Business Finance Homework Help

Chipotle offers a good example for a discussion of barriers to imitation. Read the following article: “Inside Chipotle’s Kitchen: What’s Really Handmade?” (The Wall Street Journal, February 24, 2015). Note the stages starting with identification of resources and capabilities, then VRIO analysis, and finally barriers to imitation.

• It is legal to take apart publicly available products and services and try to replicate them and even develop work-arounds for relevant patents. But is it ethical? If a key capability protected by patents or trademarks in your firm is being reverse-engineered by the competition, what are your options for a response? Also, how do you evaluate Google’s decision to move its servers to Hong Kong? For Google’s values, see Values.