The wisdom of the crowd? How to best balance alignment and common understanding with crowd collected market data in strategic planning

As most companies, ABB runs a strategic planning cycle. This is done as a rolling planning with a time horizon of 5+ years. The strategy is reviewed every half year: every summer, strategic plans are decided upon and are put in action; every winter, these plans are detailed out for the fiscal year ahead. For this, the top management team of ABB needs good information such as information about market insights, market outlooks, and strategic fundamentals (e.g., information about competitors, etc.).

Rather than relying on a few individuals’ input (such as from strategic staff functions) or selective market studies, ABB has started to collect these data points from all its sales managers, channel managers, business developers, and segment managers. Thus, information is sought from very decentralized levels.

In the past, this was typically done via Excel templates. The consolidation of the data, aggregation, crosschecks and alignment was time-consuming and error-prone. In Q1 2019, ABB will start to collect the data using a unified process supported by a planning system (project name STRATOS). While this makes the process smoother and less error-prone, the difficult task of consolidating and “making sense” of the data will still persist. ABB foresees that the role of country managers and market segment managers are key in order to be able to best align and consolidate the collected data. However, this is a new task and process and ABB requests support to identify concrete ways how the country managers and market segment managers can be supported in this task, for example, by:

• defining and implementing early warning signals,
• highlighting huge variances in market size estimates (which, in turn, should trigger further investigation), or
• fine-tuning process steps that the managers should follow before they can submit the consolidated data upwards.

This is a great business project in the context of a large industrial group, a hands-on strategy process, and modern, IT-enabled crowd-strategies. It represents a unique opportunity to collect real-life project experience in a very dynamic environment. ABB is a pioneering technology leader that works closely with utility, industry, transportation and infrastructure customers to write the future of industrial digitalization and realize value.

Knowledge and Understanding:

After completing this course, students will have:

• extended their knowledge on strategy processes (especially strategic planning processes) 
• learned how to collect, analyze, and structure data
• developed project management skills
• received feedback from practitioners on the outcome of their analyses and the viability of their recommendations

Cognitive & Subject Specific Skills:

Upon completion of the course, students will have the ability to:

• develop critical thinking and defend their developed arguments in class and in front of practitioners
• apply tools for analyzing challenges in the global environment

Key Skills:

Students upon completion of the course will have the ability to:

• conduct research on global strategy processes
• gather and filter information efficiently and effectively on a specific research topic
• organize teamwork including presentation and report writing skills
• shift material quickly and efficiently to structure it into a coherent argument and to present it in a concise way tailored to a professional audience
• present this business project to the partner in a professional way, through personal presentation skills and support of suitable media,
• utilize the theoretical knowledge and the interpersonal skills developed throughout their studies to solve a real-life challenge.

As this course format heavily relies on personal interaction between students, ABB and faculty, presence in sessions is mandatory. More than two times absence during the sessions announced at the beginning of the seminar will lead to exclusion from the seminar.

This business project uses a combination of discussions with ABB representatives and external solution providers, feedback sessions, presentations, group coaching, as well as individual/group work outside the classroom. Groups of students will be formed in the kick-off session.

In a first kick-off session with the supervising faculty, the challenges and milestones of the case will be outlined. At the same time, students will be familiarized with the guiding principles of project work, with the project plan and rules in handling the supervising faculty/ ABB interaction.

Afterwards, the students will officially kick-off the project in collaboration with ABB. In a plenary session, ABB will outline the challenges from their perspective and provide useful input for the project (e.g. experience on former, related projects) and the specific challenges to be dealt with. As a result of that, students will come up with the precise scope of the project.

Subsequently, the students will receive training on the needed software solutions and will start the collaboration with ABB.

Throughout the process, various feedback loops (in coaching and feedback sessions with the faculty and/or ABB) will be installed to make sure that students are on the right track and get relevant input needed in each project phase.

Results will be presented to ABB managers at the end of this process. The verbal and printed presentations will be assessed. Students will have to actively participate in class, hold group presentations and summarize their findings in a final report (final presentation document). It is the policy of the class that no late assignments will be accepted under any circumstances.

Assessment is based on the quality of the mid- and end-term presentation, the participation during the classes, group members’ peer ratings, and the final report (final presentation document).

Group assessment:

• Mid-term Presentation (PowerPoint Document): 20%
• Mid-term Presentation (oral Presentation): 10%
• End-term Presentation (PowerPoint Document): 30%
• End-term Presentation to Corporate Partner: 20%

Individual:

• Peer rating: 20%

Students will be assessed on:

• their ability to understand and analyze international strategy and/or management challenges,
• their ability to use the appropriate analytical techniques and to come up with relevant advice,
• the quality of the presentations and the written reports; by quality in this context we mean the clarity and persuasiveness of each bit of work. This implies an ability to work in teams.

Students failing to participate in their teams will lose the marks for that piece of work.

WU will retain a copy of all coursework for Teaching Quality Assessment as part of the ongoing quality assessment program. It is important, therefore, that students make a second copy for their own purposes.