MBA501: Fantasy Films Business Portfolio Development Report

This report analyzes Fantasy Films, a digital animation studio, focusing on its business portfolio and dynamic capabilities. The analysis uses BCG, GE-McKinsey, and Synergy matrices to categorize four business units: Fantaspace, Advantage, Anisoft, and DigiFX. The report assesses each unit's market position, competitive strength, and synergy within the portfolio, providing strategic recommendations for growth and improvement. Furthermore, the report examines Fantasy Films' dynamic capabilities, specifically its ability to identify and assess opportunities, mobilize resources, and transform strategic assets. The report provides recommendations to enhance the firm's dynamic capabilities, addressing shortcomings like the "Script Doctor" fiasco, and emphasizes the importance of periodic auditing and market trend analysis for sustained competitive advantage. The report highlights the need for strategic adjustments across the business units to maximize their potential in the competitive market.

Business Portfolio and
Dynamic Capability
Development Report
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

Introduction
 Fantasy films headquartered in Sydney is a Digital
Animation Studio. Have three more regional Offices in
San Francisco, Los Angeles and Brisbane.
 The firm offer products and services like animated feature
films, digitally animated advertising, digital animation
software, and digital special effects for live action films.
 The presentation discusses the business portfolio and
dynamic capabilities of the Fantasy Films.

Business units
Fantasy Films has four business units who specializes in different
digital means. The name of the units along with their specialty has
been listed below.
 Fantaspace: Digital animation feature films.
 Advantage: Digitally animated advertising.
 Anisoft: Digital animation software.
 DigiFX: Special effects for movies.

Firm Structure & problem
 Firm follows top to bottom hierarchical structure where the
decision is made by top officials and accordingly filtered down the
hierarchy.
 The firm’s business and market findings reveals that some units are
underperforming and needs to be assessed.
 Fiasco of ‘Script Doctor’ is also a case that raise question over the
resource & asset assessment and management.

BCG Matrix
?
Relative Market Share
Market Growth Rate

GE-McKinsey Matrix
Growt
h
Competitive strength of
business unit
High Med Low
Industry
attractiveness
High
Med
Low
Growt
h
Harves
t
Selective Harves
t
Harves
t
Selective
SelectiveGrowt
h

Synergy Matrix
Threshold of
acceptance
Misfits
Incoming:
Benefits from belonging
to portfolio
+-
Fits
+
-
Outgoing:
Benefit to portfolio
Altruists
Givers
Parasites
Takers

Business categorisation
BCG
Matrix
GE-McKinsey
Matrix
Synergy
Matrix
Fantaspace Star Growth Fits
Advantage Cash Cow Harvest Givers
Anisoft Question Growth Takers
DigiFX Dog Harvest Misfits

Fantaspace
Analysis
 It has been identified that Fantaspace has high market
growth and is utilising the opportunity. The competitive
strength of the business unit is also high. Hence, is can be
stated that it is the most successful business unit of the
firm.
Recommendations
 The unit in discussion needs no changes however, it can
upgrade its offering to maintain the competitive advantage.
It can be attained by gaining feedback from the end-users
and making necessary changes adequately. It should be
stated that the firm should adopt defensive approach.

Advantage
Analysis
 It has been identified that the discussed business unit is
providing more benefit to its consumers than garnering
for itself. Though, it should be noted that it is offering
reasonable benefit in context to the low opportunistic
market, but it can be further enhanced.
Recommendations
 It is recommended that the business should follow
alliance strategy to gain competitive advantage. The
recommendation can be justified by the fact that the unit
is more dominant in offering outgoing benefit and
forming an alliance with them would enable the firm to
strengthen its competitive advantage.

Anisoft
Analysis
 It is offering very high incoming benefit however has failed to
maintain a competitive advantage in a high opportunistic
market. Hence, it can be stated that the discussed unit needs to
adopt an different approach than its competitor to become a
leader.
Recommendations
 To become a market leader, it is recommended that the business
unit should adopt a different approach than its counterparts to
ensure that its market share and incoming benefits is maintain
while attaining a competitive advantage. To attain the discussed
measure the unit should undertake measures to enable the
customers in differentiating itself from its competitors.

DigiFX
Analysis
 It has been identified that the discussed unit is offering
low benefits in a low growth and opportunistic market.
Recommendations
 The recommendation for the discussed unit is to adopt
an offensive approach to gain competitive advantage.
As part of the approach, the firm could adopt cost
leadership measures so that it can capture the market.

Conclusion
It can be concluded to stated that the business units of the
Fantasy films needs to adopt different approaches based upon
the offerings and the market growth and attractive to sustain
themselves in the competitive market.

Dynamic Capabilities
Introduction
 Dynamic capabilities is the representation of organisation
capability to build, integrate and reconfigure.
 Fantasy Films is lacking in the discussed sector which is
evident from the Script Doctor Fiasco.

Identify and assess
opportunities
 It is of great importance that the opportunities are
identified and assessed so that the organisation could gain
a competitive advantage.
 The discussed firm lacks proper identification and
assessment of the opportunities.
 The negligence of the Fantaspace in identification of the
script analysis program is a major flaw.

Identify and assess
opportunities
Recommendations
 Brainstorming towards the use of the organisational assets and
resources could assist in identification and assessment of the
opportunities.
 Auditing and researching is also one of the crucial method to
attain the discussed capability.

Mobilise resources
 The method that is adopted to secure the organisational
resources and utilising it for the sustainability of the firm
is resource mobilisation.
 The case of Doctor script has made it evident that the
organisation has failed to mobilise the resource that was
available to it 5 year prior but had not been utilised.

Mobilise resources
Recommendations
 Researching of the current resources and trends in the market
is one of the prominent measure for mobilising of resources.
 Mapping of the organisational assets is another measure that
can ensure the mobilising of the resources. It will determine
the opportunities and take necessary actions.

Transform and
reconfigure
 Strategic assets refers to the adoption of the capabilities,
technology and end-users responses to transform and
reconfigure the assets for future assistance.
 The fiasco of ‘Script Doctor’ reveals that the Fantasy
Films not even failed to identify the strategic asset but also
made further investment of the resources for the delivery
of similar offering.

Transform and
reconfigure
Recommendations
 The firm should consider co-specialisation which will avoid
the chances of fiascos like Script Doctor and will also
enhance the capability of the firm’s offerings.
 Proper assessment of the assets will enable the identification
of the strategic assets and could be utilised in the process.

Conclusion
 It has been identified that the Fantasy Films has an
inadequate approach towards its dynamic capabilities.
 Periodic auditing and researching of the organisational
resources and market trends could assist in leveraging of
the dynamic capabilities.

References
Helfat, C.E. and Peteraf, M.A., 2015. Managerial cognitive
capabilities and the microfoundations of dynamic
capabilities. Strategic Management Journal, 36(6), pp.831-850.
Lin, Y. and Wu, L.Y., 2014. Exploring the role of dynamic
capabilities in firm performance under the resource-based view
framework. Journal of business research, 67(3), pp.407-413.
Robson, W., 2015. Strategic management and information systems.
Pearson Higher Ed.
Wilden, R. and Gudergan, S.P., 2015. The impact of dynamic
capabilities on operational marketing and technological capabilities:
investigating the role of environmental turbulence. Journal of the
Academy of Marketing Science, 43(2), pp.181-199.