Strategy

Fall

• How to Become an Expert: Practicum
  This Practicum is the logical progression of EXPRT. It picks up where EXPRT left off. The final assignment of EXPRT asked students to reason about how they would apply the insights they learned in the course--especially the concept of deliberate practice and the model of learning we derived from it--to their professional domain of choice. In particular, the assignment required them to elaborate a concrete “plan of action.” The Practicum brings them one step closer to practice by asking students to apply a version of their plan of action to their internship jobs. Upon their return to Tuck, students will get individualized feedback, share their experiences, make sense of them, and derive general patterns that cut across them. The main goal of this course is to help students deepen their understanding of how they can achieve excellence in their professional domain. There are three ways in which the course helps students accomplish this goal. First, it helps them develop a more nuanced understanding of what deliberate practice means in their professional context. While this is a central topic of EXPRT, moving from reasoning about the concrete implications of deliberate practice to actually applying it will reveal challenges and opportunities that would be hard to foresee otherwise. Second, the application effort, properly guided, helps sharpen students’ understanding of the components of deliberate practice and the relationships among them. Third and most importantly, it helps students deepen their internalization of the modus operandi associated with deliberate practice, ideally to the point where it becomes second nature in guiding their pursuit of excellence going forward.
• Ecosystem Strategy
  Over the past 20 years, the notion of business “ecosystems” has become pervasive in discussions of strategy, both scholarly and applied. Its rise has mirrored an increasing interest and concern with interdependence across organizations and activities. In this course we will develop a perspective on the challenges of innovation and competition with a particular focus on the context of ecosystems – settings where value creation depends on aligning multiple parties in novel ways. How should we approach the challenge of picking the right opportunity, aligning the right partners, and targeting the right market and, perhaps most importantly, setting the right expectations for a new venture? How should an ecosystem context affect competitive strategy, both offense and defense? What new management challenges arise when value creation and capture no longer depend just on satisfying customers and beating rivals, but also on our ability to identify, align, and maintain critical partners and partnerships? We will explore these questions using a set of analytic lenses that will help us assess the potential of new opportunities and to strategize about how to best exploit them. We will apply these tools using a combination of cases, exercises, and reflection essays.
• Generative AI and the Future of Work
  The use and capabilities of generative artificial intelligence (G-AI) has dramatically increased recently. G-AI is being used in business processes ranging from call center responses and creating ad copy to generating business plans and strategic analysis. In these three classes we will examine the foundations of the technology and its use, strengths and weaknesses of G-AI, and expectations for how the digital tool will shape future business practices.
• Horizon Scanning
  The science fiction writer William Gibson famously noted that “the future is already here, it is just not very evenly distributed.” While it’s possible to “experience tomorrow today” by spending time in the right places and with the right people, spotting, interpreting, and aligning a group around what often show up as faint signals of future change presents a number of challenges. For example, what sources provide the most reliable signals of future change? How can you determine which signals actually are material? How can you get a group to develop enough of a shared perspective to make decisions in the face of significant uncertainty? How do you handle the inevitable tension that comes when individuals interpret early-stage developments in different ways? Capabilities around horizon scanning are a key component of the toolkit of a wise, decisive leader. Properly deployed, they allow an organization to be more agile and adaptable, creating significant sources of competitive advantage. The blend of case-based discussion and experiential activities in this sprint course will help students to build these capabilities.

Winter

• Strategy in Innovation Ecosystems
  Entrepreneurship and Innovation Strategy (EIS) or Ecosystem Strategy (ES) is a prerequisite for this RTP. No exceptions. In this seminar we will continue to develop the theme of ecosystems that we covered in ES, and explore whether and how strategy making needs to change when value creation requires multiple participants to interact. The course itself will be an exercise in joint value creation (with all the risks that that entails). The session formats will vary. Some sessions will be devoted to discussing academic articles. Others will focus on deep-dive analyses of selected topics and contexts. Depending on student interest and speaker availability, we may also engage with external visitors (think of these more as interviews than presentations). A subset of topics to be covered includes: • Changes in industry structure • Changes in the competitive landscape • Approaches to technological change • Managing internal and external collaborations • Implications for corporate leadership The course structure is subject to real time adaptation and will respond to opportunities and interests that arise. Student deep dive projects will be the focus of the closing session.
