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Business-Level Strategy

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BUSINESS-LEVEL STRATEGY
By Alan S. Gutterman 1
Abstract
Growth is a key goal and objective for emerging companies and management must carefully determine the best way to combine the core competencies within a firm’s functional departments to provide the firm with the best opportunity for achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage in its chosen environment. This report focuses on the process of setting business level-strategy, which includes (1) selecting the domain(s) in which the firm will be competing for scarce resources (e.g., capital, personnel, technology, inputs and customers) and (2) positioning the firm in each chosen domain so that its function-based core competencies are most effectively leveraged to establish a competitive advantage. The overall goal of business-level strategy is to protect the firm’s position in its current domain and, if possible, enlarge the domain in which the firm can operate with a competitive advantage.
I.

Overview

Senior executives and managers involved in the development and implementation of business-level strategies are tasked with identifying the core competencies within the various functional departments of the company and combining them in a way that provides the company with the best opportunity for achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage in its chosen environment. The key choices that must be made when setting business-level strategy include: (1) selecting the domain(s) in which the company will be competing for scarce resources (e.g., capital, personnel, technology, inputs and customers) and (2) positioning the company in each chosen domain so that its function-based core competencies are most effectively leveraged to establish a competitive advantage. The overall goal of business-level strategy is to protect the company’s position in its current domain and, if possible,

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