INDEPENDENT UNIVERSITY, BANGLADESH

School of Business
MBA Program

Spring– 2020
Course: MBA 550 (Strategic Management)

ASSIGNMENT

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TWITTER

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Rahi Mun Farque
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ID: 2021686
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Submitted To
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Dr. Md. Nazmul Hossain

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November 28, 2020

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 Case Study: Twitter

Ques 1: Why is Twitter struggling? What role do industry and firm effects play here?

Ans: Twitter is struggling because it lacks the proactive management to get more users and
revenue for the company. Another reason for poor leadership and management that failed
to take advantage of good strategy. Twitter is lacking a clear guideline policy. Thus,
causing a delay in developing a strategy that will render the company the advantage over
similar companies. As we know that, Twitter is competing for more users against the social
media such as Snapchat, Facebook and its messaging services like WhatsApp, WeChat and
varieties of messenger applications.
The industry and firm effects here lie in the liability of the former CEO to define a clear
consistent strategy when the business was continuously losing money. The firm’s effects
are that, the company is focuses too much on its users base rather than growing it’s
advertised. However, advertisers should be should be the focus because, they provide the
revenue. Once twitter increase its revenue, the company can use the extra income to
implement a strategy to target geographical and demographical data that the social network
collects and infers about each user, including birth year, universities affiliation, network of
friends, interests, and so on. In addition, Twitter can use the extra revenue to gain an
advantage in the industry by developing a program that can advertise on mobile devices.

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Ques 2: What grade would you give Dick Costolo, Twitter’s CEO from 2010 to 2015?

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Support your decision with specifics. Also, list some of his leader ship strengths and

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weaknesses. What recommendations would you have for the new Twitter CEO to be a

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more effective strategic leader?

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Ans: Poor grade. Inconsistency and poorly planned strategies. When consistent revenue
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losses are evident, called for more precise, proactive strategies that maintained objectives
and goals that made sense and were followed through to completion and success.
Although the company started out with close to 300 million worldwide active users and
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“Twitter’s share price soared from $26 at its Initial Public Offering (IPO) to over $73
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within a few short weeks”. The company continually declined within the following year in
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a half. As stated in the book, “Twitter gained a junk rating and totaled 1.4 billion a year of
revenue while losing 1 billion a year”.
In my view to be an effective strategic leader some of the points I would surely recommend
to new Twitter’s new CEO which are given below:
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 Share Their Vision: A leader with vision has a clear idea of where they want to go,
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how to get there and what success looks like. Be sure to articulate your vision
clearly and passionately, ensuring his team understands how their individual efforts
contribute to higher level goals. Personally, working toward your vision with
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persistence, tenacity, and enthusiasm will inspire and encourage others to do the
same.
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 Make Hard Decision: To be an effective leader, the ability to make fast, difficult
decisions with limited information is critical. When facing a tough decision, start by
determining what you are trying to achieve. Consider the likely consequences of
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your decision and any available alternatives. Make your final decision with
conviction, take responsibility for it and follow it through. Being a resolute and
confident decision-maker will allow you to capitalize on opportunities and earn the
respect of your team.
 Confident and Unafraid of the Unknown: Great leaders are true visionaries, who
are not afraid to step outside their comfort zones. They are willing to take risks and
try new things. They’re all about seeing the organization continue to grow and
develop, instead of just settling down into a comfortable and complacent routine.
Theybyare
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  Welcome Failure: Failure is a crucial stepping-stone toward success. Not every
decision you make will result in a positive outcome; it is important that, as a leader,
you can both acknowledge and accept this early on. The key to growing from a
good leader into a great one is learning how to appreciate that failure can also often
lead to bigger achievements when it’s embraced rather than hidden from. In a
situation of failure, it’s important that you take responsibility for the problem and
be honest about what went wrong.
 Be Open to New Ideas: Good leaders have the emotional intelligence to
understand and accept that change is inevitable. Instead of trying to maintain a
status just for the sake of consistency, embrace change and innovation. Be open to
new ideas and alternative ways of thinking. Everyone brings a unique perspective
to the table, and that is something to take advantage of, not discourage.
Dick Costolo strength was his ability to start up a company and a set of mission. While his
weakness was the ability to adapt to challenges. Also, his long-term vision is not clear to
the company on competitive world. My recommendations for the new Twitter of CEO
would be to, make it clear his intentions for the company and to not be afraid of change.

