Business Strategy

The goal of this module is to provide you with the knowledge and skills on which to make strategic decisions that concern the success of a business.

You will face several types of strategic decisions, including:

• Which markets or segments a firm should compete in
• How a firm should compete to best create competitive advantage
• How a firm should respond to opportunities and threats
• How to shape a suitable business model to deliver the firm's strategic goals and aspirations
• How to evaluate options and arrive at a clear recommendation for the way forward. 

You will learn how companies engage in strategic planning, how they seek and assess new markets, and find ways to create competitive advantage. 

Knowledge Objectives

Attain a good knowledge of the key concepts, evaluation criteria and frameworks that form part of modern-day strategy analysis 

Skills Objectives

Attain the skill and confidence to be able to: 

• Identify a company’s current strategy
• Assess whether that strategy is fundamentally sound or not, and make recommendations
• Identify how the business is likely to evolve, the implications for current strategies and how to respond. 

In presence

The module stresses critical thinking and decision-making skills - not just course concepts and theory. Students will learn through:

• Lectures: learning of core concepts and analytical frameworks
• In-class discussion of business cases: applications of module concepts and frameworks
• Teamwork: in teams, students will analyze the business strategy of a company of their choice and provide recommendations for the future. They will then present their analysis in class at the end of the course.

Students are thus expected to spend about 1 hour to prepare for a case discussion (when scheduled), attend classes regularly, and actively participate in class discussion. 

20% teamwork: Power Point Presentation of the business strategy of a company of choice

80% exam: multiple-choice questions