1) To implement a corporate strategy, a firm needs to have a strong set of capabilities to “parent” the set of business units that the firm has established or acquired. Given Sony’s history and organization structure, what would you argue are Sony’s strongest parenting or corporate capabilities? How will the new strategy utilize these capabilities?

2) Do you think that Sony has the right organization structure to foster the necessary integration among its electronic and entertainment content businesses that its revamped strategy seems to entail?

Answer:

1. Sony’s strongest corporate capabilities are its innovative product designs and its ability to quickly to improve the existing products. Innovation was critical to the success of Sony in all of its product lines. It used this innovation and product improvement capabilities in its multiple product areas. Innovation in its products has been the foundation for the organizational structure changes at Sony. In order to share its resources and its capabilities across all of its business units, Sony continued its operations by linking its business activities across its multiple departments. Thus, innovation in product development and product/process improvement has been the strongest corporate capabilities for Sony.
2. The revamped strategy for Sony is that it divided its core business units into three segments such as entertainment, electronics and ofcourse finance. Under each category, the business functions such as research and development, accounting, HR, sales, marketing, etc are enlisted. Prior to this strategy, Sony had a multidivisional structure as its SBU (Strategic Business Unit). In the revamped strategy, Sony requires more integration than its previous strategy because each core business unit has its own performance criterion which would make it highly difficult to integrate the business functions.