Acting on a Strategic Mission Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Acting on a Strategic Mission - Case Study Example EA should have utilized this human resource advantage to grow its market share by providing the developers with attractive incentives that would help to retain them and prevent them from switching to competitors such as Activision Blizzard (Griffin, 37). One of the weaknesses that a SWOT analysis would have revealed is the disparity between objectives of the management and those of developers. Management focused on maximizing productivity and profit whereas developers were motivated by imagination and creativity. EA could have easily eliminated this weakness by allowing developers more autonomy and, therefore, harmonized objectives of management and developers. The major opportunity and threat include a growing market and strong competitors respectively. EA should have realized early on that the video game industry market was on a steady growth pattern and sought new ways of tapping into this market. For example, EA should have developed games tailored for new market segments such as adults. EA could minimize the threat of strong competition by producing high quality games that would improve its brand name (Griffin, 36 – 41). ... Although this strategy resulted in high asset turnover and lower costs than its rivals, it killed developer autonomy and motivation (Eldring, 56). Activision Blizzard identified this niche and set on gaining competitive advantage over EA by focusing on promoting developer autonomy and providing them with financial and distribution muscle that enabled them to benefit more than previously from their innovations. This approach basically meant that Activision Blizzard now focused on the product differentiation strategy. Developer autonomy promoted product differentiation by facilitating the creation of very popular games with a high level of uniqueness that drastically increased Activision’s market share. Furthermore, it helped Activision to attract the industry’s best developers, including those working for EA. Consequently, EA lost the most important resource in the gaming industry to EA, creative talent (Eldring, 62). Q3 The Miles-Snow typology is a classification of bus iness strategies into four main categories: prospector, defender, analyzer, and reactor strategies. The strategy that Activision Blizzard ought to adopt should have a strong basis on market dynamics and strength of the competition. The video-game industry is characterized by a very dynamic and unpredictable market environment, with new market opportunities constantly arising. Developers keep on coming up with new ideas based on prevailing events and situations. Games that have a connection with current or recent events that customers are familiar with tend to be very popular and they take advantage of new market opportunities. In order for Activision Blizzard to maintain its market leadership, it should operate with an