Strategic Management; Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage at Hewlett Packard

Strategic Management; Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage at Hewlett Packard

The key strategic issues facing Hewlett Packard as it seeks to generate and sustain competitive advantage.

The objective of any organisation is to

"Create and sustain long term competitive advantage" get quote

Corporate strategy is central to achieving this through making assumptions of an organisation's external environment, its resources, and formulating a plan of how they should operate. The organisation upon which I have conducted my research: Hewlett Packard (HP), have recently been reported of having

"Some cost and profitability problems" (Analyst-Goldman Sachs 2005)

Added to this has been the threat from competitive rival Dell as their profits and market share grew. Using key frameworks, I will examine and conclude the key strategic issues contributing to these issues.

To complete this analysis, I will focus on the following key areas:

- What are the current strategic issues facing Hewlett Packard?
- In light of these issues, how does Hewlett Packard create value and why?
- How are these values organised and managed?
- Does this value enable Hewlett Packard to sustain competitive advantage?

Hewlett Packard operates as a market leader in the fast changing, highly competitive information technology market and was renowned for its collaborative and decentralised structure-directly influenced by the two original founders. In recent years however, a rapid economic slowdown and the end of a ‘boom' in demand for computer products and downturn in consumer spending, has seen Hewlett Packard having to evaluate their external environment, internal structure and processes in order to generate competitive advantage over their rivals, and refrain from:

"Slowly declining into mediocrity and irrelevance" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1168012.stm

A brief examination of Hewlett Packard's external environment is necessary in order to fully understand the current pressures of their marketplace, and enable an analysis of the organisation....