Strategy

Overview

The Strategy program develops students who study the factors that drive firms’ fundamental strategic choices, and the way such choices influence firm performance, including risk-taking, management of strategic innovation processes, strategy formation and implementation, behavioral understandings of competition, global strategy, and entrepreneurial strategy. The program embraces a wide variety of methodological approaches but shares an emphasis on rigorous scholarship directed at understanding the processes that cause important strategic outcomes.

Faculty

Visiting & Affiliated Faculty and Researchers

Primary Course

210 Business Strategy
As the emphasis on bottom-line performance has increased due to external financial market pressures and globalization, managers are increasingly concerned with how to develop and sustain competitive advantage – the basis for superior performance. Strategic management goes to the heart of how managers add value to the firm by focusing on how managers should evaluate and assess their organizations and competitive environments in order to develop a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The objectives of this course are to provide conceptual frameworks and successful techniques by which to analyze, develop, and implement the competitive strategy of the firm. An understanding of competitive strategy requires an assessment and analysis of the firm’s competitive marketplace and the firm’s stock of resources and capabilities. The course begins with providing frameworks for understanding the dynamics of industry structure, the evolution of this structure, and the pattern of interaction among the competitors in the industry. The course then focuses on an assessment and analysis of the organizational resources and routines that form the basis for firm-specific capabilities. The course if focused on developing a competitive strategy based on the leveraging of firm-specific capabilities in the marketplace. This course is designed to improve decision-making in a competitive and dynamic environment and thus enable the manager to take action to improve the firm’s competitive position. The approach of the course is practical and problem-oriented. A major part of the course will involve applying concepts, frameworks, analytical techniques, and managerial insights to the strategic issues which real world companies face. In applying strategic analyses to real-world situations, students are placed in the role of key decision makers and asked to address questions regarding their evaluation of the marketplace and organization. One major objective of the course is to improve one’s capacity for strategic thinking and action by developing frameworks by which to assess, evaluate, and respond different business situations through the use of case analysis and discussion.

Additional Courses

213 New Venture Management
This course is designed to both inform you about how to start a business and inspire you to consider doing it. It will expose you to an overview of the entire entrepreneurial process: identifying new venture opportunities, developing a business model, preparing a business plan, assembling a management team, raising the necessary financing, structuring and negotiating a deal, and launching a new enterprise. Our primary learning vehicle will be the exercise of working with a team of classmates to create a business plan for a new business venture.

This course will move fast and cover lots of ground. For background, we will use a comprehensive text supplemented by key readings on different facets of the new venture process. For inspiration, you will hear presentations from experienced and successful professionals in the venture field. You will also learn in more depth about the launch of a new assistive technology business by reviewing a business plan that raised $65 million in funding and hearing directly about the challenges and pitfalls from the entrepreneur himself, your professor.

The heart of the course will be working in project teams to prepare a business plan for a new venture of your choosing. You will present portions of it to your classmates in a workshop environment, culminating in the presentation of the completed plan to a Review Panel of business professionals in lieu of a final exam. To ground your new venture in reality, you will be required to seek out and talk to at least twenty customers, distributors or other relevant market representatives to validate that your concept has attractive potential. All of these efforts are designed to help you craft a more credible new venture plan, one that can earn funding support and succeed in the market place.

214 Entrepreneurship
This is a project course in which student teams develop a business plan to launch a new venture. Drafts of sections of the plan are due throughout the course. The final business plan is presented to a panel of private investors, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, experienced executives, and faculty. The course assumes that entrepreneurship is a social process, rather than a transaction, whose goal is to create a new organization Entrepreneurship is not about running a small business. It is about founding a new organization to create financial or social value. We will consider an array of related issues ranging from idea development and creation to going public or
harvesting the venture.

215 Global Competitive Strategy
In today’s world, all business strategies should have a global perspective. This course will look at the challenge of formulating and implementing a successful strategy that is attuned to the realities of global competition. How does a domestic company broaden its reach to address global markets? How can global sourcing of materials, components, products and/or services improve its competitive position? How can you protect your intellectual property on a cost effective basis in advance of moving overseas? How should a company protect itself from foreign exchange risk when trading internationally or expanding abroad?

In this course, we will address a different global strategy topic each week, such as: global business models, expanding into overseas markets, international organization and structure, global sourcing, people and culture issues, foreign exchange risks, patent and trademark protection, international tax issues, strategic alliances and global M&A. Each week there will be relevant readings and a case discussion on a business that has confronted the topic under consideration. Outside speakers with real world experience will add to our learning.

