In the finance business segment, for example, the chief rivals are major banks providing commercial financing. While there is no single competitor to Textron, we can talk about the competitors and strategy of each of its business units. While the corporation must manage its portfolio of businesses to grow and survive, the success of a diversified firm depends upon its ability to manage each of its product lines. The role of the corporation then is to manage its business units and products so that each is competitive and so that each contributes to corporate purposes.Ĭonsider Textron, Inc., a successful conglomerate corporation that pursues profits through a range of businesses in unrelated industries. While strategy may be about competing and surviving as a firm, one can argue that products, not corporations compete, and products are developed by business units. Strategy can be formulated on three different levels:
