Applied Business Strategy All Modules

Strategy sits at the core of business management, and this course equips managers with the tools to model and adapt strategy as circumstances change.

What this course covers:

• Strategic analysis, strategy development, implementation and evaluation
• The foundations of strategic thinking and game theory
• Competitive advantage and sustainable business in the modern economy
• Michael Porter's generic strategies and industry analysis models
• How companies like IKEA build unique, hard-to-replicate market positions

By the end you will be ready to position your organization for lasting success.

Strategy and strategic management guide a company's long-term objectives, competitive advantage, and profitability, and this course explains how.

What this course covers:

• What strategy means and how it links to wider business decision-making
• The prescriptive, rational approach and the Johnson and Scholes planning process
• The emergent approach, where strategy develops through trial and error
• How Lynch frames these two key approaches to strategy

By the end, you will understand the definition of strategy and the main approaches used to manage it.

Strategy is shaped by a firm's external environment and its internal capabilities, and this course shows how the two connect.

What this course covers:

• The key components of a company's external environment
• Assessing industry and competitive conditions with the five forces framework
• Strategic group analysis and identifying key success factors
• Developing mission, vision, and values
• Balancing commercial, social, environmental, and ethical factors in strategy

Ideal for anyone building strategic planning and corporate responsibility skills in modern business.

A firm's business strategy brings together research, analysis, and the synthesis of strategic management concepts into initiatives an organization can actually execute. This course lets you build, apply, and evaluate strategies in real-world scenarios.

What this course covers:

• Rationalizing analysis findings into a coherent strategic direction
• Aligning strategy with the firm's vision, mission, and values
• Matching organizational structure to strategy
• Adopting best practices and continuous improvement tools
• Building an execution framework at the strategic business unit level

You will leave able to connect strategy formulation to functional-level implementation.

Complex strategic business problems call for solutions, and organizations need local and international strategic management plans and operations that work across diverse business contexts. This course provides the tools to critically evaluate and develop dynamic business plans, with attention to implementation and the future of the strategy planning process.

What this course covers:

• Revisiting the higher strategic levels so that the role of functional strategy is clear
• Corporate Level Strategy as the statement of a company's main purposes
• How the corporate-level strategic process sets priorities and common goals, focuses the use of resources, and specifies the expected results or achievements
• How Business Level Strategy translates corporate strategies into more tangible actions and strategic directions
• Overarching business-level themes for departmental direction, such as increasing market share, improving product quality and building brand exposure

It suits managers and planners who need to develop and critically evaluate strategic management plans and operations.