Copenhagen Business School
E-types design firm strategy formulation
The innovative and price-insensitive sector needs a bottom-up look towards its strategies. It should be mentioned that emergent strategies work better in design business.
2. UNDERSTANDINGTHEENVIRONMENT
WHERESHOULDWECOMPETE?HOWSHOULDWECOMPETE?
General Environment
P E S T E L
GDP Per Capita World Map
Possible Competitors
DubaiLondon
Partnership Program
Success Patterns
Growth Map
Client Attributes Unique! Not the Best!
In order to reach out to price-insensitive clients, e-types needs to conduct an analysis on eco-
nomic and industrial standings of countries. It is obvious that the first logical target market for
e-types could be countries with an industrial context or those with a higher GDP per capita. It
needs to be mentioned that not all the countries follow the same working regular nations and
e-types might get exposed to different cultures.
As the main portion of clients for e-types come from enterprises, it could be told that they need
to find a channel for getting connected to organizations and businesses.
An optimized channel, which can get e-types connected to businesses and simultaneously pave
the way for them to enter local markets easily would be business consultant companies.
I propose e-types signs contracts with consultants in each of main business mega-cities of the
world.
By studying over several successful
design offices, which are active glob-
ally, we can collect a list of factors
that contribute to their success. By
making comparisons and through
the collected data as a whole, suc-
cess patterns can be identified.
Those factors and patterns, if not
already applied in e-types, could be
organizational objectives in terms of
resources and capabilities.
E-types needs to design several concept projects, to fill the gap in its portfolio. The projects could be defined after studying
the results of the studies on the general environment and task environment, highlighting potential clients.
E-types needs to come up with a set of values that are unique to its design language. I call it DNA of their designs and it can
be easily found in each of their design works, despite being unique. This value is a way to grab the attention of price-insen-
sitive group of clients.
Presence in high-GDP nations and industrial or financial capitals of the world is a most for growth. It is obvious that regula-
tions and relation networks won’t be similar in destinations, so e-types needs a reliable channel of relationships to the des-
tination spots. As the main group of clients are businesses, signing partnerships with business consultant in target nations
could open a wide window for them.
These office firms reveal a pricey
piece of information in their portfolio
and that is the list of their clients. By
studying the attributes and perspec-
tives of those clients and matching
them with successful design offices’
capabilities and reputation factors,
we can have a deeper understanding
of what kind of clients we need to tar-
get and what need of them is to get
satisfied by our design.
Strategy formulation is not about de-
cisions leading us to be the best in
the business. It is indeed about mak-
ing decisions that make us unique!
By having a detailed view of the com-
petitors and the potential markets, it
is possible to identify a gap or a value
proposition which has not been of-
fered already.
Shanghai New York SingaporeSidney
Task Environment
Pininfarina RKS Studio IDEO Zaha Hadid
MAHDI SABAMEHR
3. RESOURCESANDCAPABILITIES
WHATMAKESE_TYPESAHARD-TO-REPLACEDESIGNOFFICE? Human Resources Capabilities
Capabilitiesareessentialinconvertingresourcestovaluableassets
Tangible Resources Intangible Resources
Human Resources is the most important kind of resources for a design firm. The value proposition they provide, is
highly dependent on the quality of work their designers deliver. In order to gain any kind of success, it is highly crucial to
invest on Human Resources. My strategy for e-types has a meaningful emphasis on recruiting, training and leveraging
human resources.
As a Denmark-based company, e-types has to develop a plan for attracting young talents from Denmark. To be more
specific, they need to analyze and study design schools in Denmark and conduct a channel of relationship to lure highly
talented young designers from the mentioned schools.
In each step of invading a new location, creating a channel for attracting young talents from the host culture and nation
will be ahead of all activities regarding instituting new headquarters.
Having a detailed plan for employing interns from high-rated design schools would help e-types to get familiar with the
capabilities of young talents as well as starting to train them from an early age.
Alongside with having a look to young talents, the current designers and experienced employees must be considered
as the heart of any innovation and growth for e-types.
E-types, as a leading design office, needs to secure a lev-
el of tangible resources, such as high-tech design com-
puters and AR or VR devices.
As an office that is aiming to give service to price-insen-
sitive clients, e-types needs to be located in a high-end of-
fice (offices) and have an investment on its appearance
as it talks to the customers.
Any strategies for growing tangible resources, should
follow the mindset that they get from the big picture they
have in mind and has an attitude towards flexibility to
ensure they can reshape in cases of immediate growth.
A design office, which’s product most of the times is an
intangible design element, has lots to do with intangible
resources.
The unique design language, the portfolio, the relation-
ship channels they have created and so on and so forth,
are considered as their main resources, they need to
leverage in order to achieve their objectives.
For a design company, tangible and intangible resources
might reflect an identical sense of presence, so e-types
needs to pay attention to both in a steady manner.
Well-Tailored Design process
A major contribution to the capabilities of a service business is its innovative pro-
cesses, which in this case is innovative design process. At e-types ac considerable
effort needs to be taken into account to pave the way for a unique approach towards
projects
Organizational Culture and Structure
In order to leverage the human resources and capacities, in this case “innovation”, the
organizational culture needs to encourage contribution and participation. In order to
reach to this goal, a flat organization with a citizenship culture needs to be
implemented
Knowledge Sharing and Management
Innovation and creativity occur when an organization lubricates the flow of informa-
tion and knowledge. An enhanced Knowledge Management System (KMS) is essen-
tial in order to keep knowledge and information flowing among the organization
Iteration and Learning
In order to make the capabilities less replicable and durable enough, agility of teams
needs to meet high standards. A learning system which learns soft and hard skills in
each project and resets its skills in every iteration, makes e-types and edgy office.
