Hypercompetition Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Hypercompetition - Essay Example Creating and protecting a market position is beneficial if the competition is sparse, or the firm has a unique product that gives them supplier power. However, if a profit is being made on the product, it will attract competitors and innovators will find substitute products (Sull & Escobari 2004 p.15). It may take substantial resources through advertising and customer service to maintain a position in a fluid market (Day & Reibstein 1997 p.52). It may be easier to create a new opportunity than it is to protect an old position. However, new opportunities require resources. Amassing resources can be a definite advantage. However, the value of these resources may erode if other firms can easily acquire them (Day & Reibstein 1997 p.312). A firm needs to evaluate all its resources. Garelli (2006) states, "Competitiveness thrives increasingly on intangible assets that are difficult to value, to account for, to create, and to recover" (p.4). Firms can maximise their competitive edge by utilising their intangible assets as well as they can any other raw material. These resources may be easier to protect than a superior market position. However, in today's hypercompetitive market competitors are quick to take your intangibles such as innovations, employees, and market share. The The signs of hyercompetition are everywhere. In fact, competition has evolved from dirty tricks into criminal behaviour. Global firms such as Proctor and Gamble, Oracle, and Deloitte & Touche have been caught up in scandal in their underhanded attempts to undermine the competition (Grimm 2005 p.7). Competition in the US wireless market has left an industry in paralysis and the world of global products has produced an air of uncertainty (Sull & Escobari 2004 p.17, Woolley 2003). Still, most firms have learned to compete by integrating new strategies to supplement the tried and true theories on creating value. The restructuring of the global economy has demanded that firms not only take every opportunity, but they must create opportunity as well. The goal is, as D'Aveni says, "to upset the equilibrium of the industry, disrupt the status quo, and open opportunities for a new advantage" (1995a p.53). How does a firm reshuffle the product, the market, and the consumer to turn the situation into a competitive advantage To do so it is imperative that the firm understands the nature of hypercompetition. Hypercompetition is a concentrated effort by competitors to create and sustain market instability and to establish an uncertainty of economic conditions (Mittleman 2000 p. 16). By definition it is a rapidly changing environment where there is no long-term sustainability. Firms need to plan for short-term strategies. In D'Aveni's 7S's, he points out two necessary dynamics that a firm will need in a hypercompetitive marketplace; speed and surprise. (1995a p.51). A prolonged strategy of surprise will keep the competitors off balance and the firm will benefit from gaining momentum. Speed can be a valuable asset when getting a new innovation to market. With today's short product life span, the first to enter the market stands to gain. However, with shorter development time costs are driven up, quality suffers, and profits begin to wane (Gibson 1997 p.51). Speed to market may be a short-term necessity, but may not give the

A project is a complex, non-routine, one time effort limited by time, Essay

A project is a complex, non-routine, one time effort limited by time, budget, resources and performance specifications designed to meet customer needs Gray CF & Larson EW - Essay Example If there is a defined process, then standardisation is not a problem. In every software project, standard processes are employed and therefore, these can be standardised. For instance, PMI has created global standards of excellence for project management and so has National Competency Standards for Project Management (NCSPM 2007). Most of these standards are produced on an overall requirement and performance of people across the world. These might not be the ones that one might be able to adapt to their companies. Instead, a standard can be created based on the performance of the company's employees for their own internal requirement. This would ensure that the standards are more attainable and the same can be compared later with the global standards set by others. 2. The primary purpose of project management is to ensure that the customer requirements are met within the budgeted time and cost, in addition to the resources and performance specifications. While this is the target that the project manager would try to meet, there could always be issues which have to be countered by him. The time budget is drawn with the requirement of the customer in mind. The plan for the entire project in terms of time required will be drawn only on the basis of the requirements that the customer brings up. May be the customer or the company's management might bring up a time control in the plan which might make the project manager to recast the plan she has drawn. The time control and the requirements of the customer together will decide on the nature of resources that will be required for the company. Based on the resources that the project manager will employ to meet the requirements and the time limits, the costing budget is drawn. The performance specific ations will be the measure to judge how efficiently the team worked to deliver what was expected out of it, which is nothing but the customer requirements. Therefore, the entire requirements of the customer is the starting point and therefore, when the project manager meets her time schedule, resources, budget and the performance specifications, there will not be any issue in meeting the customer requirements. 3. The time, budget, resources and performance specifications are neither complementary nor competing demands. They are interrelated but not necessarily complementing one another. For instance, the planned time for a project and the constraint of time is related to the resources and the budget. When the resources in the project are increased, there will be a reduction in the time required. Not necessarily a standard mathematical relationship. The reduction may not be proportional to the resources that were employed. The same way, an increase in the time keeping the resources constant will escalate the budget. There could clear relationship between the time, resource and the budget. However, the time increase itself could have been the result of reduced resource availability. In case of performance specifications, these are only measures of the rest of the parameters that make up the project. The project performance ratings that are normally done will be calculated out of the time, bu dget, all resources or specific resources, multiple jobs and then