Scenarios, roadman, business targets and changing markets 1. A vision leads GE to its optimal desired state. A strategy can help GE reach this state through the actions it should take through its positioning and resources. GE can plan out its success through the strategy by achieving goals it set up for itself. The goals GE set up for itself were reducing cost with 15 %, improving quality with 15% and increasing access for customers with 15%. These goals help GE to select projects and reject projects.
Shoemaker (1995) explains how an interaction between basic trends and uncertainty can lead to multiple scenarios that a company can come in to in the future. One of the trends that played at the moment was affordable health care for everyone in America. President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, a political trend. GE foresaw this trend and the global population trends and hoped to benefit from healthcare related stimulus spending. GE believed it can position itself as a more caring conglomerate with hallucinations.
Within Hallucinations it came up with several innovative products such as Ultraist and Omega. A product like Omega could even led to first mover advantage of an affordable echo machine in a country like Indonesia with 18 new births for every 1000 people in 2010 (population trend). Yet, for a product to be really successful in the Gee’s eyes it must also help reach the three goals: reducing cost, increasing quality and access with 15%. For evidence to back up the claims for these goals, GE needed validation.
GE hired Oxford Analytical, a independent third-party source to validate the products to this 15 percent. 2. GE may develop several kind of technologies that can be on the edge of the field. The problem here is that the market must be ready for these technologies. Groveled (2007) explains how airdropping can help reaching the market in time with the right technology, to ensure a long term vision of Gee’s Healthcare division through market-product and technology strategy. 3. Scenario planning can be seen as telling a good story hat obtains different plots that looks at the past, presence and future.
The SOOT analysis looks the strengths and the weaknesses , but these can remain the same in the different plots . However, the opportunities and treats in each plot can differ. 4. Shoemaker (1995) explains how scenario planning simplifies the avalanche of data into a limited number of possible states. These possible states can help a manager cope with uncertainty. Within the business strategy of GE It can give predictions and adjustments around the uncertainty of new product velveteen.
Scenario planning also helps firms like GE tackle the biggest problem they have in their business strategy ; it helps a company to understand in what it does not know what it does not know. This situation, together with errors a manager can have such as tunnel vision or overconfidence can put GE in dangerous situations. For example, If the next president is Republican and he puts down the Affordable Care Act, which GE makes a lot of money of.
