Present:
Competitive Strategy, 2015-
This course teaches analysis of strategic decisions facing an organization. The primary emphasis is on decisions at the line of business (rather than corporate) level, and the primary source of analytical method is economics. We cover traditional strategy topics such as capabilities and sustainability as well as modern game theory models of competition. A central integrating idea is anticipating the response of other actors in the economy and recognizing that often an organization’s profits depend on the actions of other firms. We study nonprofits as well as for-profits. Class sessions are a mixture of applications (cases and other examples) and lectures.
This course equips students to use durable principles from economics, marketing, organizational behavior, accounting, and politics to achieve success in competitive environments. Students will use course tools to understand a manager’s role in a company’s value creation and value capture activities. Using this perspective, we will examine the potential for suppliers, buyers, complementors and traditional rivals to function as both competitors and cooperators to a company in the marketplace. Emphasis will be placed on anticipating the actions of other marketplace participants by understanding those participants’ objectives and constraints. The course explicitly recognizes that relevant players in the environment include governments, nonprofit organizations, and corporations and that all of these agents can behave both cooperatively and competitively.
Past:
- Industrial Organization, University of Minnesota, Spring 2011, Spring 2013
- Introduction to Econometrics, University of Minnesota, Fall 2010, Fall 2012, Summer 2013