Can Under Armour's Product Leadership Strategy Recover afterthe Speed Skating Suit Disaster?

You are Under Armour. Your business strategy is Product Leadership. Your tagline is “To Make All Athletes Better.” You spend hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development to overtake the powerhouse brands: Nike, Adidas, and Reebok. You invest in marketing with celebrity endorsements and product placement to become a player in your market. You are selected to provide the ultimate world-class elite athletes – the US Olympic team – with the performance apparel they will wear as they compete for gold. A success on this stage could quickly skyrocket you to the top of the industry.

As business leaders assess the ongoing operations and results of 2015 and at the same time engage in the strategic planning process for 2016, one of the many elements of focus is global business trends that will impact future business results. Readers of this blog know that Advantexe Learning Solutions has the opportunity of working with dozens of large global clients. During our engagements, we accumulate research and identify trends that will help our clients achieve their results by developing the business acumen and business leadership skills that will be needed to address the impacts of these trends.

There seems to be a business news story just about every day concerning the latest global conglomerate under attack. This aggression is usually from an “activist investor” group trying to assert its will and influence on the strategy and shareholder value of what it terms as “undervalued” organizations. Pepsi, Baxter, and H-P are just a few of the organizations that have been or will be changed forever because an activist investor group intervened to “unlock potential.”But just a few years ago, many large companies were engaging in M&A strategies in order to grow, gobbling up companies and integrating them to create scale and efficiencies. So what’s really going on here?

Last night, I had the pleasure of enjoying another fantastic and beautiful meal at my most favorite restaurant on the planet earth: Nahm’s Thai Cuisine in Alpharetta, Georgia.  In our line of business – delivering award-winning simulation-centric business acumen, business leadership, and strategic business selling learning engagements – we have the opportunity to travel the world and eat some of the most interesting and delicious food in the world.