218 Business Dynamics [ITM Course]
Business Dynamics aims to improve both your ability to analyze sudden challenges to organizational survival and to quickly implement a winning response. We will enhance your competitive analytical skill by dissecting some of the more complex challenges to organizational survival such as increasing foreign competition, innovation in knowledge intensive industries, unforeseen regulatory changes and competitor product launches. Once we can identify and understand the survival challenges, we will formulate a strategic response including an action plan for implementation. These strategic responses include international alliances, developing and managing a network of technology and business alliances, foreign direct investment and mergers and acquisitions. Business Dynamics is specifically designed as a strategy elective that builds upon the core course in Business Strategy (210). Individuals eager to enhance their skills in strategic analysis and formulation will find the course particularly valuable.

290 Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence is a combination of an “art” (CI focused strategy), science (analytical techniques) and craft (learning from experience of managing and doing CI). An effective competitive intelligence program (CIP) is a core foundation upon which competitive strategies and execution tactics are developed, assessed and modified.
The heart of the course is developing a CIP. The CIP is a continuous process that integrates both formal and informal intelligence gathering processes by which managers in the organization assess, disseminate and use key trends, emerging discontinuities, the evolution of industry structure and the capabilities and behaviors of current and potential competitors to assist in formulating and implementing strategy and tactics. The course will focus on how to design a CIP and produce actionable intelligence based on a framework that provides answers to three critical questions:
To what extent do we understand why and how strategic interactions with competitors and non-market forces impact our competitive position?; To what extent is intelligence integrated (flows) to managers on a timely basis?; and to what extent and in what manner is competitive intelligence factored into the corporate/business unit decision making and implementation process?

290 Mergers & Acquisitions Growth Strategies
Growth through mergers and acquisitions can provide an attractive means to jump start a stagnant company, leverage its core competencies or diversify into attractive adjacent markets, but it is a strategic path fraught with risks. When is it the best course versus alternative growth strategies? What is the “perfect “fit” test for evaluating target companies? What antitrust considerations must the acquirer bear in mind? Addressing those questions will provide the strategic backdrop for a more detailed review of the techniques and mechanics of growing through acquisition: merger economics, deal structure, valuation, negotiation tactics, legal considerations, due diligence, closing the deal and post-closing integration. The course will conclude with units on deal financing and leveraged buyouts, corporate restructuring and takeover defenses. Each week a different acquisition oriented case will be discussed. Two papers during the course will require developing pricing proposals and building financial models of actual target companies described in unpublished cases. For the final project, the student will prepare for a board of directors an acquisition proposal that identifies a target company, justifies the strategic rationale, analyzes different purchase prices, proposes a financing plan and calculates an internal rate of return for the acquiring company or investors. The course will thus interweave three M&A strands: strategic considerations, operational methodologies and financial modeling techniques. Upon completion of the course, the diligent student will be ready to acquire his or her first company.

290 Topics in Strategic Innovation
As global competition heats up at an ever-increasing pace, the ability to innovate becomes a vital strategy for every business. Yet it is not enough to focus on a single, breakthrough innovation or a series of small incremental changes. The business of tomorrow will only grow through a sustainable approach and practice of innovation. This course will incorporate three elements: Organizing for Innovation, Innovation in a Global Context, and Innovation at Work. Every student will take part in a team project for an existing business or organization that will incorporate the principles of innovation, help develop strategies, and deliver added value. The course will include case studies of organizations including Cirque de Soleil, Samsung and Apple; examination of new research; a panel of expert speakers; and hands-on participation in an innovative project.

290 Practice of General Management
General managers, who are responsible for the overall profitability and performance of an organization, face a formidable set of challenges. Whether charged with managing a department, plant, store, division or company, they must make the big decisions that determine the organization’s success or failure. For them, there is always more at stake. Whether a division general manager or a company CEO, they must choose an overall strategic direction for the business and then take responsibility for its product/service superiority, market share gains/losses, technological excellence/shortcomings, operational effectiveness, customer service levels, employee morale and of course profitability and ultimate survival. The prior experience of a newly promoted general manager or CEO will probably have left many of these bases uncovered. All senior managers begin their tenures with great promise, having excelled in lower level positions, yet many will fail. There is no science and little academic literature to provide the keys to success at this level. Instead, the most valuable lessons must be gleaned from the best practices being employed by executives across a variety of business settings.

This course is designed to teach the graduating MBA how the best managers actually manage. Students will develop throughout the course a toolkit of proven concepts and practices that will help them succeed as department managers, division general managers and ultimately CEOs. The toolkit will include philosophical principles, practical techniques, analytical skills and a series of memorable “management axioms.” The course is organized around modules, each reflecting a facet of the senior manager’s job. Some representative topics: Taking Command, Strategic Vision, Turnaround Management, Managing by the Numbers, Organic Growth, Operational Excellence, People Management, Growth through Acquisitions, Global Expansion, and Crisis Management. Each class session will begin with a challenging discussion question, such as, “What steps should a new manager take in assuming command of any new organization?” There will then be a lecture on the day’s topic referencing many real world business examples, followed by a case discussion of management successes and failures in different industries. During the course, several guest speakers with CEO experience will add their perspectives.