Ques 3: Why is a good strategy so important, especially at high tech startups like Twitter?
Why is crafting a good strategy at Twitter so difficult? What are some of the pitfalls that a
CEO of a company such as Twitter needs to watch out for when crafting and implementing

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a strategy?

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Ans: Good strategies require knowing our industry and reading the market with great
analytical skills that makes the strategies chosen a success. A good strategy for a high tech-

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startup important because, it is an extremely first place industry with a high demand. Due
to, it only takes one minute to go behind the competitive world. The reason why having a
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strategy is so important is because it gives more time to get a sense of how they are
preforming, what their capabilities are, and if these capabilities are able to help them grow.
Some of these strategical points are given below:
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 Vision: A good strategy creates a vision and direction for the whole organization. It
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is important that all people within a company have clear goals and are following the
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direction, or mission of the organization. A strategy can provide this vision and
prevent individuals from losing sight of their company’s aims.
 Guide: A well-defined strategy will offer a guide on how your policy is performing
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internally. Also, how you are performing against your competition and what you
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need to stay relevant into the future.

 Trends: A strategy can identify trends and opportunities in the future. It can
examine the broader changes in market such as political, social or technological
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changes, as well as consumer changes, and can develop tactics so your business can
modify and develop to suit these future changes.
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The reason for Twitter’s difficulty in doing so, was losses around. Crafting a good strategy
for twitter is difficult because, of the continual change in technology and the consent
change for customer preferences.
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Some pitfalls to consider for Twitter is being sure to know what the consumer is looking
for in their product, what our competitors are doing successfully and staying ahead of them
with new innovations, and financial growth strategies that generated better revenue gains
for the company and its shareholders. The CEO need to watch out for pitfalls such as
making broad guidelines, bad financial decisions, staying relevant, a meaningfulness plan,
not considering implementation, an overwhelming plan, lack of communications and no
accountability.

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 Ques 4: Apply the three-step process for developing a good strategy outlined above
(diagnose the competitive challenge, derive a guiding policy, and implement a set of
coherent actions) to Twitter’s situation today. Which recommendations would you have for
Twitter to outperform its competitors in the future?

Ans: The three-step process for developing a good strategy are given below:
1. Diagnose the Competitive Challenge:
 The biggest competitive challenge for Twitter is to grow its user base to
become more valuable for online advertisers. Twitter is viewed by
advertisers as a niche application. Companies direct the bulk of their digital
ad dollars to Facebook and Google rather than Twitter.
2. Derive a Guiding Policy: Taking steps to accelerate user sign-ups and usage. For
example:
 Making the sign-up process and use of the services easier.
 Explaining the sometime idiosyncratic conventions on Twitter to a broader
audience.
 Rooting out offensive content.
3. Implement a Set of Coherent Actions: Throughout most of modern business
history, corporations have attempted to unlock value by matching their structures to
their strategies. Implement a strategy faces the challenge but when hurdle to

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overcome the situations it is easier to sustain in competitive world and do the

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business. Such as actions are:

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 Backing up policy with training and capital expenditure.
 Make adjustments that will lead to the increment of twitter user. For

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example: Twitter is fairly complicated, with the tweets and hashtags. The
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fact that we can view all tweets regardless of whom we follow can make it
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 Raise the revenue and resources that twitter can offering different method of
training and tutorials how to use the application to the public.
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 Break the minimum consequences of words level. In addition, bring a

adequate level of words such as (Facebook do now-a-days) where people
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can share their opinion full of thoughts and fruitfully.

Analyzing the external and internal environments consists of in-depth business analysis of
the internal aspects of the company as well as the external threats and weakness. A better
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business and corporate strategy would be ensuring the leader’s vision is to complete with
the appropriate strategies from a good SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats)
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analysis that’s current and precise. Implementing the necessary changes through structure,
culture, and control could have been done with inconsistencies were noted by the
committee, and leadership change earlier in the process should have been the first step.
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The competitive challenge is growing a higher user base while increasing revenue. Twitter
can derive a guiding policy by directing it attention to core users that are valuable to paid
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advertisers. This can be done narrowing the three selections of users to two, either valuable
or not; the company can than pick a direction to move the company.
My recommendations for Twitter would be to, make the program easier to use and to
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conduct a survey to see what users are interested in. They should also target leaders with
good performance record and experience in management, unlike their past leadership that
was led by a former comedian.

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