30012 - STRATEGIA COMPETITIVA / BUSINESS STRATEGY

This is an introductory course, therefore there is no formal prerequisite. Students should be familiar with the fundamentals of management and microeconomics.

The focus of this course is on how managers can enhance and sustain superior business performance by making sound strategic decisions. The course covers analytical and conceptual models that help in the development of business strategy. The main goal of the course is, in fact, to improve students’ analytical skills and to foster the development of strategic thinking.

This course is designed to expose students to fundamental and advanced topics in business strategy and enable them to analyze business situations from the point of view of the practicing general manager. General managers engage in identifying opportunities and threats in the competitive environment, developing and allocating critical resources, and interacting with competitors. They also identify opportunities for forming strategic alliances and plan how to create and capture value from alliances, especially when collaborating with competitors. The course also reveals how managers should negotiate alliance agreements and govern the firm’s alliance portfolio.

Course Content Summary:

• What is strategy?
• Industry analysis.
• Competitive dynamics and co-opetition.
• Cost leadership.
• Differentiation advantage.
• Creating value from resources and capabilities.
• Sustainability of competitive advantage.
• Motivation for alliance formation.
• Selecting the right partners.
• Creating and capturing value from alliances.
• Collaborating with competitors.
• Negotiating and governing alliances.
• Managing alliance portfolios.

• Understand and be able to deal with basic strategy concepts.
• Understand the framework of value creation/value capture.
• Understand the main threats to the sustainability of competitive advantage.
• Understand how to form and manage strategic alliances.

• Apply basic strategy tools and frameworks to analyze complex business situations.
• Formulate a strategy for a business that will help address the challenges posed by the competitive environment of the firm.
• Formulate a strategy for a business that will aid the firm with its strategic decision-making and efforts to create and maintain competitive advantage overtime.
• Formulate a cooperative strategy for developing and managing the firm's strategic alliances.

• Face-to-face lectures
• Case studies /Incidents (traditional, online)
• Individual assignments
• Group assignments
• Interactive class activities (role playing, business game, simulation, online forum, instant polls)

• Case studies: a real-world case is assigned to each session as a basis for class discussion.
• Individual assignments: students' contribution to class discussion is assessed on an individual basis. Occasional quizzes are submitted individually.
• Group assignments: case analyses and some in-class assignments are conducted in groups.
• Interactive class activities: the case discussion is interactive.

The final grade consists of these elements:

• Class attendance is mandatory. Students are allowed to miss only one session.
• 20% of the grade is based on class participation.
• 80% of the grade based on six group case analyses.
• There is no final exam but students still need to enrol in the first available exam session to have their grade registered.

An individual project involving analysis of the competitive environment and the internal organization of a real company. The grade is based on an oral presentation of the project following the conclusion of the course.

• A sufficient grade in the project is required in order to pass the course.
• There is no final exam but students still need to enrol in the first available exam session to have their grade registered.

• R. GRANT, Contemporary Strategy Analysis, 8th edition.
• Additional readings and case studies available on the Bboard platform.

• R. GRANT, Contemporary Strategy Analysis, 8th edition.