Business Approaches Comparison: Wide Space and Hassle.com Report

This report provides a comprehensive comparison of the business approaches of Wide Space, a mobile advertising company, and Hassle.com, an online platform for cleaning services. It delves into their respective histories, strategic analyses (including PEST and SWOT analyses), product offerings, and growth patterns. The report examines the generic and developmental strategies employed by both companies, highlighting their key milestones and expansion strategies. A significant portion is dedicated to analyzing the leadership styles of Patrik Fagerlund (Wide Space) and Jules Coleman (Hassle.com), drawing upon entrepreneurial leadership concepts. Finally, the report explores the organizational culture of both companies using the web cultural framework model, culminating in a conclusion that summarizes the key differences and similarities in their approaches. The acquisition of Hassle.com by Helpling is also discussed, providing context to the company's strategic decisions.

Running head: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND COMPARISON
STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND COMPARISON
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND COMPARISON
Executive Summary
Wide space is a large corporation, founded in Sweden in the aim of providing a new platform for
mobile internet advertising using the smart phones and mobile apps. On the other hand, Hassle is
a SME, which started as a digital platform for providing booking and payment options for the
local customers to avail the cleaning service by using internet. Overtime, both the companies
have grown into international companies with the help of strategic leadership and management
and technological innovation.
The aim of this report is to discuss about the difference in the business approach of Wide space
and hassle.com. Business models being followed by both these organizations are being discussed
in this report. In addition, the internal management includes the organizational process and
leadership styles being followed in hassle.com. The motive behind the acquisitions and selling
hassle.com to helpling is also being discussed in this report. This report concludes that, both
these organizations are having different business approaches. One of the key similarities being
identified is the offering of distinctive services to the customers. The development strategies that
have been adopted by the two companies since their inception has been described in detail with
particular milestones
The next section throws light on the various leadership styles that are present and compares and
contrasts the leadership style of the leaders of the Wide space as well as the Hassle.com
company. These leaders are Patrik Fagerlund and Jules Coleman. Their leadership style has been
explained in detail along with reference to entrepreneurial leadership concept.
The last section of the assignment describes the Organizational Culture of both the companies
using the web cultural framework model. The conclusion summarizes the assignment.

2STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND COMPARISON
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Brief history of the companies.....................................................................................................3
Strategic analysis and SWOT analysis........................................................................................4
Products and services...................................................................................................................7
Growth Patterns...............................................................................................................................9
Generic and Developmental Strategies..........................................................................................11
Development Strategies.............................................................................................................16
Organizational Culture...................................................................................................................22
Web cultural framework............................................................................................................22
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................27
References......................................................................................................................................28

3STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND COMPARISON
Introduction
Strategic management and leadership play a very important role in developing the
organizational culture and growth patterns of an organization. These help in shaping the
organizational activities, which in turn helps in making the brand image of an organization
(Rothaermel 2015). In the following report, the comparison between a large corporation, that is,
Wide space, and a SME, Hassle.com, is made to find out the difference in the impact on the
organizational growth due to difference in their strategic management and leadership styles.
Wide space is a mobile advertisement company, headquartered in Sweden. It took the
idea of advertisement using the mobile internet when the smart phones are just being launched.
Overtime, as the smartphone industry went through a revolution, the scope for Wide space grew
leaps and bounds. On the other hand, Hassle.com is a online platform for booking and payment
that establishes a connection between the customers and pre-vetted local cleaners. It is a digital
start up based in Vauxhall, in London.
Brief history of the companies
Wide space was established in 2007 in the USA. The founders, Patrik Fagerlund and
Henric Erhenblad got together while working in Ericsson. Henric worked in business
development in Sweden, USA and China, and Patrik worked in sales in USA and Sweden, for
Ericsson. They integrated their business ideas and came together to start the business for mobile
internet advertisement in 2007. Since, the smartphone technology was absolutely new at that
time, with iPhone just entered into the market, the idea for mobile internet advertising was new
and challenging and saw very slow growth rate in the initial two years. The reason was that the
smartphone was not widely used by the people. Their target companies were the media agencies

4STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND COMPARISON
and the head of those businesses were not much inclined towards the new mobile technology.
Hence, initially, Wide space faced obstacles while growing. Apart from that, the founders
realized the need for their own technology and sales team to make a position for themselves in
the market. Hence, they hired an experienced Marketing Head from Nokia for brand building.
Around 2014, the company was able to make a branding in the mobile internet advertising
market (Wennberg 2017).
Hassle.com, a digital startup, was co-founded by Jules Coleman, Alex Depledge and Tom
Nimmo in 2012 in London. Its original name was Teddle. They founded this company with the
help of Techstars London and several angel investors in 2012. In 2013, they rebranded and
changed the name to Hassle. The reason behind such unusual name was that the founders wanted
to remove the hassle of cleaning from people’s lives and make their lives easier, so that they can
pursue the things that they love. Initially, it started with 27 service providers, such as, driving
instructors, personal trainers etc. and at the end of 2012, they channelized their business towards
only house cleaning service providers. Hassle has grown very rapidly and acquired its German
competitor Helpling in 2015 and took the process of expansion into the Europe (Helpling.co.uk
2018).
Strategic analysis and SWOT analysis
Strategic analysis of an organization refers to the analysis of different forces that
influence the business capacity of the organization (Grant 2016). The forces can be internal as
well as external. For the external forces, PEST (Political, Economical, Social and Technological)
model is used and for the internal force analyses, SWOT is performed.

5STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND COMPARISON
PEST analysis
Figure 1: PEST analysis structure
(Source: Google image)
Wide space Hassle
Political Stable political condition of the
countries has helped it to grow
their business.
Stable political condition of the
countries has helped it to grow
their business.
Economical The company expanded its
business in the developed
countries, due to more
availability of capital, stable
economic conditions, and
improved technological and
It also expanded in the developed
countries of Europe and other
developed countries, like UAE,
Australia and Singapore, which
have strong economic
background to support their need

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economical facilities. for capital and financial
capacities of the customers.
Social The expansion in the customer
base of smartphone and online
media publishers has contributed
to in the growth of the company
Increase in the number of internet
users and number of working
professionals in the society has
contributed in its growth.
Technological Invention and continuous
innovation of the smartphone
technology is the backbone for its
growth.
Improvement in the technology
in terms of secure online
payment, database technology
and GPS technology has
contributed in its growth.
SWOT analysis
Wide space Hassle
Strength Technological innovation in
developing new advertising
channels
New concept of business with the
integration of technology
Weakness Staggering growth in the
emerging markets
Building and marinating
databases of the cleaning service
providers in foreign countries,
especially in the developing
countries
Opportunity Growth of manufacturing
industry and service companies
Growth in the increasing number
of internet users across the world

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Threat Rising competition domestically
and internationally
Rising competition domestically
and internationally
Products and services
Wide space started the business with a commitment to offer premium advertisement for
mobiles. This highlights the facts that their products and technology includes the classical banner
advertisements along with adding the real customer value to the clients as well as to the end-
users. They have been providing the advertisements through different formats. Those are as
follows:
The Splash: full screen ad for three seconds during the loading of an app and clickable ad within
the app.
Video banner: video ads played directly in the app, becoming full screen when clicked and
becoming banner again after finishing playing.
Store locator: interactive map by displaying the street view in the banner for locating the nearest
store using the GPS technology of the smart phones.
Calendar: one click on the ad allows the user to set an event or reminder on the calendar on the
phone.
The Swipe: users can switch through unlimited number of images through one slide over the
advertisement.

8STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND COMPARISON
Voice ads: users can interact with the ads via speech. This new technology is developed with the
partnership of a U.S. based technology firm, Nuance Communication.
Apart from these, Wide space introduced new software that would enable the media agencies or
ad publishers increasing their revenues on their own. The international media houses use this
new technology to deliver the mobile customized advertisements from the advertisers to the
readers. This generates a significant value added for the advertisers with automatically generated
analytics (Wennberg 2017).
On the other hand, Hassle.com is a digital platform that establishes a connection between
the homeowners and the local cleaning service providers. The customers can book and pay to
any cleaner through this platform. They have made a database of all the cleaners based on the zip
code. The customers can look for the cleaner, whose profile and price matches the best with their
requirements, through the postal codes. The flat £10 an hour is charged by the cleaners and they
have to pay a certain amount of fee when they find a regular client through the website or they
have to pay 10% of the booking value for the single time cleaning. Hassle.com plays the
connecting medium between the service providers of all type of cleaning, such as, oven, floor,
kitchen, bedroom, toilet, refrigerator, dishwashing, dusting, window cleaning etc. However, the
customers can only avail these services of these providers by booking through the online
platform. The customers can access the booking portal from their laptops or from the apps in
their smart phones (FinSMEs.com 2014).

9STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND COMPARISON
Growth Patterns
Wide space has successfully captured the smartphone market. In the beginning, when
Patrik and Henric first developed the idea of mobile advertisements in 2004, the chance of
success was very less. Back then, the people were not into the smartphone technology. It was a
completely new idea and if people did not use smart phones, then there is no point of launching
mobile advertising technology. However, with the launch of iPhone, people’s perception began
to change and the smartphone industry saw a huge growth. Wide space took this opportunity of
allowing the advertisers to reap the benefit of ads by showing in the mobile apps. Reaching out
to the customers became easier for them. After the foundation of the company in 2007, the
company experienced rapid expansion nationally as well internationally, especially, the
smartphone revolution started around 2011-12 across the globe. As iPhone and its competitors in
the smartphone industry started to capture the world market, Wide space utilized this opportunity
to increase its market position in the advertisement industry. As the number of smartphone, users
are increasing every day, and the manufacturing industry is also growing, Wide space felt the
need to display the ads by using the convenience factor of the customers. Thus, to reach to a
wider target customer base, the mobile advertisements are extremely beneficial and the company
was successful in drawing the advertisers towards using their technology in the past few years,
which has contributed in their rapid growth (Wide space 2018).
However, the company also faced some difficulties in expanding in the international
market, as there is big difference in the mobile usages in different countries. The cost of
establishment of new offices in different countries is mostly huge. Yet, the company opened new
offices in Sweden, Finland, Bangladesh, Norway, the UK, the Netherlands, and France in 2013-

10STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND COMPARISON
14 and they expanded in USA, Spain and Italy in 2015. Although, the majority of the share
comes from the domestic market, the owners found that transnational deals yield big amount of
revenues. Hence, to capture a bigger share in the European market, Wide space put the strategic
importance on the UK office. They cashed in on the fact that major international deals are mostly
generated in the UK than in Sweden. In the early months of 2016, the company managed to
reach more than 128 million users in the 19 countries of Europe. It is more than half of the total
smartphone users of Europe. It has also managed to reach to more than 50 million direct users in
the USA, which is a quarter of the total smartphone population.
In the case of Hassle.com, they started as a local company in London providing digital
services of booking the cleaners and making payments to them. The company grew to be one of
the top ten digital startup companies by 2014. Within the establishment of 2 years, the company
not only managed to grow in the domestic market, it also managed to receive large funds and
acquire its German competitor, Helpling. When Ron Zeghibe, founder of Hailo, joined Hassle in
April 2013 as non-executive chair, he was able to bring in $6 million funding from Accel
Partners, who also gave backing to Facebook. With this fund, Hassle started its expansion into
Europe and the first step they took was to acquire Helpling. This company was started in Berlin,
Germany, with the same idea as Hassle. The concept was to make life easier for the working
professionals by providing the aids for cleaning their assets. The idea became hugely popular as
people could not only look for a suitable cleaner from the local area through the internet, but they
could also book their service through online payment. Through the use of GPS and location
detecting technology, the company has a built a database of all the cleaners and matches the
records with the postal code of the customers (Helpling.co.uk 2018).

11STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND COMPARISON
Helpling already started to expand its business nationally and internationally. It has offices in
major countries in Europe, such as, France, Netherlands, Italy and Ireland apart from major cities
in Germany. Outside Europe, Helping has set its offices in UAE, Australia and Singapore. When
Hassle acquired Helping in 2015, it expanded its business in the UK. In the major cities like,
Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Cardiff and many more places, the
company has opened its offices. Thus, using a new concept the company has become to be one
of the top digital startup in just 2 years of its founding (Prassl and Risak 2015).
Generic and Developmental Strategies
Business model of Hassle.com
Hassle.com is basically provides their services through internet. This is due to the fact
that, they use their online platforms to connect the customers with the best cleaners in the town.
Thus, their service is internet based. Thus, the business model being followed by them is the
direct sales model (Stone and Woodcock 2014). However, direct sales refer to door-to-door
selling and selling by telephone without the presence of any intermediary or intermediaries, but
in the current business scenario, internet helps the business organizations to cater to the target
customers directly without the assistance of any agencies or intermediaries (Urde, Baumgarth
and Merrilees 2013). Thus, in the case of the Hassle.com, they use the medium of internet to
directly cater to the customers, which in turn helps them to reduce the cost incurred for the
intermediaries. With the help of the direct selling business model, they are enabling the
customers to choose from the wide array of services being offered from their online portal. Thus,
much like the approach of the direct selling, customers and the service providers are indulging in
one to one connections.