COMPANY: AT&TIn crafting your submissions for each part of the project, you are expected to draw on the knowledge and skills you have developed throughout your time at JWMI. Because this is a “capstone†course, it is not built around teaching new material, but rather it is an opportunity for you to synthesize all that you have learned in all other courses in the program, analyze and derive meaning from the complexity of the information, and apply your knowledge and insights through the lens of the CEO of your chosen company. You must demonstrate you have determined which data is most relevant to the present circumstances of your chosen organization AND that you have derived meaningful insights from the data. Please review the grading rubrics carefully. You will see that the most heavily weighted components require you to come to new insights, present an argument for proposed changes and provide authoritative support for your arguments. As a CEO, you must be highly skilled at getting at the right information while avoiding excessive or irrelevant data or not articulating why the data is important and how they shape your choices and actions. Your Instructor will review your submissions for Parts I, II and III of the project, and will challenge you, where needed, to dig deeper. It is your responsibility to incorporate that feedback into your presentation. Failure to do so will result in deductions in your final grade for Part IV. Formatting and Submission Requirements 1. Parts I, II, and III There is no minimum or maximum length, but you are reminded that, as the CEO, you must filter out the less critical data and concentrate on what really matters. That means you should strive for brevity favoring bulleted lists, clear headers and short paragraphs for your deliverables. Your responses are to be concise and logical, and your arguments are to be well-supported and documented with verifiable sources. Since the purpose of these assignments is to help you synthesize information and draw conclusions, do not just copy and paste information you have found. This will weaken the quality of your submission. Please format as follows: a. Clear Title (a separate title page is optional, but advised for longer submissions) b. Executive summary as the opening paragraph c. Use headings and subheadings to help the reader more easily understand how information relates to other parts of your submission d. Include reference page and addenda of supporting documentation (as needed)Leveraging Jack’s 5-Step Strategy Framework, conduct an analysis of the competitive landscape leading to the identification of a “game changing winning move” that will take your organization forward and beat the competition. As a reminder, those steps are organized into questions as follows: 1. What Does the Playing Field Look Like? a. Who are our competitors in this business, large and small, new and old? b. Who has what share globally, and in each market? Where do we fit in? c. What are the characteristics of this business? Is it a commodity, high value, or somewhere in between? Is it long cycle or short? Where is it on the growth curve? What are the drivers of profitability? d. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor? How good are their products?How much does each one spend on R&D? How big is each sales force? How performance-driven is each culture? e. Who are this business’s main customers, and how do they buy? 2. What has Competition Been Up To? a. What has each competitor done in the past year to change the playing field? b. Has anyone introduced game-changing products, newtechnologies, or distribution channels? c. Are there any new entrants, and what have they been up to in the past year? 3. What Have We Been Up To? a. What have we done in the past year to change the playing field? b. Have we bought a company, introduced a new product, stolen a competitor’s key salesperson, or licensed a new technology from a startup? c. Have we lost any competitive advantages that we once had (such as a great salesperson, a special product, a proprietary technology, etc.)? 4. What Could be Coming Around the Corner that Could Upset Everything? a. What scares me most in the year ahead—what are one or two things a competitor could do to nail us? b. What new products or technologies could our competitors launch that might change the game? c. What M&A deals would knock us off our feet? 5. What’s Our Winning Move? a. What can we do to change the playing field—is it an acquisition, a new product, globalization? b. What can we do to make customers stick to us more than ever before and be more loyal to us than to anyone else?
