Fundamentals of Strategy

Strategy is an all-embracing term that broadly refers to decision-making at both an Individual level – dealing with how we make personal choices in varied settings – and a Business & Management level –focusing on how individuals grouped in organizations or companies make decisions about successfully running an entrepreneurial endeavor. This course will start from discussing the elements of the Individual level of Strategy decision-making process, to then focus on the Business level. In Business & Management, Strategy is fundamentally a quest for sustained superior performance compared to competitors. Strategists working in either incumbent companies or startups ultimately and systematically aim at outperforming rivals, by creating and sustaining what is traditionally called a competitive advantage. To achieve such overarching goal, they have to deeply analyze and understand the competitive environment their companies operate in, by investigating the factors responsible for their firm’s past performance and by spotting those changes (inside or outside the firm) that are most likely to enhance or hurt future performance.