Welcome back. I have good news and bad news. We're at the end.
We're going to summarize things but not the end of your learning, you could learn more.
But let me give you an overview of where we've been and what you should take away.
We've talked about resource based strategy,
you can think of this as your fortress,
you think of this as protecting what you have.
You can do it in various ways.
Size comes from network externalities or economies of scale, both matter.
Access to resources is also a source of advantage that can help you build your fortress,
build your defensible position to try and stop
others from entering or copying your presence in the marketplace.
Access to markets and customers through brands,
through switching cost or contracts also can help you
build a defensible position and knowledge as a source of advantage.
These are resource based strategies and that's kind of one view of strategy.
We should build fortifications to protect our market position.
That's a resource based view of strategy.
Alternatively, we can look and say,
let's just be fast.
And let's win by being fast in
the market and moving so quick that others can't keep up with us.
We're continuously innovating by the time somebody has copied us,
we're not there anymore.
And then they've got to try to keep up with our continuous innovations.
We can also move fast by franchising to take a good idea and go global because
franchising may remove some of
the disadvantages of growth or some of the challenges to growth.
So we could grow much faster and go global much faster.
We've looked at a couple of cases like Tesla and Intel.
We've looked at Apple in a love hate relationship with their suppliers.
The benefit of joint ventures partnerships and alliances but also the downside of
becoming strategically dependent on those suppliers when you don't control them.
And what does that mean to your margins.
How much power do you have in the relationship?
That's the dilemma, you want strong partners but you also want strong profit.
And so, you have to balance the value of these strong partnerships versus the risk
of having those partners gain an advantage
over you in terms of price extraction from the marketplace.
And we've looked at international strategy and how can you leverage
your strengths and going quickly into
international markets and why should you think beyond today.
We've also looked at strategy in the context of new markets are
relatively new markets like cyber law and global e-commerce.
Now, this is important because it does not that e-commerce
is new but from a government point
of view or a legal point of view or strategy point of view, it's relatively new.
It's relatively recent and some of the rules are
changing and some of the things you may learn in
traditional courses about strategy may not work as
well in a global e-commerce environment.
And some of the things you assume about copyright or trademark or
patent may not apply very effectively when you're dealing with mice,
little companies that can be killed but don't care,
because they have very capital.
People used to say in parts of China when the rules were
unclear and the country was just devolving from communism to capitalism,
keep all your assets in
a suitcase because if everything goes wrong you grab the bag and run.
And so, you try to think of opportunities as a mouse.
I can go into a risky environment if somebody really kills my business.
Okay, I don't have any cash there.
I don't have any assets there.
I don't have anything valuable there.
And so, I can be very creative.
But it's also good to be an elephant.
And in China today, that won't work anymore.
That's not the environment we're facing in China.
We don't need to be mice.
We need to build fortresses.
We need to build barriers around our increasingly large powerful businesses.
But from market to market,
you may change your view and change your position between being small and
entrepreneurial and fast and aggressive versus being strong and powerful.
We also looked at some issues in a legal context of contracting and online issues,
terms and conditions because it's something I
know about and something I think is interesting and
something I can share that touches a little bit on
the law as well as on strategy in a new market context.
And finally, we looked at changing the rules.
We looked at how you can think about data mining and analytics and use that to change
your rules and in price lower but have higher profits by better understanding customers.
We looked at pricing as a strategy where often pricing higher is your goal.
Now, obviously, higher price sounds buy high,
no I think it's buy low, sell high.
Yeah, sometimes we do it the wrong way,
then we lose money.
So, we looked at this and say,
"Let's make more money, let's price higher."
The most profitable song in the world is not because it's the most popular,
it's because they've been able to leverage popularity
by increasing price over time and we've done that with drugs.
And pricing of drugs has led to massive profitability,
huge margins, bigger than bankers for many drug companies.
But it's because we've learned to
leverage market strength and so we've been able to change
the rules of traditional thinking about cost and price and say,
"Let's think about opportunism,
let's think about lock in,
let's think about how to make more money."
And finally, Coke and Pepsi in a battle where the rules keep changing.
And it's not clear who's winning and losing because they're competing in different ways.
Coke dominates the beverage business.
Pepsi has diversified into related enterprises and is making more money.
Both are successful in different ways.
Coke own the beverage markets that they compete in or at least
the dominant share of most of the markets in which they're competing.
Pepsi has branched out into
other businesses that have synergies with their soda business,
their cor, e and they've done very,
very well as a firm financially.
So different perspectives, different ways of thinking about
the rules changing and what it means to succeed. That's it.
We've looked at as a summary of the course,
we've looked at resource based advantages and fortresses.
We've looked at moving fast.
We've looked at e-commerce as a strategy and we've looked at changing the rules
as part of strategy to maximize value and gain a competitive advantage.
Now, these courses all fit together and
we have four courses on protecting business innovations.
Copyright, patent, trademark and strategy
all are different approaches to protecting innovations in different ways.
I hope if this is the first course you take,
it won't be the last in this series.
I hope you'll come join us for other courses.
As for the last course is this course.
I hope you look for other courses from UST and enjoy continuously learning as part of
your own creation of innovations and moving
fast to get ahead of the competition in your own competitive marketplace.
Thank you very much.
