PDA Strategic Management I PDF

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STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT I (Note: this is a preliminary orientation document. See PDA for final details)

Professor Timo Sohl (Theory) Professor Veronica Lassus (Seminars) Presentation The course aims to equip students with the skills needed to understand the process of strategy formulation and implementation in a business environment. Students who complete the course will gain the expertise, methodologies, and tools to design and interpret business strategies. The course builds on a number of interrelated questions and topics. These include: How do firms create value and how can they capture (part of) the value they created? Why are some firms in the same industry outperforming others? Why are firms in some industries on average more profitable than firms in other industries? How can firms sustain a competitive advantage? What are common types of business models and does it matter which business model a firm uses? How can incumbents respond to entrants with disruptive business models? How can multi-business firms create value? How can firms escape declining markets? Learning outcomes 1. Understand the nature of strategic competitiveness and develop the ability to analyze the environment facing a firm, assess the attractiveness of the industry and isolate potential sources of competitive advantage and disadvantage. 2. Develop business level strategies by defining the type of advantage sought, scope of operations and activities required to deliver the chosen strategy. Assess the likely sustainability of firm strategies and competitive positions. 3. Discriminate among the types of data to evaluate alternative scenarios. Assess strategic alternatives and develop logical, coherent and persuasive analyses for a desired course of action. 4. Analyze the business model as a potential source of competitive advantage and how it affects the ability to reach strategic goals. Develop courses of actions that incorporate the actions of multiple players in the marketplace. 5. Integrate knowledge and apply analytical techniques from various disciplines. The goal is to identify and analyze strategic issues and develop solutions in the form of actionable plans with the purpose of developing and sustaining competitive advantage.

Contents 1. Introduction to strategy Defining strategy Strategy levels 2. Value creation and value capture Basic ideas Internal analysis: strategic positioning and resources External analysis: industry structure and competition 3. The business model as a source of competitive advantage Business model design and innovation Managing a business model portfolio 4. Corporate scope and growth strategies Entry, exit, and sunk costs Diversification strategies Strategic options in declining markets Teaching Methods The process of teaching of the course will be carried out as follows: Lectures: There will be sessions of lectures that will last 1h30 each. The purpose of these is to provide students with the basic conceptual tools of business strategy. In the lectures the student should not take a passive role but, instead, actively participate in the discussion. Individual class contribution Strategic thinking is best learned through practice and use of strategic concepts. The cases we will study are about specific business situations; they are an opportunity to both apply the concepts we discuss in class as well as further develop our ability to think about business strategy. We will be using short cases and exercises, and you must be prepared to discuss everything assigned for the particular session. Seminar assignments There will be 6 seminars dedicated to understanding and extending the content of the main lectures. This learning activity will take place with the active participation of students, by means of different activities related to strategy and sustainability in business. Students will be graded on their individual work and participation in class. Evaluation The overall course grade will be calculated based on these two components: Seminars (30%) Final exam (70%) In order to pass the course students must pass both the seminars and final exam. That is students must obtain at least a grade 5 out of 10 for both the seminars and final exam.

Seminars: Seminar sessions are based on dialogue and discussion where the students are the main content contributors. This implies that students must prepare thoroughly for each session and be active participants during each session. There are 6 seminar sessions. Attendance to the seminars is mandatory to pass the course. This means that it is not possible to pass the course without attending to the seminars. It also means that it is not possible to do an alternative task instead of attending to the seminars. Students can miss two seminar session. If students provide a documented justification for their absence, they can make up for the session; otherwise they will have a zero in the session they miss. Recuperation: According to the university rules, students who have not passed the course have the possibility to recover, only if they have participated in the learning and evaluation activities throughout the term. Students who have not participated in the continuous evaluation or that have renounced the evaluation, cannot recover. Seminars recuperation: students who have attended to a minimum of 4 seminars and have failed the seminars overall, will be assigned an additional task to recover the seminars. Resit exam: students who fail the final exam can take the resit exam (provided they have attended to at least 4 seminars). To pass the resit exam, students must obtain at least a grade 5 out of 10. The resit exam will account for 70% of the final grade and the grades from the continuous evaluation will be kept. Following the school guidelines, the resit exam will be stricter than the regular final exam. If a student does not receive a passing grade for the exam and/or seminars, the final mark will be 4. In this case, no exam or participation grades will be retained from one year to another.

Basic bibliography Besanko, D., Dranove, D., Shanley, M., & Schaefer, S. (2013): "Economics of Strategy", 6th edition, John Wiley & Sons. Porter, M.E. (1985): Competitive Advantage, The Free Press Porter, M.E. (1980): Competitive Strategy, The Free Press...