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JWI 540 – Lecture Notes (1214) Page 1 of 10
JWI 540: Strategy
Week Two Lecture Notes
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DEFINING THE PLAYING FIELD
What It Means
Jack defined strategy as making “clear-cut choices on how to
compete.” To develop a winning strategy,
you must first identify the boundaries that define your market
and identify the forces at work within that
market. Understanding your competitive environment – your
playing field – is crucial to your
organization's success.
Why It Matters
• Defining the playing field is the first step in the strategy
development process. If you do not
decide on what is and is not within the scope of your business,
you will severely compromise your
ability to make effective strategic choices.
• Setting an appropriate industry scope allows you to better

assess future opportunities for growth.
• Clearly mapping out your current and potential competitors
will enable you to better consider
“what if?” questions.
“You can’t be detailed enough about
knowing the playing field…
too often, people like to call themselves
the market leader, so they end up
limiting
the scope of their playing field to make
that happen.”
Jack Welch

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YOUR STARTING POINT
1. Does your team have an agreed-upon definition of the playing
field on which your business
competes?
2. If so, how would you explain your playing field in a succinct
elevator pitch?

3. If not, in what ways might the lack of a clear understanding
of the scope of the playing field
impede your ability to develop a competitive strategy?
4. When was the last time you conducted a thorough review of
market conditions and other
players in the field?
5. Is the market growing or shrinking, and which sectors or
products in the marketplace are
experiencing the most dynamic changes?
6. Where are your core products or services on the adoption
curve? In other words, do you have
a highly innovative product/service or is it an offering that is
part of a mature market segment?

University.
DEFINING YOUR PLAYING FIELD
Developing a winning strategy begins with a thorough
understanding of your playing field. That means
defining what is and is not part of your potential market. The
narrower your definition of your market, the
easier it is for you to be the top player, which can lead to a false
sense of accomplishment as well as,
unintentionally, limit your potential for growth. Instead, try to

cast your net wider because as you broaden
the vision of your market, your opportunities for growth expand
as well.
Jack would advise us to consider a powerful example of how the
competitive playing field could be
defined. Shifting your perception of the market dramatically
changes your perception of the overall size,
number, and type of competitors. Imagine you are in a typical
meeting room, sitting in a typical office chair
with armrests and wheels. Imagine that you are the
manufacturer of that chair. Is your target market only
business chairs? If you broaden your vision, your market may
be any type of chair. Change perspective
again, and your market could be all business furniture.
As you define your playing field, there are three areas you will
want to focus on:
1. The characteristics of the market, segment, products, and/or
services
2. The most important customers
3. Your competition

Let’s start with a focus on the playing field characteristics.
Consider the following questions:
• What are the characteristics? For example, is it a commodity
market, a high-end specialized
market, or something in between?
• Does it have a long selling cycle or a short one?
• What are the growth characteristics in this particular market?
• What drives the market?
• What are the drivers of profitability?
• What are the specific characteristics of your products and/or
services?
• What are the geographic boundaries in which you currently
compete or plan to compete? For
example, are you focused on U.S. companies or global players?
• Are you competing with manufacturers, distributors, or both?
• Are you competing within a certain price point?

Identifying the multiple characteristics of the market and your
own business can help you define a clear,
concise, and bounded playing field that will help you focus your
strategic analysis going forward. The
playing field definition will help you exclude some competitors
while including those whom you anticipate
being the biggest competitive threats.
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THE CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUR INDUSTRY
Companies that understand their environment are better
prepared to compete and identify opportunities
to disrupt the marketplace to their advantage. It is essential that
you undertake this exercise with a candid

perspective.
If your industry is part of a commodity market, make sure that
your approach either addresses it as such
or creates a plan to change the game and differentiate. Often,
sales and marketing organizations deny
that they play in a commodity business. There is little incentive
in believing you play in a highly
differentiated industry if your customers are not willing to pay a
premium for what you can deliver.
Conversely, if there are certain minimum requirements for any
product or service being sold, then there
may be very little opportunity to deliver a suboptimal solution
and try to come to the market at a lower
price point. By clarifying these factors for your business, you
will have a better perspective on the macro
drivers of your industry. You can then start zooming in on your
customers and competitors. To do that,
look at your customer base and ask yourself:
• Who are the key customers? Are they the ones that you have
and the ones that you want?
• What are the typical characteristics of these customers? What
do they value?