MAHDI SABAMEHR
4. EMERGENTSTRATEGIES
INADYNAMIC,HIGHLYCOMPETITIVEENVIRONMENTFLEXIBILITYISESSENTIAL
Emergent Strategies
As a design office, the competition e-types faces as well as the general environment is considered to be an always changing environment, in which it is cru-
cial to be as “flexible” as possible. To this end they need to go for an emergent strategy over a deliberate strategy and form a learning organization. Making
this possible requires several situations that enables the organization to learn and “Emerge“.
Middle Managers Are Key to Successful Strategic Planning
Emergent strategies require a learning organization, in which participation and contribution is possible for almost all of the employees. Unlike deliberate strategic planning, in which only
top managers take part, in emergent strategies middle managers play an important role as they are the bridge to fill the gap between the top level managers and employees, having a
detailed sight on operations and projects.
Standing meetings
Whether during projects or not, short daily meetings are crucial for mid-level managers to collect information and innovative voice from employees. The culture of scheduled short meet-
ings or morning meetings enhances the culture of participation, engagement and corporate citizenship. This eliminates the shades between the experiences of the employees and orga-
nization.
Bottom-Up Strategies
Most of the innovative organizations, put employees in charge for defining strategies for the organization, as they are the frontiers of the organization in dealing with problems, clients
and organizational resources. Creativity and learning occur during challenges, so putting employees in charge for setting objectives and developing strategic ideas seems to help e-types
with learning.
Lean Start-up proposals
It is obvious that in terms of flexibility and learning, start-ups are pretty successful, so e-types can study and analyze success factors of start-ups. One major contributor to the success
in start-ups is lean start-up methods and mindset. E-types can implement some of the principals of lean start-up in their organization, in order to accelerate the learning process.
Gamification and data-based KMS
Data is essential for learning. Mining big data from organization’s operations and applying data science techniques to learn from the data mined, seems like a promising framework. Addi-
tionally, Knowledge Management Systems can pave the way for the circulation of the data inside the organization. Data collection and Knowledge Sharing via KMS, both can be enhanced
by implementing Gamification techniques, that can be beneficial in motivating a desired behavior, which is sharing data and knowledge. The data can be analyzed and reveal patterns for
the managers to analyze and learn from.
MAHDI SABAMEHR
5. EMERGENTSTRATEGIES:RESOURCESANDCAPABILITIES
Managingtoplananyimprovementinresourcesandcapabilitieswithaflexibleapproach Based on the lessons e-types learns from its internal and external environment, there will be
decisions made for improving and innovating its resources and capabilities. These decisions
alongside with frameworks for imroving resources and capabilities shape the future of the e-types.
Resource-based view
Gaining and sustaining competitive advantages for e-types over time and based on the lessons from internal
and external environment and operations, needs resources to get aligned with the goals. In RBV the firm relies
on its rare and unique resources to gain and sustain its edge over competitors.
It is possible to capture external opportunities just by adjusting new approaches for exploiting the current
resources than acquiring new resources, which will be costly to the organization.
In order to make sure competitors won’t be able to exploit the same resources and gain the same edge in a
market, which is shared with e-types, the resources should be planned to get as “Heterogeneous” and
“Immobile” as possible.
All processes and structures in the organization, alongside with capabilities could make it happen. It needs
to be mentioned that an always-training human resources program might make e-types advantages more
durable
VRIO
VRIO framework helps the analyzing teams to conduct deeper researches and make more rational decisions
for the organization in terms of assessing and acquiring resources and capabilities. A learning organization
always relies on the data from external and internal environment.
In each iteration, data scientists and analysts may reveal patterns of weaknesses and/or strengths in the
organization. Building on or making decisions to invest on acquiring resources and capabilities need to con-
sider VRIO framework requirements. All the considered resources and capabilities need to fulfill the following
characteristics:
On condition that the resources and capabilities have mentioned characteristics, they can be a source of
sustainable competitive advantage for e-types.
Valuable Rare Costly to imitate Organized to capture value
As mentioned before, human resources are considered to be the most important and valuable source of competi-
tive advantage for a design firm. E-types needs to conduct training and learning road-maps for its current employ-
ees and remove every single bump in the innovation and creativity of its employees, which can be identified during
time. They also need to increase the engagement rate of their employees to increase the organizational efficiency.
I propose Gamification methods for leveraging possibilities for engagement and education.
MAHDI SABAMEHR
6. 5Ps of Mintzberg
PLAN
PATTERN
PLOY
POSITION
PERSPECTIVE
Grow business in diverse markets by conducting channels
Unique project management and process/ Dedicated organizational culture/ Innovation per iteration
Promotion campaigns, highlighting on resources and capabilities that are not checked by VRIO
Capture the position of the highest-ranked, high-end Scandinavian design office
Innovation culture/ Data-driven company/ Innovation per iteration
MAHDI SABAMEHR
8. E-TYPES WITH AN BOTTOM-UP STRUCTURE
In an innovative organisation, operational employees
play an important role in strategy formulation. E-types
as a learning organization, needs to adjust organization
with this mindset and empower all its mid-level
managers and employees.
Flat organization
Learning Culture
Corporate citizenship
Data-driven decision making system
Empowered employees
Knowledge Sharing culture
Innovation in every iteration
Fast meetings
MAHDI SABAMEHR