• International Strategy
  International strategy shares many of the same principles and practices as corporate strategy. But we need to recognize that there are fundamental points of divergence. When a company’s activities and interests’ cross national borders, disruption, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, and diversity (D-VUCAD) increase exponentially. Managers and leaders can struggle to make balanced and informed strategic choices as they encounter new stakeholders and multifarious issues and influences. As companies internationalize, management encounter factors that introduce new strategic tradeoffs and fresh strategic choices. The three overarching factors[1] are heterogeneity across markets (countries are fundamentally different), the scale and complexity of global operations (you need to comprehend and manage a lot more), and the unpredictability of economic and political conditions between countries (the volatility of geopolitics and exogenous global events). Each factor has profound implications, both for the type of competitive advantage or scope economy that justifies geographical expansion, and for critical decisions concerning how the company is configured and positioned to compete internationally. The crux of this elective is to understand how to proactively develop and deliver foreign market entry strategies that effectively anticipate and respond to these overarching influences.
• Strategy in Emerging Markets
  A vast portion of the world’s population and growth opportunities are located in ‘emerging markets’ (i.e. nations with rapid economic growth but commercial infrastructure that is not fully developed). Can you use what you learned in your Core Strategy class to design strategies for companies operating in these countries? Certainly. However, there are other important elements that need to be considered, which are at the center of SEM. For example: 1) consumers’ willingness to pay for a product may be high, but their capacity to pay may be low due to income constraints; 2) limitations in the supply of basic inputs -such as capital or labor, or public goods -such as roads and electricity, may overly burden cost structures; and 3) on top of all of that, the legal system and courts may not function well, making it difficult to establish long-term contracts with buyers or suppliers. SEM is designed to give you an overarching perspective of strategy in emerging markets. We cover traditional sectors, such as mining and telecommunications, as well as those at the fore-front of technology, such as the sharing economy and Fintech. We take the perspective of managers of large companies, as well as that of entrepreneurs who are starting or growing new ventures. We also travel the world, covering business activity in large (popular) emerging markets, including Brazil, China, and India, as well as in nations that are not traditionally covered by the business press, including Cuba and Liberia. SEM is an applied course, which provides an opportunity to put to practice robust academic principles in the context of case discussions and group exercises. We complement academic rigor with the latest from the world of practice by bringing subject matter experts as guest speakers to our class.

Spring

• Leading Disruptive Change
  Leading Disruptive Change describes a set of lenses, tools, and mindsets to navigate through today’s world of predictable unpredictability. Technologies are advancing exponentially, lines between industries are blurring, expectations of consumers, employees, and stakeholders are shifting, and global shocks are happening with increased frequency. The forever normal of constant change places leaders in a thick fog. Data to justify making a decision comes in when it is too late to make a decision. Yesterday’s strengths become tomorrow’s weaknesses. In the fog, leaders must confront adaptive issues that are complicated, interdependent, and require multidisciplinary approaches. Conflicting demands feel paralyzing. Pursue purpose by embracing sustainability and maximize profits by extracting and exploiting resources. Protect the present and create the future. Enable empowerment and autonomy and decisively lead in new directions. Build a high-performance meritocracy and provide equitable opportunities and outcomes. Resting at the unique intersection of the disciplines of strategy, innovation, leadership, behavioral psychology, and systems psychodynamics, Leading Disruptive Change integrates academic research and practitioner-oriented tools and frameworks to give students practical ways to act wisely and decisively through the fog of disruptive change. We will go through seven core tenets: 1. You need to lead through fog 2. You need to understand the particular nature of adaptive challenges 3. Technical solutions are necessary but not sufficient to solve adaptive challenges 4. Solving adaptive challenges requires intentionally inducing and managing discomfort. 5. Go deep to find the real problem. 6. Both/and it with a paradox mindset. 7. Follow paradoxical practices to lead disruptive change.
• Media and Entertainment: Technology and the Consumer
  Innovations in technology continue to impact almost every industry in the world and the media industry is no exception. Recent advancements have not only disrupted the traditional business models but also have created an ecosystem that forces companies to go direct to their consumers. Technological advancements have forced creators to innovate and alter the way they create, market, distribute and monetize content today. In three classes, this course will examine how technology enabled the direct-to-consumer video industry, how technology leads to a better understanding of the consumer, and finally how technology is enabling consumer communities. The three classes should create a robust dialogue about how consumer groups or communities are built, how important they are, and how can one measure actions that might impact them.
