Discuss about the Different Types Of Agility and Advantage.
The video projects focus on different types of agility. The first form is based on disruption. For instance, The Financial Times adopted a new operating model that enabled it to take advantage of the disruptive technology.[1] The process entailed the migration from print to digital media because print media was losing it value due to a change in customer preference. This form of agility was also utilized by Tencet, which developed the WeChat application.[2] The application was developed with the aim of connecting those who have family ties and has features that are easy to use. Overall, disruptive technology necessitates the need for innovation, which creates agility.
The second form of agility is based on adapting to new environments. For example, the Ball Corporation demonstrated agility by moving from the wooden to glass, from glass to aerospace, from aerospace to metal and from metal to plastic industries.[3] Evidently, its adaptation makes it agile as it establishes new ways to remain in the industry. Secondly, Finance Times also adopted the latest digital technology to revolutionize the newspaper industry.[4] After adoption, the newspaper ventured into the online advertising business using the content generated from the subscription. This form of agility allows firms to adapt.
The third form of agility is based on meeting the needs of clients. Wong was an oil company that changed its business to a retail company after facing a lot of competition and changing economic conditions.[5] After changing its model, the new model was tailored to meet the specifications of the client. Ultimately, meeting the needs of the clients helped the company to stay agile. Another example is the WeChat application that was developed to meet the communication needs of the customers.[6] In fact, it was designed to keep families closer since it is highly private.
The fourth form of strategic agility is based on acquisition. In the video projects, Unilever acquired Dollar Shave Club to withstand competition from other companies.[7] After acquiring the company, it allowed it to develop on its own as a separate unit. Additionally, Unilever gained a new way to interact with customers through a new distribution channel.[8] Unilever also learned how to implement e-commerce in its current business model, which enabled it to compete with companies like Amazon. Essentially, this way of doing business allowed it to observe the Dollar Shave Club business model while mitigating risks since it did not implement it immediately. This form of agility enables a company to acquire new technology and stay ahead of its competitors.
One of the drivers of agility is new technology. From the video projects, Financial Times used the adoption of digital media to develop agility that enabled it to gain a competitive advantage. In particular, the Financial Times adopted strategies that moved it from print to digital technology in the newspaper industry.[9] The move was necessitated by the emergence of digital technology, which affected people’s preferences. Another example is the use of technology by the ABInBev. According to the video projects, the company created a unit to explore the modern areas of the beer industry.[10] It utilizes digital technology such as e-commerce and Rate Beer to achieve this objective. Evidently, new technology can be used to drive a firm to develop agile strategies for survival.
The second driver of agility is focusing on the needs of the clients. Based on Wog, a company can become agile by focusing on meeting its customers’ preferences that are continuously changing.[11] Wog developed a new business model to create differentiation, which included food, gas and coffee selling in gas stations after Ukraine experienced recession and oil prices fell. After competitors began to copy its model, it decided to own the whole value chain in the food production sector and tailored its products to meet the clients’ needs. Eventually, Wog became prosperous through the agility developed after facing these challenges.
The third driver of agility is the limits of traditional growth strategies. For example, for ABInBev, the traditional strategies did not guarantee future sales especially when the preference of customers began to change from alcoholic to non-alcoholic drinks.[12] Therefore, the company developed an agile strategy that entailed the sale of non-alcoholic drinks and the formation of a unit that would explore the beer industry and discover new areas of the beer industry to exploit.
The fourth driver of agility is innovation. Based on video projects, the majority of the companies had to innovate to remain significant players in their industries. For example, Tencet developed WeChat as a response to a threat where another company wanted to gain market share.[13] In this case, being innovative made Tencet agiler and it was able to retain control.[14] Another example is the Financial Times that had to innovate and use disruptive technology to its advantage. It had to use digital media because the print media’s market share was reducing. Upon, innovating it was able to remain in businesses and acquire more market share.
