Strategic Steps of Growing and Remaining Profitable Essay

This course presented several principles, concepts and analysis tools that, taken together, help to both evaluate the current strategy of a company for effectiveness, as well as to help develop a new strategy that can lead to a competitive advantage and thereby superior long-term financial performance, as has been demonstrated by companies such as Apple, Nucor Steel, Southwest Airlines, IKEA, Caterpillar, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Zara, Dyson, Netflix, and others.

In this course, we learned about Strategy topics such as competitive advantage, leadership, mission, strategic goals, generic strategies, Porter’ Five Forces industry analysis, strategic groups, value-chain, corporate governance, business ethics, organizational culture, reward systems, organizational structure, diversification, horizontal and vertical integration, balanced scorecard, globalization, innovation, environmental analysis, and product life-cycle.

For this Discussion Board, answer the following three (3) questions:

1. Imagine that you were starting up a new company that designs and manufactures a line of high-quality retail sports clothing (similar to North Face or Patagonia).

   What are the steps or actions that you would take to develop an effective strategy in that industry and position your company for growth and profitability in that industry? Use some of the fundamental principles from the course in your response and be specific.

   Describe all of the steps that you would take and their sequence and explain why you would do each one and what you would expect to get from each one as output, and explain how they fit into the process of developing a strategy for your company.