• How dependent are customers on the products you and your
competitors provide?
• What has been the growth rate and evolution of your customer
base?
• How do buyers perceive your product, service, and
organization?
Your customers will ultimately determine if your new direction
succeeds or not; “best-in-class”
organizations remain focused on the underlying customer needs
and how to better serve them.
UNDERSTANDING THE PLAYERS AND THE GAME
All games, like industries, have players and rules. They have
boundaries establishing the nature or field
of play. The players score points or gain field position by
employing tactics designed to give them an
advantage over their rivals.
PARTS is an acronym for one framework that can help you
understand the game already underway in
your competitive arena. It can also help to define potentially
game-changing levers that may be

manipulated as part of your strategy (Brandenburger &
Nalebuff, 1997). For example, you will view the
game differently if you define the players in your game as not
just competitors, but also distributors and
customers. As an example, to illustrate the framework in action,
consider the bookselling business, which
has experienced seismic shifts in the competitive field over the
last two decades.
PLAYERS
The first component of the PARTS framework is the players,
those individual participants or groups that
can take actions to create value and ultimately have a chance to
be one of the game’s winners. In 1997,
established players in the bookselling industry were Borders,
Barnes & Noble, and independent
University.

booksellers. A rising player by the name of Amazon had been in
the game for only a few years.
Look at your industry. Do players team up to collaborate, or is
it every man for himself? Can the number
of players change – can a company join or leave the game? In
the bookselling business, should an
established player have asked Amazon to partner with it in the
early days? Such a move would have
changed the way that game developed.
ADDED VALUE
The next element of the PARTS framework is a way to keep
score in your industry. Say you are a
distributor. Storing, shipping, and tracking the items that your
customer manufactures, and performing
these activities in a reliable, timely, and cost-effective way,
adds value to the manufactured goods. The
degree to which these activities meet the needs of your
customer, or the manufacturer, determines your
score.

RULES
In the book business, Amazon challenged the added value of the
old-style booksellers head-on. Until
then, adding value meant offering a diverse assortment of titles
in convenient brick-and-mortar locations.
With an inventory that included virtually every book, and the
convenience of browsing on the Internet,
Amazon shifted the game. All the players had to adapt to a new
definition of added value.
The third element, rules, defines what can and cannot be done in
a strategic game. In the most literal
sense, regulators or legal entities set the rules. A bookseller
must not reproduce copyrighted books
without the proper authority and payments, for example. Some
of the most important rules in an industry,
however, are not of the legal kind.
Throughout the 1990s, book retailers ordered books to stock
their shelves based on their market research
and marketing plans. Their inventory decisions were a major
part of their strategies. The books that did
not sell might be marked down to lower prices. If they still

failed to sell, they were returned to the
publishers to be destroyed without being paid for. There was no
rule that legally required this unusual
form of inventory management, which dates back to the
Depression, as a strategy to take the risk out of
the extremely common problem of unsold books. Regardless, it
was the industry standard.
Think about the unwritten rules your business has with its
customers, employees, and others. You may
find existing rules you would like to break or new rules you
want to put in place. Often, you need to adapt
to the current rules of the game. Even within these limits,
however, you might be able to gain the
equivalent of a home-court advantage or even put your rivals on
the defensive with a full-court press. And
merely thinking about who makes the rules and what it would
take for your company to set them can
generate new ways of thinking about, and playing in, your
industry.
TACTICS
The fourth component of the framework is the methods that
companies use to gain a better position on

the strategy game board, or score points with stakeholders,
suppliers, or customers. In recent years,
Barnes & Noble has reinforced its strategic commitment to the
total customer experience by creating a
generous loyalty program and opening in-store cafes where
customers can relax and browse magazines.
University.
These tactics increase customers’ perceived value of what it
offers without increasing the perceived cost
of a book. This helps them move below the value equivalence
line – its perceived cost is lower than its
perceived value.
SCOPE

