EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The purpose of the report was to discuss the business strategy of Cisco Systems Inc (Cisco), a company widely considered innovative. The report was to discuss the justification of Cisco’s status of innovative, how the business environment impacted on Cisco and it’s opportunities for innovation, their sources of competitive advantage, strategic options available to Cisco, and evaluate the risks of implementing the strategic change to achieve this option

This was done by evaluating Cisco’s current strategies, its business environment and markets, applying strategy frameworks in the context of its industry and innovation, and by analysing the risks that could be associated with implementing this change.

Cisco
By opening up their innovation to these ecosystem partners, it will engage the partners on a positive way and ensure that the partner’s complimentary products and services will be fully compatible with the UCS. The ecosystem approach will help speed up innovation, as more people working together to create innovative products or services are more likely to get superior products to market faster (Johnson, Whittington and Scholes, 2011).

Cisco has, since inception, been a first-mover in its markets. Cisco’s vision, “Changing the way we work, live, play and learn” (Cisco, 2012. Corporate Overview Pg 11), shows that they want to lead the market in developing networking technologies. This gives them considerable advantages, allowing them to become market leaders in these areas, and charge a premium for these products.

3.0 CISCO AND THEIR BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

When we discuss the business environment, we are in fact looking at the environment where the business operates. In this section the external environment will be analysed using PESTEL framework, focusing on some of the key drivers for change, use Porters Five Forces to analyse the Industry and will look at the opportunities and threats Cisco face.

3.1 THE MACRO ENVIRONMENT

The Macro Environment of a business is concerned with the external factors which affect