Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?

David J. Collis; Michael G. Rukstad

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Article | Harvard Business Review | April 2008

Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?

by David J. Collis and Michael G. Rukstad

Keywords: Strategy;

Format: Print

Find at Harvard

Citation:

Collis, David J., and Michael G. Rukstad. "Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?" Harvard Business Review 86, no. 4 (April 2008). (50th Anniversary McKinsey Award Winner for Best Article in Harvard Business Review, 2009.)

About the Author

David J. Collis

Adjunct Professor

Strategy

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Case | HBS Case Collection | January 2015 (Revised May 2018)

$19B 4 txt app WhatsApp...omg!

David Collis, Ashley Hartman and Aakash Mehta

In February 2014, Facebook announced the acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion. WhatsApp, founded in 2009, was a relatively young company that employed only 50 people and earned merely $10 million in revenue in 2013. It was one of many mobile messaging services that allowed users to contact each other without paying costly text message fees. However, its popularity and growth potential enticed Facebook, a company facing many challenges and looking for opportunities to expand its user base. Facebook, the social networking website that allowed users to share information with friends, believed WhatsApp was a logical next step that would help it achieve its mission of "making the world more open and connected."

When Facebook announced the acquisition, it vowed to keep WhatsApp operating independently, letting the founders control the direction of the company and allowing WhatsApp to stay true to its mission. Yet, many debated the logic behind paying so much for such a small company with limited revenue streams. Was Facebook correct to purchase WhatsApp? Even at $22 billion? How could it create value if it did not integrate WhatsApp with Facebook?

Keywords: WhatsApp; Facebook; Mobile Messaging; social network; Acquisitions; value added; strategy alignment; monetization; social platforms; technology; Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Acquisition; Communication Technology; Social and Collaborative Networks; Value Creation; Communications Industry; Information Technology Industry;

Citation:
Collis, David, Ashley Hartman, and Aakash Mehta. "$19B 4 txt app WhatsApp...omg!" Harvard Business School Case 715-441, January 2015. (Revised May 2018.) View Details

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Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2017 (Revised March 2018)

Reawakening the Magic: Bob Iger and the Walt Disney Company

David Collis and Ashley Hartman

Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and Buzz Lightyear strolled down Main Street at the grand opening of Hong Kong Disney in the Fall of 2005, pausing to snap selfies with enthusiastic children in their Mickey Mouse ears. Bob Iger, newly appointed CEO of The Walt Disney Company proudly watched the parade go by, but concerned for the future of the global corporation, he turned to colleagues and asked, “How many characters in this parade were created by Disney in the last ten years?” There was one. But the languishing Disney animation department was not the company’s only problem. Disney was under pressure: the company had recently delivered poor financial results; ratings at the ABC network had fallen below competitors; Walt’s nephew, Roy E. Disney, had stepped down from the Board after expressing his displeasure with the direction of the company under Iger’s predecessor, Michael Eisner; and Comcast had made a $54 billion hostile bid to take over Disney only one year before. The situation for Disney looked bleak.
Yet by December 2015 the tide had turned (Exhibit 1). The much-anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens was set to become the highest grossing film ever in the U.S. and earn over $2 billion worldwide. Frozen had just surpassed $1 billion in box office to become Disney animation’s biggest success ever. In live action movies, Disney franchises, like Pirates of the Caribbean and Marvel’s Iron Man, had produced multiple blockbuster hits. ESPN, ABC and other cable and broadcast properties were producing record profits. Attendance was up at Disney parks and cruise ships, while the Shanghai Disney Resort, the company’s third and largest theme park in Asia, was scheduled to open in June 2016. Iger thought back to the Hong Kong Disney parade, reflecting on how far the company had come and the lessons he had learned about reawakening the Disney magic.

Keywords: strategy; franchise management; brand management; culture change; business units; acquisition strategy; technological change; Disney; ESPN; cord-cutting; media; Bob Iger; Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Diversification; Integration; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Consumer Products Industry;

Citation:
Collis, David, and Ashley Hartman. "Reawakening the Magic: Bob Iger and the Walt Disney Company." Harvard Business School Case 717-483, March 2017. (Revised March 2018.) View Details

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Chapter | Business Groups in the West: Origins, Evolution, and Resilience | 2018

The United States in Contemporary Perspectives: Evolving Forms, Strategy, and Performance

David J. Collis, Bharat Anand and J. Yo-Jud Cheng

BOOK ABSTRACT: In spite of surging interest in the business group organization among business scholars, economists, and historians in recent years, academic research on business groups has, to date, remained within the boundary of emerging markets. The major aim of this volume is to explore the long-term evolution of different varieties of large enterprises in today's developed economies in the West. More specifically, the volume focuses on the economic institution of the business group and aims at understanding the factors behind its rise, growth, resilience, and/or fall; its behavioral and organizational characteristics; and its contributions to national economic development. While business groups, especially those with widely diversified product portfolios, are a dominant and critical enterprise model in emerging and developing economies and have lately attracted much attention in academic circles and business presses, interestingly, their counterparts in developed economies have not been systematically examined. This contempt for business groups in mature market settings stands in sharp contrast to the intensive research that has been conducted on other major models of large modern enterprises in those economies, such as functionally organized firms with a clear product focus and multidivisional enterprises that have diversified into related product lines. The present book aims to fill in this gap in the literature by adopting a coherent approach to this elusive subject.

Citation:
Collis, David J., Bharat Anand, and J. Yo-Jud Cheng. "The United States in Contemporary Perspectives: Evolving Forms, Strategy, and Performance." Chap. 15 in Business Groups in the West: Origins, Evolution, and Resilience, edited by Asli M. Colpan and Takashi Hikino. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. View Details

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Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?

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