Mid-term assignment

Mid-term assignment

The rules

Submission date: 9am Thursday 31st May, online

No more than 3,000 words, bullet points/charts where appropriate, long on strategy and short on numbers; in other words, don’t dwell on valuations at this stage, but do suggest one or more targets.

Presentations on May 8th, 15th or 22nd, bring any visuals – 10 minute presentation, or less.

Assignment

Your team heads up the Business Development group at a media/comms company; you have been asked to develop and present a strategy review piece for the Board.

The Board wants to demonstrate a top-down approach in defining their growth strategy and then show how one or more specific opportunities fit the pre-defined strategy. Based on the Company's existing position and assets, the Board will expect a realistic plan for any suggestions you come up with; these might include acquisition (perhaps of one of the other teams!), organic growth, reductions or some combination. They’ll be looking for justification of any particular plan and especially including what the likely reactions of the following groups will be:

• Regulators
• Consumers
• Content suppliers
• Competitors
• Potential collaborators
• Your own organisation

Teams

Each team will represent a specific organisation within one of the following industries:

• Newspaper, magazine or book publishing
• Television - either a channel, producer or both
• Artist or artist organisation
• Music - record label
• Telecoms
• Technology company
• On-line aggregator - may be a search engine, content aggregator

Next steps

• Form a team and inform Lynne Bradley in the Course Office
• Select an industry and an organisation within it
• Create a wiki page