Notes

Q What are the different steps of Strategy Implementation ?

Strategy implementation is the translation of chosen strategy into organizational action so as to achieve strategic goals and objectives. Strategy implementation is also defined as the manner in which an organization should develop, utilize, and amalgamate organizational structure, control systems, and culture to follow strategies that lead to competitive advantage and a better performance. Organizational structure allocates special value developing tasks and roles to the employees and states how these tasks and roles can be correlated so as maximize efficiency, quality, and customer satisfaction-the pillars of competitive advantage. But, the organizational structure is not sufficient in itself to motivate the employees.

An organizational control system is also required. This control system equips managers with motivational incentives for employees as well as feedback on employees and organizational performance. Organizational culture refers to the specialized collection of values, attitudes, norms and beliefs shared by organizational members and groups.

Following are the main steps in implementing a strategy:

Developing an organization having potential of carrying out strategy successfully.
Disbursement of abundant resources to strategy-essential activities.
Creating strategy-encouraging policies.
Employing best policies and programs for constant improvement.
Linking reward structure to accomplishment of results.
Making use of strategic leadership.
Excellently formulated strategies will fail if they are not properly implemented. Also, it is essential to note that strategy implementation is not possible unless there is stability between strategy and each organizational dimension such as organizational structure, reward structure, resource-allocation process, etc.

Strategy implementation poses a threat to many managers and employees in an organization. New power relationships are predicted and achieved. New groups (formal as well as informal) are formed whose values, attitudes, beliefs and concerns may not be known. With the change in power and status roles, the managers and employees may employ confrontation behaviour.

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Q Explain balanced scorecard strategic advantage profile (SAP).
A balanced scorecard is a strategic management performance metric used to identify and improve various internal business functions and their resulting external outcomes. Balanced scorecards are used to measure and provide feedback to organizations. Data collection is crucial to providing quantitative results as managers and executives gather and interpret the information and use it to make better decisions for the organization.
The balanced scorecard views a business from four perspectives. Companies set objectives and targets for each perspective. Then, they pursue those objectives through initiatives, measuring their progress in terms of key performance indicators.

Financial: Companies traditionally measure performance in terms of sales, profit and return on investment. The most relevant of these based on a company’s goals may be included in a company’s balanced scorecard. For example, if growing the top line is a priority, then the scorecard may include monthly sales.

Customer: Viewing the company from a customer’s perspective can help a business retain its customers, which is important since it costs less to service existing customers than it does to acquire new customers. Measuring factors like the number of customer-service calls and whether customers are satisfied after the calls can help a company retain customers.

Internal Processes: Measuring how well a company produces, sells and services its products can help it earn more profits because efficiency determines profitability. The balanced scorecard helps businesses determine where they have implemented systems and processes as well as how efficiently they are working.

Organizational Capacity: The balanced scorecard helps companies determine whether they have the right people, the proper technology and the appropriate culture for achieving their goals.

Benefits of Balanced Scorecard Management
A company’s success often involves more than just selling products. It also must earn profits and invest in the company wisely to sustain growth.

The balanced scorecard helps companies form strategies designed for more than selling products by making managers consider factors like external customers and internal efficiencies. They can explain their goals and strategies as well.

Then, managers can assign projects and tasks that align with the company’s strategies. Employees see how their work helps the company achieve its goals.

================= Entrepreneurship Development
Q Write a note on Idea generation.

Idea generation or ideation is the act of forming ideas. It is a creative process that encompasses the generation, development and communication of new thoughts and concepts, which become the basis of your innovation strategy.

As an individual activity, idea generation techniques are a great way to shake up your routine and spark new thoughts. As a collective or organisation, structured ideation can be transformative as a tool for problem solving and collaboration.

Why is idea generation important for businesses?
All innovation starts with a great idea, but one idea tends to come from many. Even if your business is using idea management software to collect and evaluate ideas, you might find that everyone needs a little challenge, or inspiration, to get them into the routine of constantly contributing ideas.

By exploring new idea generation techniques, you can give your team the creative tools they need to generate ideas in any situation. From games, to challenges, to concepts, these are just a few of the techniques used by the world’s greatest minds when they need to come up with ideas themselves:
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Q Write a note on Project selection.?

Organizations invest huge sums of money on new projects. It is important for organizations to ensure that these investments are safe and will result in good returns and benefits for the organizations. Hence there is a need for analyse all new project opportunities to justify the decisions for making the needed monetary investments. An organization may be having multiple project opportunities to invest on and reap the benefits. But they cannot invest on all projects, they have to be selective.

The process of analysing the new project opportunities to decide which ones will be worthwhile taking up so that organization gets the most benefits is known as project selection methods.

