Portfolio Analysis of Your Company
Introduction to Portfolio Analysis
We previously focused on analyzing the external and internal environment of a business unit to understand how it creates value and achieves a competitive advantage. Those modules introduced frameworks that helped us understand the market power and business model choices of our project companies. This module will focus on portfolio-level analysis, where we aim to better understand our project companies as portfolios of strategic business and geographic units.
The global and corporate strategy discussion in this module introduces a sequence of critical business decisions and frameworks that help in making those decisions. The core of this project is about identifying those decisions in your company via historical analysis, understanding the value creation and competitive advantage rationale behind those decisions, and finally evaluating whether those choices are still optimal under the current business environment. This guide aims to help you be successful in this project. This guide has four major sections: research tips, historical corporate event analysis, organizational structure analysis, and current portfolio evaluation.
Project Objectives: Analyzing Portfolio-Level Advantage
Upon completion of the Corporate Strategy Analysis Project, you will be able to:
- Describe the Portfolio-Level Advantage: Describe the organizing principle that has shaped the composition and evolution of geographic and business portfolio of your chosen company.
- Analyze Execution of Corporate Parenting: Analyze how different business units are wired together in your company’s portfolio and evaluate the strategic implications of centralization, decentralization and coordination among business units in the portfolio.
- Evaluate Sustainability and Durability of Advantage: Assess the long-term viability of the company’s competitive advantage in the context of industry evolution and competitive dynamics.
- Analyze Innovation for Future Advantage: Examine how firms employ process, product, or technology innovation to maintain and enhance their competitive position, adapting to evolving customer preferences and industry structures.
- Synthesize Industry and Firm-Level Analysis: Integrate prior industry analysis with company-level strategic analysis to produce a comprehensive strategic assessment.
Below you will find a brief summary of each section. Click on the links to access the detailed guidance for each part of the project.
Section Summaries
- Research Tips: This section will equip you with strategies for using NotebookLM to organize your research efficiently. It will also highlight essential data sources such as company reports, earnings call transcripts, and analyst reports that will be crucial for your analysis.
- Historical Analysis: This section will guide you through the process of identifying and critically evaluating 3-5 landmark corporate events in your company’s recent history. You will learn how to analyze management’s rationale and the subsequent performance of these events.
- Organizational Structure Analysis: This section will provide a framework for analyzing your company’s organizational structure, including aspects like centralization, decentralization, and shared services. You will also explore how these structural choices impact the company’s willingness-to-pay and supplier opportunity cost.
- Corporate Portfolio Assessment: This section will guide you in describing your company’s corporate portfolio and applying the “better-off,” “ownership,” and “organizational” tests to understand the rationale behind its structure. You will also learn how to compare your company’s portfolio with its competitors.