If you ever tried to analyze why some big organizations fail? Or ask yourself why sometimes startups change established industries. Organizations fail because they haven't identified and interpret market opportunities and threats correctly, and as a result, they have developed unsuitable competitive strategies. Think about famous case studies like Kodak, a former leader in photography that missed out on the disruptive innovation of digital photography. Or Motorola, a former market leader on phones that missed out on the smartphone market. So far, we've only discussed the simple case of the organization following one competitive strategy. That is, developing a value proposition for one market or market segment and for one industry. The problem is that most products and industries follow a fairly predictable lifecycle, as you can see in this figure. Without going into too much detail here. In the early stages, product categories and industries grow quickly and it's good for organizations to enter or be in these markets. However, as they mature competition typically gets fiercer and price competition increases. Based on that, it's important that you prepare your organization to be able to generate enough revenue from ongoing business activities to survive, but also generate enough resources to set the organization up for the future. As a strategist, you need to think ambidextrously. You need to set up your strategy to exploit current advantages and opportunities while simultaneously using your resources and capabilities to form new advantages. That's what we're exploring in this week's videos. Corporate-level strategy decisions, looking at whether investing in other opportunities is a good idea for your organization. This relates back to our week one content, where we recognized that on the corporate level, you have to make decisions about which product markets and customer segments your organization should be active in. To do this, we'll discuss the organization's business portfolio and then look into possible growth strategies.