In situations where rivals can readily copy the successful features of a company's strategy or duplicate its attempts to attract customers, the only dependable path to competitive advantage is for a company to staff the company's organization with smarter and more talented people. outexecute rivals by developing a collection of resources and capabilities that enables the company to perform certain important value chain activities at lower cost than rivals or with greater effectiveness than rivals (thereby gaining the ability to deliver more value to customers via either a lower price or a more appealing product). do a better job of training, empowering, motivating, and compensating employees than rivals. perform value chain activities quicker or faster than rivals can. outsource more value chain activities than rivals do and thereby achieve lower operating costs.

Oliver's company is planning the launch of their hybrid cars. the company has included "never-before-seen" product benefits in the hybrid cars. which type of advertising should oliver's company use for the new cars?

Imagine us is a startup that offers high definition 3d prenatal ultrasounds for high-end customers. the service process includes four activities that are conducted in the sequence described below. (the time required for each activity is shown in parentheses): activity 1: welcome a patient and explain the procedure. (20 minutes)activity 2: prep the patient (e. g., show them to the room, apply ultrasound gel). (17 minutes) (*your id number represents the amount of time needed to complete this task)activity 3: take images. (5 minutes)activity 4: discuss diagnostic with patient. (20 minutes)at each location there are employees (servers) s1, s2, and s3. the assignment of tasks to servers is the following: s1 does activities 1 and 2.s2 does activity 3.s3 does activity 4.a. what is the capacity of this process (in customers per hour)? b. suppose 3 patients arrive every hour on average. ignoring any “start of day” or “end of day” effects, what are the utilizations of all three servers (%)? c. suppose each activity can be done by any server and any server can do any set of activities. however, each activity is done by only one server. for example, a possible assignment includes: s1 does activity 1, s2 does activity 2, and s3 does activities 3 and 4. of course, the original assignment of servers to activities is also feasible. what is the maximum capacity of the process (in customers per hour)? d. now consider the capacity measures in (c) and (a), what is the percentage change? why can you improve capacity without using additional resources? (there is no free lunch, right? )note: for all hw assignments, show your process of getting the results. only providing the final answers is not acceptable and will get 0%. if necessary, use a separate sheet of paper to show your work.

On january 8, the end of the first weekly pay period of the year, regis company's payroll register showed that its employees earned $22,760 of office salaries and $70,840 of sales salaries. withholdings from the employees' salaries include fica social security taxes at the rate of 6.20%, fica medicare taxes at the rate of 1.45%, $13,260 of federal income taxes, $1,450 of medical insurance deductions, and $860 of union dues. no employee earned more than $7,000 in this first pay period. required: 1.1 calculate below the amounts for each of these four taxes of regis company. regis’s merit rating reduces its state unemployment tax rate to 3% of the first $7,000 paid to each employee. the federal unemployment tax rate is 0.60