First place is Group 11 and second place is Group 8
Several key features of management used at Amazon affected its strategic agility. The first one is that Amazon’s leader was continually searching for the next significant opportunity. This action can be illustrated by the various acquisitions the company has made, which has enabled it to be a market leader in its industry. For example, it acquired Kindle to be able to gain a more significant market share in the book industry.[15] The second feature is demonstrated by the inclusion of employees in the search for business opportunities. Additionally, the employees were encouraged to make mistakes and were not punished for them.[16] This strategy boosts their morale and provides a conducive environment for developing innovative ideas.
The second feature was that the management model was deeply concerned about the welfare of the customers. The well-being of customers affects a firm’s agility because it concerns their preferences. Amazon is more passionate about serving its customers than competing with its competitors.[17] The focus on customer fulfillment ensures that it retains the majority of them thus defeating its competitors in the long run. The last feature is the long-term approach to development projects. Amazon invested in projected that guaranteed returns five to seven years and may even provide zero or negative returns within the first years.[18] This approach allows it to predict its future and adapt, hence adopting the agile strategy.
One of the threats to Amazon’s success is the continuous risk-taking, which is illustrated by the various projects and acquisitions. In the past, the company has been stubborn even after undergoing multiple failures, which is excellent when success is achieved.[19] However, it may not work out if the failed projects are more than the successful ones. Therefore, the leaders need to establish the risks worth taking, which is not an easy task, and it faces the risk of making wrong choices. The second threat is there is a probability the company may stop innovating when some professionals leave especially if a few people did innovation. This act is a threat because innovations drive the company.
The last threat Amazon faces is the loss of morale by the employees, which would lead to their poor performance. The employees have previously complained about the harsh working conditions in the company, and if they are not addressed, it may interfere with their performance, which affects their ability to innovate.[20] Nowadays, employers recognize the value of employees because they are valuable assets that influence performance.
One of the similarities of Marcel Telles and Akin Onger leadership style is that they both valued training programs, which is meritocracy type of management. In the banking sector, knowledge is highly valued since professionals are usually university graduates who know how to manage money. Akin knew the valued of acquired knowledge, and he ensured his managers attended regular training and he employed fresh graduates.[21] Similarly, Marcel knew the value of knowledge, and he employed fresh graduates as well through a graduate training program.[22] In addition, he hired the graduates who succeeded and gave them managerial positions. The use of this type of leadership was essential since it ensured those who worked there were knowledgeable to take advantage of the various financial opportunities.
The second similarity between Marcel Telles and Akin Onger leadership style is that they both value the quality of their products and services. When Marcel took over, he realized that the quality of the beer was poor and he looked for other brewers to improve quality.[23] Similarly, Akin restructured the services provided by the bank and implemented technology to ensure the quality of the services offered improved.[24] Ultimately, both produced quality services and products.
One of the differences in the leadership styles of Marcel Telles and Akin Onger was their way of motivating the employees. Employees can be motivated using rewards such as bonuses and salary increments. Marcel used a performance measurement technique to monitor the managers” performance and reward them accordingly once they met the company’s set goals.[25] For Akin, the performance of the employees was measured by the general performance of the bank, and none of them was given any rewards for improved performance. Therefore, Marcel’s employees were always competing with each other, but Akin’s employees did not compete as much. Despite the differences, both styles worked, and the companies got good returns.
Marcel Telles and Akin Onger had difference leadership strategies related to the operation of the firms. Marcel focused on improving the operation efficiency of the business because it could be translated to objectives that were to be met by a given deadline.[26] The set objectives were then translated into individual goals that all the employees had to meet. This approach was based on the belief that human beings can only focus on approximately three things at a time. For Akin, the focus was on the culture of the organization.[27] He believed that an organization could only succeed if it has a good culture that reflects its objectives. Therefore, he worked hard at developing the right culture in that bank.
The first reason why ING created Yolt is that it wanted to take advantage of the open banking sector. Haworth states that the open banking sector is an emerging trend in the banking industry.[28] This trend is, therefore, a disruptive technology in the banking sector and ING can use it to achieve agility. Having agility would allow the company to survive despite the high competition currently witnessed in the banking industry.
