Strategy
of his corporation. You will act as real life consultants, competing with each other on who will take
the job at the end. Marc and I will select the best two consultancy projects and offer a variety of
prizes.

This assignment is a great opportunity for you to develop employability skills that employers are
looking for, get a taste on how it is to be an IB Strategist, expand your business network, and why
not… even get an opportunity to apply for a job on Marc’s company.

Marc and I worked closely together to develop a project that tests your knowledge on the MKIB 351
module, meets the learning outcomes of the module and gives you the opportunity to apply all the
theoretical knowledge you gain in practice. At the same time, we expect from students to be
professional and remember that their target audience is the business practitioners. So the language
and overall presence has to resemble a business executive report.

Having said, you must not forget that this is also a University assignment and in order to pass the
module you will have to use relevant theories/frameworks from Global Strategic Management and
demonstrate your knowledge on the subject.

Guidance – things to address in your report

The individual report should consist of the following 5 sections. For each section I will provide
suggestions on what students could cover but these are not restrictive. I will outline all the
frameworks and tools you have in your disposal but that does not mean that you have to use all of
them. What you need to have in mind is that each section has a purpose. For each section thereof
you need to draw some “conclusions”, take them with you and complete the next sections. These
“conclusions” need to be justified. So the key word here is justify your findings/arguments in each
section.

Your end Global Strategic Plan needs to be informed by all the previous sections. So the strategy that
the company should implement needs to be justifiable by all the previous analysis.
1. Introduction: Introduce the MNE (10% of total mark)
a. Introduce the company, its products, the market it operates, define your industry,
define your target market
b. Briefly assess whether the company is doing well or bad at the moment.
2. The MNE and its environment: You need to conduct an internal and external analysis for
your company. In essence you need to identify your company’s global resources and
capabilities, supply chain activities, its weaknesses and its competitive advantage in the
markets it operates. In addition you need to assess the attractiveness of the industry you
operate, perform a competitor analysis for the markets you operate, and conclude whether
or not your company has an industry based advantage. From this stage you should be able to
identify some opportunities and threats for your company as well as strengths and
weaknesses which you will use later on in order to inform your strategic options (30% of
total mark)
a. For the internal analysis you can use the value chain model, assess your company’s
global resources and capabilities, use the VRIO model to identify your company’s
competitive advantage, identify and assess your company’s weaknesses. Alternative
you can present a narrative description of your company’s internal environment. No
matter what you decide to do, it is very important to identify your company’s
competitive advantage and global capabilities.
b. For the external analysis you can use the 5 forces to assess the attractiveness of your
industry, the Porter’s 3 generic strategies/Bowman’s clock to identify the strategic
position of your firm and the competitors against the industry, use the competitors
benchmarking to assess global competition, do a global PESTEL evaluation.
Alternative you can present a narrative description of your company’s external
environment. No matter you decide to do it is very important to evaluate the
industry and competition in your global environment.
3. The MNE and its strategic options: At this stage having collected all the data you need, you
need to start developing your company’s global strategic options. Utilise the ANSOFF matrix
and come up with 3 different strategic options (i.e. market penetration, product
development, market development, diversification – choose 3 to discuss further) that you
want to explore further. Having done so, you need to evaluate your 3 strategic options and
make an informed decision on which one you are planning to take forward. You can use your
previous discussion (company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and any
other information you consider relevant) to justify your selection and/or can test your 3
strategic options via the SAFe criteria and the one that passes use it for the future (20% of
total mark)
4. The MNEs and its international expansion: At this stage you need to explain in detail your
selected strategic option (ONE strategic option). In essence you need to provide an
implementation plan, and explain how you are going to implement the suggested strategic
option (30% of total mark).
a. Market penetration - explain how you will retain and increase your market share.
Ideas: how you will deal with the competitors, additional services you may offer to
attract new customers, maybe an advertisement you want to run. Up to you how
you will decide to proceed but need to justify your suggestions
b. Product development – explain the process of developing new product/service and
how this will add value to the company. Ideas: invest in R&D, or acquire a company
 that has the knowledge/technology you are after, how and why customers will value
the new product
c. Market development – explain which country you plan to enter and provide
discussion on how you will enter it. Ideas: use lecture 7 for inspiration and things to
cover in your discussion
d. Diversification – combine the discussion from product development and market
development. If you are entering a new industry with a new product, provide some
additional information about the new industry such as is it attractive, is it
competitive, has room for investment etc.
5. Balance score card: Provide some key performance indicators to assess against them the
success of your strategy (10% of total mark)