1. The value chain attempts to identify those activities, which add value?

► A) The organization's stakeholders
► B) The senior strategic managers in the organization
► C) The organization's shareholders
► D) The customer or final user

D) The customer or final user

2. What are core competences?

► A) Resources that critically underpin competitive advantage and others cannot obtain.
► B) Activities and processes needed to meet customers' minimum requirements and therefore to continue to exist.
► C) Key skills required for success in a particular business.
► D) Activities that underpin competitive advantage and are difficult for competitors to imitate or obtain

D) Activities that underpin competitive advantage and are difficult for competitors to imitate or obtain

3. Strategic stretch involves?

► A) The fit between the organization and its environment
► B) Creating new opportunities by stretching and exploiting capabilities in new ways
► C) The skills of the senior management
► D) Utilizing all the resources of an organization to their full capacity

B) Creating new opportunities by stretching and exploiting capabilities in new ways

4. The value chain is composed of primary & support activities. Which answer below provides the correct components for primary activities?

► A) Service, human resource management, marketing & sales, operations and outbound logistics
► B) Marketing & Sales, Operations, Outbound Logistics and Service
► C) Procurement, Firm Infrastructure, Human Resource Management, Technology Development, and Marketing & Sales
► D) Inbound Logistics, Operations, Outbound Logistics, Marketing & Sales, and Service.

D) Inbound Logistics, Operations, Outbound Logistics, Marketing & Sales and Service

5. What is the purpose of an activity map?

► A) A system to facilitate better time planning
► B) It is used in business process reengineering to show how the different activities of an organization are linked together.
► C) It is used to identify and understand strategic capability by mapping how the different activities of an organization are linked together.
► D) A list of activities undertaken by an organization

C) It is used to identify and understand strategic capability by mapping how the different activities of an organization are linked together

6. Competitive advantage through linkages between the organization and its value network can be achieved by?

* A) Vertical integration
* B) Adopting common quality standards internally and externally (with suppliers)
* C) Examining supplier specifications, common merchandising, applying quality management principles, or by collaborating with other organizations in the form of strategic alliances or joint ventures.
* D) Outsourcing customer service to India

C) Examining supplier specifications, common merchandising, applying quality management principles or by collaborating with other organizations in the form of strategic alliances or joint ventures

7. Which of the following drivers determines cost efficiency?

* A) Supply Costs, Experience, Product/Process Design, and Economies of Scale.
* B) Supply Costs & Economies of Scale.
* C) Product/Process Design and Economies of Scale
* D) Experience

A) Supply Costs, Experience, Product/Process Design, and Economies of Scale

8. Robustness of strategic capabilities is more likely when?

* A) Linkages in the value network are exploited.
* B) Core competences are complex, ambiguous, and dependent on culture/history.
* C) Competences lie with specific individuals.
* D) Core competences lie in separate parts of the organization's value chain.

A) Linkages in the value network are exploited.
B) Core competences are complex, ambiguous, and dependent on culture/history.

9. Which types of organizational knowledge are sources of competitive advantage?

* A) Explicit knowledge, which is classified and formalized in a planned and systematic way
* B) Personal knowledge, which is hard to communicate and formalize
* C) Customer databases, market research reports, management reports.
* D) Collective and shared experience accumulated through systems, routines, and activities of sharing across the organization.

D) Collective and shared experience accumulated through systems, routines, and activities of sharing across the organization

10. In the resource-based view of strategy, what type of strategic capabilities are the sources of sustainable competitive advantage?

* A) Unique resources and core competences
* B) Dynamic capabilities
* C) Operational excellence
* D) Strategic capabilities, which are valuable to buyers, rare, robust, and non-substitutable

D) Strategic capabilities, which are valuable to buyers, rare, robust, and non-substitutable

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11. What are the three criteria for the robustness of strategic capability?

* A) Core competences, unique resources, and dynamic capabilities
* B) Complexity, causal ambiguity and value to customers
* C) Complexity, causal ambiguity and rarity.
* D) Complexity, causal ambiguity and culture/history

D) Complexity, causal ambiguity and culture/history

12. Industry/sector benchmarking compares?

* B) Organizational performance between firms/public sector organizations in the same industry or sector
* C) Organizational performance between firms/public sector organizations in different countries
* D) Organizational performance between different divisions of the firm

B) Organizational performance between firms/public sector organizations in the same industry or sector

13. Best in Class Benchmarking seeks to assess organizational performance?

* A) The nearest geographical competitor
* B) The competitor who is 'best in class' wherever that may be.
* C) The competitor who is the best in the industry
* D) The nearest principal competitor

B) The competitor who is 'best in class' wherever that may be

14. The purpose of a SWOT analysis is to analyze?

* A) The business environment in which an organization operates
* B) The strategic capability of an organization
* C) The business environment and the strategic capability of an organization relative to its competitors
* D) External and organizational environments

C) The business environment and the strategic capability of an organization relative to its competitors

15. SWOT should be?

* A) A general list of issues under each heading
* B) Focused on key issues and as specific as possible.
* C) Completed when an analysis of the external environment has been conducted.
* D) SWOT analysis is the best strategic management framework for analyzing the competitive positioning of an organization.

B) Focused on key issues and as specific as possible

17. Tell me who is your primary customer?

The first imperative and the heart of every successful strategy implementation-is allocating resources to customers. Continuously competing demands for resources from business units, support functions and external partners require a method for judging whether the allocation choices you have made are optimal.

18. How you prioritize the core values of shareholders, employs and customers?

Prioritizing core values should be the second pillar of your business strategy. For some companies, shareholders come first. For others, it may be employees. In other companies, it may be customers. There is no right or wrong, but choosing is necessary.

19. Which critical performance variables you tracking?

It's your job to ensure that your managers are tracking the right things by singling out those variables that spell the difference between strategic success and failure. Like the preceding two questions, the focus in this question is again on an adjective, this time the word critical.

20. How much committed employees are to helping each others?

Building commitment is the implementation imperative. I will offer a menu of techniques to foster commitment to achieving shared goals. Or, if rewarding self-interest is more appropriate for your business, I will explore alternative approaches you should employ.

21. How much valuable corporate strategy?

Corporate strategy needs to effectively allocate resources to the best investment opportunities, drive performance and raise expectations internally and externally, improve a company's competitive position and add value beyond the sum of its parts.

22. How much enduring corporate strategy?

In developing a corporate strategy, companies should consider long cycles and macro-trends while ensuring their plan is resilient and adaptive in times of turbulence.

23. How much forward-looking corporate strategy?

A solid corporate strategy appropriately anticipates risk, uncertainty and optional.

24. How much actionable corporate strategy?

Top-performing companies ensure their corporate strategy is both intuitive and realistic. It should be easy to communicate internally and externally and also provide for an approach that can be acted on by all business units at all levels.

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25. How do you generating creative tension?

To overcome such inertia, you must push people out of their comfort zones and spur them to innovate. I will provide a menu of techniques you can use to generate creative tension to ensure that everyone is thinking and acting like a winning competitor.