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Opportunities
1. External pressure to lower higher education costs, including textbook
prices.
2. Internet savvy students and professors.
3. Professors and students largely displeased with current textbook model.
4. Technology allows textbook customization.

Threats
1. Strong competitors.
2. Competitors are few, very large, and global.
3. Substitute technologies exist.
In a nutshell, SWOT analysis helps you identify strategic alternatives that
address the following questions:
1. Strengths and Opportunities (SO)—How can you use your strengths to
take advantage of the opportunities?
2. Strengths and Threats (ST)—How can you take advantage of your
strengths to avoid real and potential threats?
3. Weaknesses and Opportunities (WO)—How can you use your
opportunities to overcome the weaknesses you are experiencing?
4. Weaknesses and Threats (WT)—How can you minimize your
weaknesses and avoid threats?
Before wrapping up this section, let’s look at a few of the external and internal
analysis tools that might help you conduct a SWOT analysis. These tools are covered
in greater detail toward the end of the chapter.
Internal Analysis Tools
Internal analysis tools help you identify an organization’s strengths and
weaknesses. The two tools that we identify here, and develop later in the chapter, are
the value chain and VRIO tools. The value chain asks you, in effect, to take the
organization apart and identify the important constituent parts. Sometimes these parts
take the form of functions, like marketing or manufacturing. For instance, Disney is
really good at developing and making money from its branded products, such as
Cinderella or Pirates of the Caribbean. This is a marketing function (it is also a design
function, which is another Disney strength).
Value chain functions are also called capabilities. This is where VRIO comes
in. VRIO stands for valuable, rare, inimitable, and organization—basically, the VRIO
framework suggests that a capability, or a resource, such as a patent or great location,
is likely to yield a competitive advantage to an organization when it can be shown
that it is valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and supported by the organization (and,
yes, this is the same organization that you find in P-O-L-C). Essentially, where the
value chain might suggest internal areas of strength, VRIO helps you understand
whether those strengths will give it a competitive advantage. Going back to our
Disney example, for instance, strong marketing and design capabilities are valuable,
rare, and very difficult to imitate, and Disney is organized to take full advantage of
them.

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