Competence strategy formulation and implementation

Abstract

Sun Microsystems is a 22-year-old company that engages itself in the business of network computing. Around four years back it started a development center in India. The fact that India had a lot of cheap but valuable skill and talent available made it a compelling value proposition for Sun Microsystems to move to India. Sun treats its centers as virtual extensions of its business units. The center is responsible mostly for providing facilities and a local site strategy for various functions like HR, finance. Each business unit then enters into a contract with the site for the provision of various resources required for the operation of the extensions of the business units. With the emergence of the India engineering center (referred to as IEC) as a successful center, every line of business is now looking at India as their target for expansion plans. However this kind of growth would have to be controlled in such a way that IEC grows qualitatively also. Such a growth has therefore brought forward the need for strategizing the growth. For the center to grow within the organization, there is a necessity to add more value to the organization. To look at the meaning of value, one needs to understand the business that Sun Microsystems is in, the way the operations in Sun are done and the way that the other centers in Sun have grown. Using the output of such an analysis, the center can chart its way to adding more value-Value however is a product of the competency within the organization. Thus the center can strategize its growth on the basis of the competency such that it would end in the addition of value to the organization. Thus this project is about finding a competency strategy that will help the center in adding more value to the organization.