Essentials of Strategic Management: The Quest for Competitive Advantage 4th Edition by John Gamble, Arthur Thompson, Margaret Peteraf

Exercise 7

After you have read the Participant's Guide or Player's Manual for the strategy simulation exercise that you will participate in this academic term, you and your co-managers should come up with brief one- or two-paragraph answers to the questions that follow before entering your first set of decisions. While your answers to the first of the four questions can be developed from your reading of the manual, the remaining questions will require a collaborative discussion among the members of your company's management team about how you intend to manage the company you have been assigned to run.
How will you build and sustain competitive advantage?
• Which of the basic strategic and competitive approaches discussed in this chapter do you think makes the most sense to pursue?
• What kind of competitive advantage over rivals will you try to achieve?
• How do you envision that your strategy might evolve as you react to the competitive moves of rival firms?
• Does your strategy have the ability to pass the three tests of a winning strategy? Explain.