There are two major categories of project selection methods as below:

Quantitative Methods
Benefits Measurement Methods
Constrained Optimization Methods
Qualitative Methods
Benefits Measurement Methods
Benefits measurement methods mostly use a comparative approach by studying the possible benefits from different projects and then selecting the most beneficial ones. Some of the most important methods under this category include the following:

Cost Benefit Analysis – Benefits from the project should be more than the cost invested in the project for any project to be considered for selection. A ratio of benefits to cost (BCR) should be more than 1. Higher the BCR, better the opportunity.
Payback Period – Payback period is the time in which the total investment of a project is recovered. After the payback, organization truly will start making profits. Payback time of a project should ideally be lower. Lower the payback period, the project looks that much more attractive.
Net Present Value – Net present value is the difference between the sum of present value of all revenue and the sum of present value of all the investment. The NPV must be more than zero for the project to be profitable. Higher the NPV, better is the choice. NPV is the most practical criteria which discount all future values of revenue and investments to their corresponding present values to calculate profit.
Internal Rate of Return (IRR) – IRR is the maximum expected return on money from a given project. Higher the IRR, better the opportunity. IRR is the rate of interest at which the NPV becomes equal to zero.
Scoring Model – Scoring models are used to study different project options against certain parameters by assigning scores to them for each parameter. The project option with highest score will be the preferred one.
Economic Value Added – EVA is to see of the project is profitable after deducting all cost of capital. Because then only there is economic value add in the project.
Opportunity cost – Opportunity cost concept is used to study what we lose by selecting something. This can be used when we have to give up some benefits while we will be selecting some other benefits. If we have 2 projects A and B. Opportunity of selecting A is what we will be losing by not selecting B.
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Q Write a note on Identification of opportunity.?

Opportunity refers to the extent to which possibilities for new ventures exist and the extent to which entrepreneurs have the leeway to influence their odds for success through their own actions. Simply put, opportunity is a perceived means of generating incomes that previously have not been exploited and are not currently being exploited by others. Opportunity identification can, in turn, be defined as the cognitive process or processes through which individuals conclude that they have identified an opportunity. It is important to note that opportunity identification is only the initial step in a continuing process, and is distinct both from detailed evaluation of the feasibility and potential economic value of identified opportunities and from active steps to develop them through new ventures. It is essentially a situation in which new goods, raw materials, markets and organizational strategies can be introduced through the formation of new means, ends or means-ends relationships.

The focus these days is on innovative opportunities which are the ones that truly break new grounds rather than merely expand or repeat existing business models. Opening a new Hausa or Igbo cafeteria in a neighborhood dominated by a populace from these extractions that currently do not have one is an example. Not everyone can identify opportunities. Some individuals are more likely to identify and exploit opportunities than are others. Opportunity is a major process of self-evaluation of one’s ability to start, operate and run a business venture with the popular analysis often referred to as SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunity and Threat). It helps to check the chances of succeeding in a particular choice of venture open to an individual through his experiences. These experiences include family, religious or professional linkages, membership of any network group.

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Q Write a note on Feasibility study.

A feasibility study is an analysis that takes all of a project's relevant factors into account—including economic, technical, legal, and scheduling considerations—to ascertain the likelihood of completing the project successfully. Project managers use feasibility studies to discern the pros and cons of undertaking a project before they invest a lot of time and money into it.

Feasibility studies also can provide a company's management with crucial information that could prevent the company from entering blindly into risky businesses.

Understanding Feasibility Studies
A feasibility study is simply an assessment of the practicality of a proposed plan or project. As the name implies, these studies ask: Is this project feasible? Do we have the people, tools, technology, and resources necessary for this project to succeed? Will the project get us the return on investment (ROI) that we need and expect?

The goals of feasibility studies are as follows:

To understand thoroughly all aspects of a project, concept, or plan
To become aware of any potential problems that could occur while implementing the project
To determine if, after considering all significant factors, the project is viable—that is, worth undertaking
The Importance of Feasibility Studies

Feasibility studies are important to business development. They can allow a business to address where and how it will operate. They can also identify potential obstacles that may impede its operations and recognize the amount of funding it will need to get the business up and running. Feasibility studies aim for marketing strategies that could help convince investors or banks that investing in a particular project or business is a wise choice.
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Q What factors might account for the more positive attitudes to enterprise by
younger people in the UK?

The need to tackle the youth unemployment problem is clear as research by (Stone et al, 2000) shows that once these young people become disengaged from learning or work they then face multiple barriers to re-entry into work or the learning environment. Young women mentioned the lack of confidence, lack of experience and childcare as issues holding them back, whereas, young men mentioned drug, alcohol or substance abuse or having a criminal record (38% of disadvantaged men aged 18-21). Other institutional barriers include lack of appropriate advice, knowledge or guidance (Henderson and Robertson, 1999). The problem of youth unemployment is likely to be most acutely felt by those with lower qualifications as analysis by Payne (2006) shows that a lack of qualifications reduces the probability of being employed by an average of 21 percentage points for young people (aged 16-24), which is much larger than the marginal effects for the working age population as a whole (12 percentage points). A lack of qualifications is likely to play a bigger role for younger people since more young people are leaving school with qualifications, and young people are less likely to have work experience, references and employability skills (Payne, 2006). The Davis Review also highlights a likely requirement for greater flexible and entrepreneurial attitudes in all parts of the workforce (Davis, 2002).Whilst entrepreneurship seems an obvious solution to the problem, especially as entrepreneurship is often described as a young mans game (Levesque & Minniti, 2006), data from the European labour force survey indicates that young people are less likely to be self-employed in comparison to older individuals. In addition to this it is found that entrance to self-employment by young people is most frequently from a position of employment, particularly from those positions which will have provided experiences and skills applicable to the challenges of self-employment (Blanchflower and Meyer, 1994) It should be noted that increased youth self-employment may not be beneficial if the start-ups youth undertake are not sustainable as this may mean young entrepreneurs will miss out on the acquisition of human capital relevant to the mainstream labour force, and will be at a disadvantage in terms of average earnings if they rejoin the mainstream labour force (Williams, 2)

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