Choose a company you would like to work for. Using the Company Diamond tool in chapter 3 page 54 -58, analyze the strength (or weakness) of competitive advantage for your target company and for the two rival firms. Begin your research by looking at news reports, company filings, and press releases to create a working model of the Company Diamond. How would you evaluate the company's prospects for future performance?

Identify two companies in the same industry. Using their 10-K filing or other available data, determine the operating performance (market share, customer satisfaction, new product introductions, etc.) and financial performance (return on sales, return on assets or equity, free cash flow) of both companies. Using the data in the 10-K or annual report, create a list of resources and capabilities for each company(use the search tool to find the relevant words in the annual report PDF such as e.g., resources, capability, competency, advantage, assets,......etc). How do the differences in the strength of competitive advantages correlate with firm performance?

For the second part of this question, you might use the file "how to compare companies strategically" in the course materials module to help you craft a better understanding and also a better report of analysis. Note that in this framework, the sum of importance weights must equal 1, note that it is your responsibility to assign importance weights based upon your perception of the criteria and it should be logically assigned, then you can multiply the strength rating (which you also assign from 1 to 10 as explained in the model based upon how the company is doing in this regard) by the weight and get the weighted score for each company in each criteria and then do the summation and compare the companies you identified based upon those criteria and provide your explanations, diagnosis, and recommendations for these two companies to address challenges they are facing or to strengthen their positions or to improve on existing strengths...