The last PARTS framework element, scope, refers to the
boundaries of the game in your industry. Is this
a stand-alone game, or is it linked to other games? Could you
gain an advantage if you provided that
link? For example, for a long time, Borders and Barnes & Noble
competed against each other
simultaneously in a game of location, to gain prime retail
locations in malls, and in a game of
merchandising, to get customers who were strolling past their
stores to make impulse purchases.
Amazon, with its Internet retail business model, linked these
two games, creating a single location in
which people could browse without having to wander the aisles.
Leonard Sherman, in his book, If You’re in a Dogfight, Become
a Cat! suggested that, although the
playbook can be simple and straightforward, “business strategy
is inherently dynamic and context
sensitive. No one universal framework or management
prescription fits all business circumstances” (2017,
p. ix). Knowing what elements that should in your playbook is
critical for winning at strategy. As we
proceed through the course, you will review various strategic
tools, techniques, and frameworks. Make

note of those that you believe would be responsive to the
specific requirements of your industry,
workplace, and context. A full and diverse toolbox is a critical
resource for a strategist!
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SUCCEEDING BEYOND THE COURSE
As you read the materials and participate in class activities, stay
focused on the key learning outcomes
for the week and how they can be applied to your job.
• Define the playing field and the scope of the business

Challenge yourself to look beyond the current scope of your
business. Ask questions about how
you could grow the business if you were to define your playing
field differently. Gather key
leaders in the organization to brainstorm ideas about the playing
field.
o Do we have a clear definition of our playing field? Is it up to
date?
o Is the current definition wide enough? Does it provide
opportunity for growth?
o Have we identified our key customers and our key
competitors?
o Do we know what it takes to win in our industry?
• Explore the use of Jack’s first slide to help assess market
share and opportunity
Many business leaders are so focused on the day-to-day
operations that they never step back
and think about what they could do to better understand what
their customers really want and
what they could do to expand on that customer base. Gather

your team to discuss the following:
o Who are our main customers?
Are you able to identify sub-groups within those buyers? If so,
what are those sub-
groups and what percentage of your total business can be
attributed to each of them?
o What characteristics are shared among customer groups?
For example, a large corporation may have global customers,
regional customers and
distributors.
o How do our customers buy our products?
Discuss whether customers typically buy directly from you or
through a third party. Do
they leverage the Internet to research and buy products? How
much comparison
shopping do they do? Do you expect these patterns to change
over time?
o Ask the group what additional products or services customers
would be willing to
buy, but you don’t currently provide.

For example, if your customers buy equipment, they may also
want to buy service plans
to maintain it. If you provide a service, you may be able to offer
broader solutions that
answer similar needs of a customer. As an example, accountants
who prepare end-of-
year tax planning.
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o What characteristics are shared among our competitors?
For example, you may have competitors that are very similar to
you and others that cater
to a very different niche portion of the market.

o How do our competitors serve their customers?
Do they cater to customers differently than your own
organization? If so, why have they
adopted a different service model? Has it worked well for them?
What additional
products or services do your competitors offer?
• Evaluate potential strategic initiatives against the mission and
values of the organization
As you begin the process of reviewing existing strategic plans
and looking for opportunities to
reevaluate and grow, it’s a great opportunity to review the
mission and values of the
organization. Why do we exist? What do we believe in? Are we
fulfilling our mission? Could we
do more? Gather your team and have a “Mission Meeting” to
share ideas.

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ACTION PLAN
To apply what I have learned this week in my course to my job,
I will…
Action Item(s)
Resources and Tools Needed (from this course and in my
workplace)

Timeline and Milestones
Success Metrics
JUSTICE SANDEL VIDEOS
Mini Research Paper
http://justiceharvard.org/justicecourse/

This Mini Research Paper involves writing an in‐ depth study,
survey, and/or evaluation of one or more topics .
A research paper examines the use of specific evidence in one
or more application areas. A research paper must relate to one
or more of the topics discussed in class (or in this case, a
video), but must not be simply a summary of the material
covered in the video. The goal of such a "research project" is to
go beyond class material, video, etc.; examining the topics in a
much more in‐ depth
manner. Students are required to select any FOUR lectures
(excluding Episode # 1 and 2) and
links for videos
Episode #3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw4l1w0rkjs&ab_channel=
HarvardUniversity
Episode
#4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGyygiXMzRk&ab_chan
nel=HarvardUniversity
Episode
#5https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yT4RZy1t3s&ab_channe
l=HarvardUniversity
Episode #6https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rv-
4aUbZxQ&ab_channel=HarvardUniversity
include:
Pages 2-3: YOU ARE A NEWSPAPER
REPORTER/AUTHOR/JOURNALIST: write a well-constructed
essay (minimum 100 words) of the student’s understanding by
writing the essential theme of the Episode (Lecture); by
extracting (summarizing) elements, lecture/students’
conversations, and integrating into a well thought out essay.

