Many of the world’s most successful technology firms—organizations that have had tremendous impact on consumers and businesses across industries—were created by young people. Today, tech knowledge can be a key differentiator for the job seeker. It’s the worker without tech skills that needs to be concerned. The aspiring investment banker who doesn’t understand the role of technology in firms and industries can’t possibly provide an accurate guess at how much a company is worth.
Lecture 2 Chapter 2-4 Strategy and technology, case of Zara and Netflix Sustainable competitive advantage: financial performance that consistently outperforms their industry peers. According to Porter, the reason so many firms suffer aggressive, margin-eroding competition is because they’ve defined themselves according to operational effectiveness rather than strategic positioning. Operational effectiveness refers to performing the same tasks better than rivals perform them. Everyone wants to be better, but the danger in operational effectiveness is “sameness.” The fast follower problem exists when savvy rivals watch a pioneer’s efforts, learn from their successes and missteps, then enter the market quickly with a comparable or superior product at a lower cost. Operational effectiveness is critical. Firms must invest in techniques to improve quality, lower cost, and design efficient customer experiences. But for the most part, these efforts can be matched. Because of this, operational effectiveness is usually not sufficient enough to yield sustainable dominance over the competition. In contrast to operational effectiveness, strategic positioning refers to performing