SMM331: Advanced Strategy Analysis of the BT Group's Strategy

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the BT Group's corporate strategy, focusing on its application of open innovation within the telecom industry. It evaluates the company's approach to integrating external resources, particularly new start-ups, to foster innovation and address challenges related to employee training and resistance to new technologies. The report examines the parenting advantage of the BT Group's strategies, highlighting how they contribute to value creation and competitive advantage, particularly in the research and development unit. The analysis also includes a group work statement, detailing the collaborative efforts, roles, and challenges faced during the project's development, including time management issues. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of customer-centric strategies and the potential for BT Group to leverage parenting advantages in customer-facing technologies.

Running head: ADVANCED STRATEGY ANALYSIS
Advanced Strategy Analysis
Name of the student
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Author notes

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ADVANCED STRATEGY ANALYSIS
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Evaluating the Corporate Strategy of the Enterprise..................................................................2
Parenting Advantage of the Corporate Strategy.........................................................................4
Group work Statement...............................................................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
References..................................................................................................................................6

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ADVANCED STRATEGY ANALYSIS
Introduction
The BT group is a known name in the IT business industry. This company has been
successful in incorporating various technological interventions in their services and products.
The company works in collaboration with the start-ups to get the ideas of innovations and
technologies. BT mainly used the in-house innovations to get business success. Recently, the
company is trying to have open innovations in their organisational operations. They are
heading towards the external sources for the innovative advantages. This report is designed to
have an outlook of the corporate strategies of BT group enterprise and how they are
influencing the effectiveness of their business. Along with that there will be some discussion
of the parenting advantage of these strategies to the business units of the organisation.
Evaluating the Corporate Strategy of the Enterprise
The company has been always open to the challenges of new technology and
corporate them in their service and products. The telecom industry is depended on the
customer experiences. In this objective, the main aim of the company is to more values in
their services for the customers. The company has been trying to work with their internal
innovations till now. The strategy of the company is to move to the open innovations to get
more opportunities and exposure in the telecom industry. In this way the company has been
facing some challenges and therefore, they have taken required steps to mitigate them.
Evaluating internal resources
Sensing the internal resources capabilities is the first stage in evaluation of the internal
resources. The open innovations are based on both the internal and external resources of
knowledge and research and development. Mainly the integration of the external knowledge
sources are done for the open innovations (Slide 18, Session 5). In the process of integration
the company has to identify the resources and internalise them so that they could be put

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ADVANCED STRATEGY ANALYSIS
together with the internal resources. The risk analysis in the institutionalising of the external
resources are another important part of the open innovation process (Slide 20, Session 5). BT
group has identified the new start-ups as their external knowledge resources. This is an
effective idea for the company open innovations as the new start up entrepreneurs work with
new technological idea in the telecom markets. The company has analysed the in-house R&D
process and tried to integrate the external resources with it. The challenges in the process was
that the employees of the organisation was not ready for the new technological interventions
(Volberda et al., 2011). The resistance is quite clear as most of the BT employees are not
trained for the new technologies inclusion. Hence, the company would not be able to add
more value propositions for their customers if they do not work in their in-house training and
external resources incorporation.
Reaching to External Innovations
The idea of open innovation and collaborative community is used by BT group for their
recent ventures in telecom industry. The cumulative knowledge of the technology is required
for the success of BT group, hence they have adopted the collaborative communities
strategies (Slide 31, Session 5). The company has extended to the business partners of start-
ups and their collaboration has helped the company to include more innovation in their
operations. The BT group is aware of the importance of such company collaboration but
some companies are showing unprofessional attitudes in their deals. The market dilemmas
the company is facing is the rigidness of some of the external innovators who are not
interested to cope up with company schedules and needs (slide 34, Session 5). Therefore, the
company need to reassess their group of partners in the extension process. The external
knowledge collaborations are helping the company to add more value in their outcomes and
profits.

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Parenting Advantage of the Corporate Strategy
Business strategies are designed for the value creation and value capturing (slide 13,
Session 8). Parenting advantage is one such strategy that helps the company to evaluate their
operation effectiveness. The parenting advantage would work if the company creates more
value in a SBU than their competitors if they were in the same sector (Session 1). The
business strategy of BT would provide parenting advantage to the research and development
unit of the business. The value creation through the innovation would be seen in the services
and products. The strategies and technologies used by the open innovation are customer
centric. Hence, the firm has the sole interest of increasing the parent’s capabilities so that it
can contribute to the business opportunity in the market (Volberda et al., 2011). The
competitive advantage and the internal resource building both can be done in the strategy.
These are the part of the parenting advantage for the R&D unit of the company. The unit of
BT is the heartland business opportunity where the company can add value without much
risks. The Ballast business unit for the parenting advantage of BT group would be customer
facing units. Their collaborative ventures would help the BT group to be as good as other
competitors in the market.
Group work Statement
The group was consisted of four members and the roles of the team members were
equally distributed. The planning for the development of this project was done after a group
meeting where the roles and responsibilities were distributed. In the meeting time of the
course work and process of completing the project was also discussed. One of the group
members has the responsibility to do the initial research of the project requirements. The
other members also contributed their share in the research process. Two members of the
group research of the corporate strategies in the BT group and the rest two work on the
advantages of the corporate strategy of the enterprise.

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There were some issues related to the time management one of the group members
was unable to submit the research result at the designated time. Therefore, the whole project
work was going a bit delayed. But the team work helped to fulfil the delay and the project
was ready on time. All the team members have contributed same share of work in the project.
There was some lack of communication at the first stages. The communication gap was
resolved with time and the team started to work together. In this group I have the
responsibility to evaluate the innovative strategies of the BT group. Taking the help of the
group members it was possible to do the work effectively. There was some difficulties in
managing the time throughout the project. Hence, this part of the group work need to be fixed
next time. Other than that, the group members contributed equally in the process of project
development.
Conclusion
The BT group is been able to focus in their customer centric telecom business
through their internal sources. This company has been successful in incorporating various
technological interventions in their services and products. With the increased competition
they are heading for open innovations and taking help of their external resources of
knowledge available to them. The open innovations comprises of the integration of external
resources with the internal ones. It is necessary for the companies to understand their needs
and what kind of value they want add in their services. The parenting advantage can be
gained only if the balance between the parent and its business is done properly. The BT group
has the potential to have parenting advantages in the customer facing technologies in their
enterprise.

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References
Volberda, H. W., Morgan, R. E., Reinmoeller, P., Hitt, M. A., Ireland, R. D., & Hoskisson, R.
E. (2011). Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalization (Concepts &
Cases). Cengage Learning.
Course Study Lecture Slides