• Niche Strategies in Culture Industries: The Case of Wine
  Wine connoisseurship—knowing about, enjoying, and collecting wine—has long been seen as a marker of good taste and a sound investment practice. But the qualities that make wine valuable culturally and those that make it a valuable asset are rarely the same. More than this, they are often in contradiction: wine’s scarcity, longevity, and brand equity are often seen as the three key strategic drivers of financial performance, yet it is the ephemerality, variability, and conviviality derived from its consumption that make wine culturally compelling. This Sprint will examine what accounts for this unique product's deep cultural significance in communities around the world against the means by which it is appraised commercially, and interrogate how those two systems intersect in an effort to identify the contours of an asset class whose performance is profoundly influenced by the intangible. There are three key elements to this Sprint that are both interesting and unique. First, most coursework on strategy focuses on fundamental strategic frameworks – core competencies, resource management, competitive positioning, strategic leadership, M&A, and others. These tools are learned and employed in many contexts, though much less often in culture industries where the rules of engagement differ in important ways. For example, for every LVMH and Gallo, there are tens of thousands of small wineries operating around the world. Surviving, let alone thriving, in such a global business environment often means developing sustainable niche strategies. Students will be challenged to use more traditional strategy frameworks to inform their thinking on competition in the wine industry, and to develop a deeper understanding of the niche strategies that enable survival, and even growth, for the preponderance of smaller players in the industry. Along with this strategic framing of the Sprint, the second interesting and unique element is the wine industry itself, a global industry with cultural resonance and with roots that go back literally thousands of years. The market was valued at over $330 billion in 2023 and is projected to double by 2033, but it is wine’s ability to forge deep ties to individual identity and to set the boundaries of communities that give it an intangible and often incalculable value to its consumers. Even if some lovers of cars and watches consider their attention to those products quasi-religious, few would argue that they can wield the same celebrated power as wine, nor is it possible to imagine another agricultural product raised to the exalted heights of wine, not despite but because of its connection to nature. Finally, from a pedagogical point of view, students will have a chance to engage in a mini “CEO Challenge” in each of the three sessions. Like the CEO Challenge in Tuck Launch, we will have a wine industry CEO present a real-time challenge he or she is working on right now and challenge students to tackle that challenge during each class session. The Sprint will examine specific questions like: ● What niche strategies are more effective under which circumstances in the wine industry? ● What are the primary sources of value creation in the wine business? ● How is the wine industry similar, or different, to other cultural industries, like fashion, art, and entertainment? ● How is the market for wine changing and how are producers responding given that their product cannot quickly respond to market shifts in real time?
• How to Become an Expert: Theory, Practice and Reflection
  This course leverages insights from the modern science of expertise to explore how individuals striving for excellence can develop world-class expertise and attain mastery in their chosen profession. The modern science of expertise has uncovered compelling evidence indicating that consistently high-performing individuals approach their professional growth in remarkably similar ways across various fields. Whether you're a musician, lawyer, doctor, or chess player, achieving mastery often involves adhering to disciplined practices with well-defined characteristics. This research tradition, originating decades ago with studies of chess masters by Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, has evolved into a contemporary body of work spearheaded by Simon's student Anders Ericsson. This research emphasizes the significance of "deliberate practice," challenging the conventional wisdom of the 10,000-hour rule and highlighting the strategic nature of practice efforts. It posits that what truly sets masters apart from average performers is not the sheer amount of time spent practicing (though extensive practice is essential for success) but rather how they direct their practice efforts. This course does not aim to offer only theoretical knowledge on achieving mastery. Its objective is to influence students’ practice and learning habits in their professional endeavors. Altering habits, routines, or approaches requires a non-standard pedagogy, one that enables students to firsthand experience what the recommended shift in habit involves and why. Thus, the course is designed around experiential, action-based learning. This methodology involves initial engagement in concrete experiences, followed by reflection and the extraction of general concepts or principles, supplemented by relevant theoretical material. By the course's conclusion, students will have developed a concrete "plan of action" outlining how to approach their expertise development in their chosen professional domain. Note that first-year students will have a chance to enroll in the companion course “How to Become and Expert: Practicum,” which will be offered over the Summer (and is capped to 12 students). The conclusive assignment of EXPRT consists in the elaboration of a concrete “plan of action.” The Practicum brings students one step closer to practice by asking them to “test” a version of their plan of action in their internship jobs. Upon their return to Tuck, students will get individualized feedback, share their experiences, make sense of them, and derive general patterns that cut across the various experiences. The main goal of the Practicum is to help students deepen their understanding of how they can achieve excellence in their professional domain of choice. There are three ways in which the course helps students accomplish this goal. First, it helps them develop a more nuanced understanding of what deliberate practice means in their professional context. While this is a central topic of EXPRT, moving from reasoning about the concrete implications of deliberate practice to applying it will reveal challenges and opportunities that would be hard to foresee otherwise. Second, the application effort, properly guided, helps sharpen students’ understanding of the components of deliberate practice and the relationships among them. Third and most importantly, it helps students deepen their internalization of the modus operandi associated with deliberate practice, ideally to the point where it becomes second nature in guiding their pursuit of excellence going forward
• Startup Strategizing
  Startup success is elusive—most fail despite optimistic beginnings. Why, and what can you do about it? This course argues that success depends not just on spotting a great market opportunity but on developing an insightful strategy — a theory that identifies and solves a Problem of Value (PoV). The PoV is the pivotal challenge that, when effectively addressed, unlocks the full potential of a market opportunity. Startup strategy is difficult because PoVs often lie hidden in value chains, technologies, activity systems, and cost structures. While tools like pitch decks, business plans, experimentation, and pivoting toward product-market fit are essential, they are complements—not substitutes—for a well-founded strategy. Whether you are a founder, early-stage employee, investor, or executive navigating disruption, the PoV framework, grounded in cutting-edge strategy research, provides the tools to craft winning strategies, defy the odds, and achieve lasting success.
