Sharp
• Known for its televisions
• Origins in mechanical pencils
• With Sharp struggling as a consumer-electronics company, the company will ramp up an experiment they started in July, 2013 – Strawberry farming.
• Sharp’s LED lights, sensors, and air-purification system are key inputs into the growth of the strawberries.
• Will not enter business of selling strawberries.
• The company wants to create an agricultural engineering business that will focus on factory design, technology that monitors growing conditions, and maintenance.
• The company will also begin to sell sensors that will enable companies to monitor the purification of the air.
• Shift from consumers to business customers.

Since Sharp’s conception, they have had two major shifts in their core business. Originally a mechanical pencil maker, the company has, now, long been known for consumer electronics, namely their TVs. With their consumer-electronics suffering, and reporting of a $5.3 billion net loss, the company could be forced to shift their corporate level strategy. Sharp has started a project in which they will be growing strawberries in a controlled location near Dubai. They will be gathering data on how its cultivation techniques work to “achieve stable production of high-quality strawberries.” The company will not enter the business of selling strawberries, but rather an agricultural engineering business that will focus on technology to monitor growing conditions. With that said, Sharp is shifting from consumers to business customers.
Sharp’s concentration is horizontal expansion. It isn’t really addressed in the article, but they have expanded into new segments within their core industry. One example would be Sharp’s TVs, they are in both high-end and low-end segments. Related diversification is present in Sharp because the same management is making the decisions. This creates synergy from within the corporation because managers and employees are applying their expertise for innovation and the shift in strategy. From previous knowledge of the company, Sharp also is a hybrid diversification company. They not only have a line of TVs, they are also in audio, mobile, and appliances. These different segments, within consumer-electronics, are completely unrelated to what they are coming up with in the strawberry fields. Within the consumer-electronics division, there is synergy and the risk is spread across. Also, the CE division contains vertical integration. You see this with the audio placed in TVs and their cellphone. Also, their Aquos display, an output of the company’s, is also an input into both the TVs and mobile.

Valor Equity
• Private equity investor with knack for boosting efficiency at its restaurants and other holdings.
• Investments in franchises include Little Caesars, Dunkin’ Donuts, Red Robin.
• Also include health services, beauty supplies, and Tesla Motors.
• Targets businesses with high growth potential, then goes on to improve them.
• Sales at Valor restaurants have grown from $60 million to $250 million over past eight years.
• Tesla’s stock has increased over 1,400% since initial public offering in 2010.
• Valor helped get the cost of production of the Tesla Roadster from $120,000 to $80,000.
• Today, focus is on pizza and doughnuts.
• Operations Specialist, Mark Vadaro, rearranged stores in order to decrease the amount of shuffling around an employee must do to do his/her job.
• Average customer order has increased from $8.77 to $9.46 at Little Caesers.
• Wants to build the brand of “if you want to grow, you come to us.”

Valor Equity’s rationale behind its mix of businesses is contributed to grow and expand. The company has been extremely successful in investing in high growth potential businesses. They have a knack for boosting efficiency in the investees which will directly affect the bottom line. Over the past eight years, Valor’s restaurants have grown in sales from $60 million to $250 million. Along with the success in the restaurant industry, Valor has been really successful with their efforts in the electric car company Tesla. Valor was able to cut the cost of production for Tesla’s cars to where the company would turn a profit for each car.

The core strategy that Valor is using is related diversification. Valor has been successful in the restaurant industry, and they continue to expand with the negotiating for a Mediterranean chain in Illinois. The company is leveraging their success in order to invest in others. CEO Antonio Gracias says, “if you want to grow, you come to us.” So Valor has clients coming to them for investments, allowing them to choose the best business venture to take. The company is also succeeding in hybrid diversification. The different grouped industries that Valor is in, besides restaurants and cars, are health services beauty supplies. Within each of these industries, synergy is created allowing them to feed off the success of others by using their process to improve their own. Growth opportunities also increase as Valor’s success could lead to more companies coming to them for help.

GE
• Bill Gates warned that failure rates for the creation of new battery concepts will be well over 90 percent.
• A constant changing business model.
• GE’s Six Sigma manufacturing experts clashed with team members who wanted to get prototypes to beta-testers.
• Choosing right elements off periodic table is only the start, must also produce battery in large quantities with high quality and low cost.
• “Executives decided to go into the battery business in 2009 after concluding that none of the options on the market did what GE needed for its own products,” but proved to be inefficient.
• Durathon battery is big, bulky, and operates internally at over 500F.
• The opportunity would be in cell phone systems in developing countries with unreliable grids (Asia and Africa).
• An order for 6,000 batteries that will be installed on cell phone towers went to Nigeria in 2013.
• More orders came for the Durathon in the U.S. for wind farms.
• Exploring uses in locomotives, mining trucks, work boats, and buses.
• Launching a battery business isn’t impossible, just extremely hard.

GE’s creation of the Durathon battery did not come without hardship. In an industry where failure rate is well above 90 percent, according to Bill Gates, the company went through a lot in order to expand into a new industry. The Durathon is not the typical battery you would think of, it is not the one that will power your cellphone or the kind you put in your remote control. Instead, it is a battery that powers cell phone towers and wind farms. Even with a perfect team, GE’s Energy Storage Technologies unit struggled with the same challenges that start-up companies struggled with, which is an ever-changing business model, performance constraints, and difficult manufacturing processes. Still, the company has turned its efforts into success through. The article does not state the rationale behind the creation of the Durathon, but I believe it was to create a product that needed to be created.

GE is in several industries, so there can be a lot or relation between them. Battery making is not their core business, but it is a budding part of their business than could succeed long term. I see this business venture as unrelated diversification. From reading the article, I do not see any links that GE could exploit in order to benefit the other industries GE is in. There is unlimited growth potential here with the Durathon because it can only get better. Also, management expertise is key with the Durathon battery. Resources must be allocated properly for the health of all businesses. The battery division also created a stable portfolio for investors, as the internal start-up got the backing from the company. With GE as a whole, I see can see hybrid diversification playing a big part in the company’s processes. GE is in so many different industries, and several different segments within those industries, that it all will feed off each other. Also, the company has elements of vertical integration. The company has acquired several of their main suppliers. For example, in 2013, GE Aviation acquired one of its main suppliers. With it being a GE owned company now, the supplier produces the input for GE Aviation’s products.