Hustle as Strategy

Amar Bhide’s article entitled “Hustle as Strategy” offers an emergent business strategy approach, known as hustle. The article borrows a lot from Whittington’s classical strategy, because it focuses on management’s strategies and decisions on handling the cases of the market conditions are very critical in pursuing success. Precisely, a firm has to make choice(s) after carefully examining the internal and external factors, which the management assumes to have significant influence on the business. In reality, the extent to which the management understands and harmonizes the interplay between internal and external factors in a firm influences the situation strategy that they would adopt. In addition, for a firm to compete internationally, there are specific strategies that the management applies during the pursuit. Internal factors have a crucial role in establishing the best way, in which a firm would carry out their global strategy. For example, with increased competition, market penetration/diversification, market development and product development, it is only through strategic planning and following the plans systematically that can keep the business in both domestic and international market. These elements have been highlighted by the Ansoff‘s matrix model. To this end, a firm can use Ansoff’s matrix to predict its chances of success. A firm can evaluate all the activities by carrying out during the first stages of operation as a part of the market penetration. A firm can then develop its products to make them suitable and this will contribute to market development. After the business has developed, it will diversify its services to other locations, and can also to offer additional products to customers. Under the hustle strategy, it can also be supported by the statement that “the traditional model of competitive strategy calls for companies to seek sustainable advantage over their rivals by erecting massive barriers to competitors” (Bhide 1986, p.59).  Despite the various business challenges, which the companies face, they have to make sure that they develop innovative strategies that are more global than their competitors. Amar Bhide supported this statement by highlighting that “in a world where there are no secrets, where innovations are quickly imitated or become obsolete, and the theory of competitive advantage may have had its day” (Bhide 1986, p. 59). Some of the situation strategies, which a firm developed, include expansion to other regions or entering the key markets, standardization or improving on the quality and quantity of the products, Value addition, adoption of the marketing mix and market positioning, and integrating cross-country competitive strategies.

Under the concept of hustle strategy, Amar Bhide emphasized the Value of vision by stating that “a vision is the glue that holds together a firm, with its many diverse and unrelated activities and its processions of recruits and defectors” (Bhide 1986, p.65). In business, it is of great importance to formulate and adopt expansion strategies so that a firm can command a larger market for the volumes of products. Concerning the rationale for using the strategy, expansion is important especially when the primary market is already saturated and that not many people could continue to purchase a firm’s products. At such time, a firm reorganised its intended markets by exploring new opportunities in other countries. Through expansion to the key global markets, a firm becomes able to learn the business environment in these countries, thereby able to shift their market strategy to suit the business (Best 2006, p. 43). The expansion strategy that the business adopts could make it gain a competitive edge between the two, or among the countries of operation, thus enhancing growth and integration. Moreover, standardization is the other strategy that a firm peruses in developing its products. In fact, the companies are compelled to adapt to the local needs so that people can identify with such products. The rationale of using the strategy is that it increases the product’s preferences, making a firm benefit from the economies of scale. During the product’s standardization, a firm may customize some of the superficial ingredients.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the article

The main strengths such as important business strategies are convincing. For example, one of the important strategies to be employed by a firm is value addition, as explored by Amar Bhide “While hardware and software might account for a high proportion of the value added by financial institutions in the future, performance of employees will remain the critical differentiator” (Bhide 1986, p.61). Value addition is very important in commercial development because the manufactured goods attract higher prices than the semi-processed or raw ones. The rationale for using this strategy is that, it enables a firm to gain from the high volume of trade resulting from customer preference. In this regard, there would be leverage on the skills and the country’s strength. Moreover,  areas with people exhibiting high skills and relatively low wages for the workforce is more attractive to value addition, because this would make the products more competitive in the market (Webster 2010, p.7).

However, the main weakness of the article “Hustle as Strategy” is its failure to explore important concepts such as adopting marketing mix and market positioning strategy. In most business operations, carrying out an analysis of the marketing mix and establishing the market positioning of a firm is very significant. It helps in determining the marketing programme and strategy that a firm should develop and adopt (Seddon 2009, p.59). Despite the assumed scarcity of good ideas, a uniform, systematic, and strategic approach could enable a firm to explore the available ideas of different people in various countries of operation. In sum, this would help in making a firm focus on the best ideology that could help it grow. The justification for this strategy is that it increases internal focus in a firm in developing a brand that would sell across many countries.