The second reason why ING created Yolt is that it needed to innovate. According to Haworth, the banking sector has stopped being innovative hence are not keeping up with the digital trends in the fintech sector.[29] Failure to innovate is risky for this firm because it may be unable to withstand competition especially if a rival bank acquires or develops a revolutionary innovation. Additionally, failure to innovate makes it challenging to grow because innovation increases revenue, which fosters growth.
The last reason why ING created Yolt is that it needs to meet its customers’ needs. The primary role of any business is to meet the needs of the clients at all times. In this case, open banking is becoming a preference for some of the bank’s customers. Therefore, the bank created Yolt to meet its customers’ demand for open banking.
Yolt is achieving success by acquiring clients with a short period. After being launched in 2017, by April 2018, the company had made approximately 230,000 clients.[30] This figure shows that the application is becoming popular and there is hope that it may have more than a million clients by the end of the year. Additionally, it has been integrated with other innovation such as Monzo.[31] The integration ensures that users can access all their financial information in one platform and it is easier for them to make decisions. Yolt has made significant achievements so far thus it is doing well.
One of the things that Yolt may be doing wrong is the lack of aggressiveness in its implementation. Yolt is a disruptive technology that may revolutionize the bank and credit card sector due to the implementation of open banking. Open banking allows the third parties to access customer data after obtaining permission from the customer. Such access could provide significant insights leading to new opportunities. ING is not aggressively involved in its operation, which is a mistake because it depicts the future of the banking sector. Additionally, it offers integration with other digital banking innovation, which benefits the client. Therefore, ING should pay more attention to Yolt.
Self-organizing is useful under specific terms. Firstly, it is appropriate for adhocracy type of leadership. In adhocracy, the action is valued more than following the rules and the respective chain of command. Therefore, self-organizing means that one is not following regulations but doing what they believe is right or wrong, which is adhocracy. Secondly, adhocracy integrates emotions or intuition in decision making. For this case, being self-organized required one to make a decision based on one’s intuition which is adhocracy.
Alternatively, self-organizing can be used in meritocracy. Meritocracy is a type of leadership where knowledge is highly valued. In self-organizing, individuals rely on what they know, and that is their knowledge hence meritocracy. Additionally, meritocracy encourages individuality. In such situations, individuals seek their strength and knowledge to survive. In the meritocracy, decisions are made through discussions where ideas are shared, and the most viable is chosen. In this case, self-organizing would be appropriate since the individual decisions that outweigh the rest are adopted. Furthermore, events in meritocracy occur in the free flow of ideas and self-organization does not require outside intervention. Evidently, meritocracy is one of the conditions that supports self-organization. Another condition that must be met for self-organization is that hierarchies are not used. Initially, there is no chain of command to report to, so the individual has to make his or her own decision. The lack of hierarchies also simplifies the decision-making process and makes it faster.
Andreasyan, Tanya. 2018. “Moneyhub Integrates with Monzo And Starling; Yolt Reaches Customer Milestone”. Fintech Futures. https://www.bankingtech.com/2018/04/moneyhub-integrates-with-monzo-and-starling-yolt-reaches-customer-milestone/.
Duke, Lisa, and Julian Birkinshaw. 2015. “Amazon.com: Staying a Step Ahead.” London Business School.
Group 10. 2018. Redbull. DVD.
Group 11. 2018. Achieving Strategic Agility. DVD.
Group 12. 2018. Tencet. DVD.
Group 13. 2018. Ball Corporation. DVD.
Group 14. 2018. ZxVentures. DVD.
Group 8. 2018. Unilever. DVD.
Group 9. 2018. Wog. DVD.
Haworth, Elliott. 2017. “How ING’s Yolt Harnesses Open Banking To Create Next-Gen Money Management.” Cityam.Com. https://www.cityam.com/275653/ings-yolt-harnesses-open-banking-create-next-gen-money.
Kanther, Rosabeth Moss, Maximillian Martin, and Daniel Galvin. 2005. “Garanti Bank: Transformation in Turkey.” Havard Business School.
Sull, Donald, and Martin Escobari. 2005. “Brahma Versus Antarctica: Reversal Of Fortune In Brazil’S Beer Market.” London Business School.
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