These pages’ submission is the student’s own writing without
reliance on outside sources.
Following pages (2-3):
1. Research the philosophical position(s) discussed in the video
and briefly discuss them;
2. What is your personal opinion? Why? What are your
arguments and basis for your position? Cite all research, e.g.,
books, journals, that led you to this opinion.
Footnotes/Endnotes are required. The paper must contain at
least three (3) sources per EPISODE (LECTURE).
3. Do you believe that factors such as gender, age, religion,
birthplace, community will generate differing positions; or
regardless of variables, there will a majority of people that will
agree with your opinion.
4. Does a decision have to always be YES/NO, TRUE/FALSE?
Can there be an effective compromise that everyone will be
more comfortable with?
Thus: each video is approximately 4-6 pages; total amount for
all FOUR VIDEOS is 16-24 pages.
The evaluation of the papers will be based on thoroughness
(including adequate coverage of relevant issues/techniques as
well as references to the related work), soundness (including
justification for any claims made, illustrative example, correct
and adequate analysis of connections or relationships among
concepts or techniques), clarity/organization, and significance
(defined by the degree to which the paper covers new material,
and the extent of the original work by the author in drawing
conclusions;
and synthesizing scholarly work in this area). Note that the
paper must not simply be a concatenation of material from
several other papers, but must include some original analysis of
that work in the context of the paper topic.
• The suggested length for this mini research paper is 15-20 for
the entire 4 videos; single‐ spaced pages; font size of 11.
• Please follow the APA Writing Style for your research paper.

When citing information from your textbook, websites, and any
source besides yourself, use in‐ text/parenthetical citation and
include a References Cited section; FOOTNOTES OR
ENDNOTES MUST BE INCLUDED. Paper submissions will
randomly be subjected via TurnitIN or other softwares for
plagiarism. Please draw the references from scholarly, academic
or professional journals. Citing resources like Wikipedia is not
acceptable. Citing and formatting information correctly in your
assignments will help you do so easily on your final paper and
get a better grade. See APA style (http://www.apastyle.org/).
JWI 540: Strategy
Strategy Development Project Guidelines
University. This course
guide is subject to change based on the needs of the class.
JWI 540 – Strategy Development Project Guidelines (1186)
Page 1 of 1
Strategy Development Project
Our focus in this course is not limited to an academic study of
how others have developed winning strategies. It
is on helping you acquire the knowledge, skills and tools needed
to develop your own winning strategies – the
kind of moves that can help your organization establish a wide

moat and fend off competition for years to come.
To help achieve this, you will have an opportunity to complete a
Strategy Development Project. The project is
organized around Jack’s 5-Slide Strategy Model and is
submitted in three separate assignments as outlined
below and on the assignment detail pages that follow.
Selecting the Company for your Project
In order to support your learning experience and make this
course as meaningful as possible to your career, you
are free to select any organization you like as the focus for your
project. However, there is some data required
and thus we strongly recommend that you adhere to the
following guidelines to help you succeed in the project:
• Select a publicly traded company. You will have the benefit of
access to annual financial reports and
shareholder letters. Since most publically traded companies
have competitors that are also public, you
will have access to that data as well. Further, you will be able
to find a number of 3rd - party articles and
analyses from banks, news media and investment advisors.
Ideally, the company you work for is
publicly traded and thus eligible for your project. If not,
consider analyzing a publicly traded competitor,
a key customer, a supplier, a company you might like to work
for, or a company you’d like to better
understand.
• If your company has diverse business units, select a specific
product category/segment/business unit.
Large businesses (like General Motors, GE or Procter &
Gamble) have dozens of different products and
businesses. Attempting to develop a winning move for a large
and complex entity will likely result in an

analysis and recommendation that is superficial. After all, what
specific strategic choice would you
make at GE that would be game-winning for each of Aviation,
Healthcare, Power, Renewable Energy,
etc.? Analyzing a company like Apple is equally challenging as
the Playing Field and competitors in
Music (Spotify, Pandora, etc.) are very different from iPhone
(Samsung, Google, etc). Instead, focus on
one product line or business that is of particular interest to you
and you will have a much more
manageable and rewarding experience.
• NOTE: While the project requirements do not prohibit you
from selecting a non-public organization, you
are strongly encouraged to avoid this due to difficulties in
obtaining the data needed to complete the
assignments. If you do select a private organization for your
project, you are responsible for ensuring
that you can obtain all data necessary.

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