• Strategy
  This course offers the “essential” tool-kit of the executive involved in the strategy process—the key ideas, concepts, and tools that are necessary to properly exercise strategic leadership. The course is divided into two parts. The first focuses on the strategy problem at the business unit level. It is at the business unit level that many key strategic choices and actions are formulated and undertaken. This part of the course starts by proposing a vocabulary and an analytical structure that help define competitive advantage precisely. It then tackles the question of how a strategic leader can locate opportunities to achieve sustained competitive advantage. This part of the course concludes with a discussion of why strategic leaders should be not only competent “practitioner economists”––the ability to read market forces is the traditional focus of competitive strategy analysis and tools––but also competent “practitioner psychologists,” and what developing such competence entails. The second part of the course focuses on the challenge of managing multiple business units. In particular, it focuses on how a strategic leader can determine the ideal horizontal and vertical scope for her firm and what that implies for mergers, acquisitions, and various typologies of alliances.
• Implementing Strategy
  The central focus of this minicourse is strategy implementation. The importance of the subject matter covered in this course is captured in the widely accepted “truism” that over 90 percent of businesses founder on the rocks of implementation. However laudable strategic intentions may be, if they do not become a reality, they usually are not worth the paper on which they are written. Conversely, high-performing companies excel at execution. This course is about “contemporary execution models”: How to innovate in areas such as organization structure, incentive systems, decision-making autonomy, talent acquisition, and so on. We’ll especially focus on the management models that are pre-requisite for success in the digital era.
• Strategic Leadership
  This minicourse focuses on senior executives and how they choose to run their organizations. That means the good stuff they do, and the not so good. How CEOs, boards, and other top managers make decisions, guide strategy, and even get their jobs in the first place are all core topics in the minicourse. Course topics include: executive selection and succession, executive leadership, top management team composition and dynamics, and board-management relations. Though the course will be helpful for students who wish to strengthen their managerial talents, it is more focused on improving students’ ability to diagnose, critically evaluate, and enhance executive capabilities in organizations.
• Transforming Public Interest Organizations
  The course introduces the theory and practice of transforming public interest organizations. Public interest organizations are defined where profit is not the primary objective of the organization and where other factors such as public good are key. This can include: large government departments; not-for-profits; foundations; and academic institutions. Some appropriate learning will also come from private sector organizations. Prepares students for advising leaders, and those leading organizational transformations. As a by-product, students will explore how consultants frame and analyze problems. Organizations need to adopt new strategies and policies as their environment changes. This minicourse focuses less on developing those strategies and policies, but more on how to drive change through the organization, in order to more successfully implement that strategy. The course will be structured around a set of integrated levers and tools that are used to transform organizations, and supplemented with case studies that exhibit various combinations of levers. These will be explored in the context of changing public interest organizations, and how they differ from for profit organizations. These differences include: making tradeoffs when profit is not the primary objective; managing highly complex and powerful stakeholders and; and where there are often greater restrictions in people management practices such as incentives and ability to terminate or significantly change roles. The levers that will be focused on include: organizational design and governance; leadership and talent; culture; capabilities; HR practices and work and technology. And the tools include developing a Transformation plan and performing effective change and implementation management. Requirements: active engagement on pre-read material and class engagement; preparation of case study transformation plan that could be shared in class; and student preparation and presentation of small group assignment on transforming an organization. The instructor will meet with individuals and groups outside of class to help structure projects and provide coaching. Grades based 1/3 on class participation, 1/3 on a mid-course case assignment and a 1/3 on a course long group assignment. Students will be asked to submit three very short paragraphs before each class on pre-assigned questions. These submissions will not be graded but used to help steer the class.