A window is time horizon during which opportunities exist before something else happens to eliminate them. A unique opportunity, once shown to produce wealth, will attract competitors, and if the business is easy to enter, the industry will become rapidly saturated. Bicycles did not become viable commercial products until people needed them as transportation. When that need occurred, hundreds of bicycle manufactures rushed to take advantage of the “window of opportunity.” Literally every successful product and service has had an optimal period of time for commercialization. Those introduced too early have usually failed, and those introduced too suffered from crowded markets. A brief period of opportunity opened for electronic spreadsheets when micro-computer hit the fast growth curve. Several entrepreneurs entered Continue reading
Business Strategies
Strategic Business Plan
Either in the start up process or when re-inventing one’s business development, the design of a strategic business plan is an indispensable step towards a successful and viable business. Strategic planning involves setting up a sound and multifaceted plan or strategy to follow over a defined time period. It can involve all aspects of the business, or just a small part of it i.e. a selected department such as the marketing department. However, this does not mean that strategic business planning is only for large scale businesses since it can also benefit the small business, especially at start up, when the business sets its first goals and establishes itself in the business landscape. Writing up a business plan is an Continue reading
Case Study: Google’s Quest for Competitive Advantage
In 1996 two computer science PhD students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, were wondering how they could sort through the massive amount of information that was starting to appear on the Web to find specific and useful information on a topic. Although there were several different technologies, or search engines, available to search the Web for information, none of them seemed particularly useful to Brin and Page because they failed to distinguish between useful and trivial Web sites. Brin and Page decided to build a search engine that not only would examine the words on Web pages and then index them as other search engines did, but also would look at how and where these words were Continue reading
Merger Approaches
Irrespective of the type of merger, there are at least two firms involved. One, the buying company that acquires the other company, and survives after merger. This firm is known as an acquiring firm or transferee company. The other is the company, which is merged and loses its identity in the process. This is called the acquired company, or transferor company or the target firm. There are various modes in which the acquiring firm can attempt a merger move and therefore, merger can also be classified on the basis of initiative style or the procedure adopted by the acquiring firm. The most important merger approaches are as follows: 1. Negotiated Merger It is also called friendly merger. In this case, Continue reading
Operating Economies through Mergers
A merger, which results in meeting the test of increasing the wealth of the shareholders, is said to contain synergistic properties. Synergy is the increase in value of the firm combining two firms into one entity i.e., it is the difference value between the combined firm and the sum of the value of the individual firms. There may be various sources for this extra value arise i.e., the increase in wealth of the shareholders as a result of merger.  The key to the existence of synergy is that the target firm controls a specialized resource that becomes more valuable when combined with the bidding firm’s resources. The sources of synergy of specialized resources will vary depending upon the merger. In Continue reading
Defenses Against Takeover Bids – Anti Takeover Strategies
A firm having all or any of the following features may provide a temptation to an acquiring firm to take-over the former: The target firm has under performed other shares and the overall market in terms of return the shareholders in the preceding years. The target firm has been less profitable than other firms, and The promoter/owner group has lower shareholding in the target firm and the public has a higher portion. If an acquiring firm makes an offer for negotiated merger to the management of the target firm, it is up to the latter to accept or not to accept the offer. The target firm may not find the offer to be attractive and hence it may reject the Continue reading