Capstone Project Guidelines

 

Capstone Project Guidelines

The Capstone Paper is the exercise that comes closest to performing strategic analysis in the real world. Specifically, in your team, you will work on an unframed problem, and rely on others to help resolve that problem.

 

 

Assignment Overview:

Assume you are a consultant hired to perform a comprehensive strategic analysis of a firm. Teams must analyze a firm that is currently undergoing a strategic change, a strategic move or facing a strategic challenge threatening the survival of the firm. The event must have been covered in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The New York Times or BusinessWeek after Aug 1, 2016.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Teams reserve their firm on a first come first served basis.

Each report must identify the current firm strategy, key issues or challenges and provide an analysis of firm, industry and macro-environmental data to build prioritized recommendations for the next strategic choice and implementation. This means the teams must have an opinion (based on their data collected) as to what the firm should do achieve competitive advantage and why.

 

 

Capstone Paper — upload electronic copy to the dropbox on Camino.

 

Project guidelines:

– All capstone project reports should have, in this order:

• title page,

(2) executive summary (summary abstract of the report and its conclusions)

(3) table of contents

(4) table of illustrations

(5) the body of the text (data, analyses, critical challenges, recommendations). The
page numbering starts with the first page of the text, not with the executive
summary

(6) list of references used or cited.

– The project write-up should look like a professional report–not a memo.

– The report should be readable, “scanable,” succinct, objective, data-intensive and focused on general management and strategy.

– The report should be pleasing and inviting to read.

 

Format Guidelines:

– Double space all pages, 12 point font, 1” margins.

– In your report, note all important data sources in footnotes—not endnotes. All citations should be properly formatted (Chicago Style).

– Exhibits should be of your creation, your analysis; not copied from some other  source.

– Exhibits should appear with the text, not at the end of the document.

– To restate in the text what an exhibit shows is not very useful. Provide interpretations of what you think the exhibit suggests or shows and why it is important.

–  There is no length requirement for this report. Most Capstone Projects are 35-50   pages (this includes executive abstract, body of report, tables/figures and references)

– The executive abstract should be 2-3 pages in length, no more.

– The abstract should begin with the key challenges you believe the firm faces. You should write the abstract last

– Do not reproduce web pages or financial statements in your report.

– Do not insert writing from articles in the report.

 

Style Guidelines:

– Introductions and conclusions should be used for every section in the report, and

they should indicate what’s been accomplished so far. Provide transitions from one

section to another.

– Employ the following often in your report: headings and sub-headings, topic sentences, a generous sprinkling of data in every section, insightful analyses, spelling and grammar checkers (human and otherwise), and a fair amount of white space.

– Every exhibit should be explained or interpreted. No exhibit should stand in the

report without interpretation. If you think certain data in charts or tables are

important, find a way to convey that to your readers (e.g., bold, italics, color). Make

the report easy-to-follow, -read, and -understand.

– Every exhibit must be sourced (not in footnotes, but at its bottom), have a

title attached to it outside of the exhibit, and be numbered and referenced in

the Table of Illustration.

– Let the data do the talking. When you do not have directly relevant data by which to make a claim, explain how you came to your position or claim on that issue.

– Expose the quality of your team’s thinking. Don’t preach theory or principles. Use theory and principles to interpret and analyze data.

– If the first portion of the report is well-done (e.g., industry analysis and internal analysis), the second half can be quicker by avoiding some redundancy.

– It is usually important to point a reader to previous or future analysis if the

latter analysis will rely upon it. Indicate section, page numbers, etc.

– Challenges should extend, integrate, prioritize, or re-emphasize data and

analysis. This section should point the way logically to the set of recommendations.

– Recommendations (in response to the causes of the issues faced) should be

prioritized, detailed and indentified as short-, medium- or long-term.

– Never write recommendations that present new data or new analysis (for the

first time). Recommendations should flow directly from your analysis as

summed up in the challenges section.

 

Data Needed for Your Project:

– Competitors’ strategies, performance, competitive positions; perhaps strategic

groupings of competitors to separate the “direct competitors” from the “indirect

competitors.” It is also possible to find ways to limit the competitor analysis by

choosing an appropriate set of representatives to analyze instead of a large set of

them.

– Industry structure (entry barriers, supplier and buyer power, substitutes,

complementors), dynamics, which group captures economic value, key factors of

success in the industry (what’s important, what’s changing, the phase of development in the industry), etc.

– Industries that are “embryonic” or in the early stage of rapid growth in their life

cycles will be difficult to analyze due to a lack of data to determine industry forces.

Your objective in this kind of situation is to clarify and simplify the mess without

reverting to premature closure or fiat. It is important to embrace yet simplify the

ambiguity or mess, for that is how firms in these kinds of environments succeed.

This does not mean you can avoid coming to conclusions or decisions.

– Market segmentation (customers’ profiles, their wants or needs, their purchasing

decisions). This is one area that many teams struggle a great deal over, as good

customer data can be very difficult to come by. You may have to make assumptions,

but those assumptions must be explicitly explained and justified.

– Focal company performance, strategy, value chain, goals, product/markets,

competitive premise, financial health, and related functional or corporate

elements that are important (culture, organizational structure, etc.), readiness for

change, strategic capabilities, etc.

– Most all of this data are not available through broad industry aggregators (Hoovers, Factiva, Mintel, etc.) or from financial databases without considerable refinements and constructions. The best data for these descriptions are broad, in-depth, lengthy, and qualitative research reports from periodicals like BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and trade journals for the industry.

– Be aware that most company’s own data provisions (10-Ks, company websites,

investor-relations articles, etc.) serve a company’s own public-relations objectives.

– Recognize “intentions,” “beliefs,” “plans,” and “proclamations” mean very little until they are executed with significant and consistent resources, and when success or failure can be measured. Current and past performance matters. When the future

arrives, then you can take it i