Once you have chosen your group, please select a firm that you will analyze for the semester. Post that firm in the discussion board with your firm choice in the heading. A firm can only be chosen once per class, so once someone has taken it, it is gone.

* You may want to study a public or private firm. Either of these is ok, just understand that there are tradeoffs. Private firms will have less data available but are often times more interesting. Public firms, on the other hand, have way more data than you could ever go through in a single semester. Rather than excessive digging, you will need to be concerned with determining what the most relevant data is and what is not helpful.

*You cannot choose a firm that you or any group member is employed with or have been employed with in the last 5 years.

* The professor also reserves the right to reject a topic organization if previous classes have frequently analyzed it (e.g., Google, Amazon, Apple, St. Arnold’s Brewery, Landrys and so on).

*Your final project will apply the concepts we learn in the class to your chosen firm. A skeleton outline is below. Pages are a suggestion of what a strong project looks like, but they are not a hard limit. Content is the most essential piece to achieving a strong grade, but most good reports come in at 60-100 pages (including front and end matter, graphics, etc.)

*As you can see below, the first 8 chapters are fundamental to every business. What you will learn in these chapters is a diverse set of mental models that can be applied to whatever context you find yourself in. You will need to fully analyze your firm using the tools found in these chapters. Chapters 9-16 are a deep dive into more context-specific areas of business. You will choose the three chapters that are most relevant to your situation and use the tools found in these chapters to analyze your firm. After you have chosen your firm, work with your team to decide on what 3 chapters from 9-16 are most relevant to your situation. Once you have done so, please confirm with your professor that you are on the right track and your three chapters are approved.

Chapter 1

Answer the below questions. (1/2 Page each)

What goals does your firm have – Both short and long-term?

Briefly describe their competitive environment

What resources do they have?

How have they implemented their strategy historically? In the past 3 years?

Chapter 2

Performance – analyze the firm’s performance – compare to 3-4 close industry competitors (pg 40) (1/2 page – 1 page)

Where do you see their performance going in the next 5 years? (1/2 Page)

Chapter 3

Analyze the General Environment and use Porters 5 Forces to complete an Industry Analysis – 5-10 pages

Chapter 4

Analyze your industry using strategic groups and segmentation. Draw a strategic group map and explain. (2-5 pages)

Chapter 5

Use both Value Chain & RBV Analysis to analyze your firm value. (5-10 Pages)

Chapter 6

Analyze the Organization of the firm (4-6 Pages)

Chapter 7

Describe your firm’s Competitive Advantage. (8-10 Pages)

Chapter 8

Analysis of Industry Evaluation (What stage in the industry life cycle are we in? What has the history of your industry competition looked like up to this point?) (5-10 Pages)

Chapters 9-16

Choose 3 of the most relevant chapters and use those tools to analyze your firm. (5-10 Pages Each)