Business Strategy A-Z (With Case Studies)
What is the general idea of this course?
You have probably already heard about Business Strategy. Every business or organization that is on the market needs to have one. Often, we see successful business executives making significant decisions, seemingly using pure intuition. That is only partially right. Great Business Strategy intuition can develop once you see and understand several of famous business models. Gaining intuition is precisely the aim of this course. Once you can establish such a hunch, you can be a rockstar of any job interview or business meeting.
How detailed is this course?
This course does not go too much into details of some specific subject as it was built with a holistic idea in mind. In less than 4 hours of video content, it will take you through all five important topics within Business Strategy! If you would like to go into detail, Robert always encourages to do so if he stumbles upon an interesting idea which, if explained in too many details would be out of the scope of this course. You can always interact with the lecturer via comments or messages.
Does this course offer practical examples?
Of course. While Robert talks about business models, he always tries to relate them to practice with various examples. Moreover, there are several case studies in the form of assignments that you can work on. Practice tests accompany all of this.
Welcome to the course
Brief overview of what is awaiting for you in the course.
Organisational Environment
In this video, we introduce ourselves to the topics that are ahead of us in the first section of this course.
What is a business strategy? Is it a detailed plan or just outlined course of action where we would like to go? In this video, you will learn the answer to that.
Every organisation has to consider and work with environment that is surrounding it. We will use famous PESTEL framework to analyse it.
Once we learned about the environment, we start to be more detailed and use Five Forces Framework to analyse industry surrounding the organisation.
There is a little bit more to learn about Five Forces Framework - identification of industry types.
If there is a new industry, companies will emerge, grow, mature, shake out and die. That is the natural order of industry life cycle.
How can we distinguish ourselves from our competitors? One way is to adopt Blue Ocean thinkink.
Strategic Capabilities
In this video, we introduce ourselves to the topics that are ahead of us in the second section of this course.
What are strategic capabilities? Well, every organisation needs some. these allow us to survive on the market and be profitable.
VRIN model is the most popular model that is used for analysing strategic capabilities, or so called core competences. We really should learn it.
It is necessary to understand that there are several units within an organisation, which are linked to a value chain.
What are our strenghts, weaknesses, opportunitites and threats? Probably the most crucial analysis one can perform on any organisation.
You have arrived to the end of Sections 1 and 2, where we discussed what surrounds the organisation. We also learned couple of handy ways how one can get a grasp of it. It is hence time for a practice test, which counts at the end of the course, if you would like to receive a diploma of attending this course.
Minimum percentage to pass this test is 75%.
Remember, you can take the test as many times as you want, or just go back to the videos where all the knowledge neccessary to pass this test is.
Good luck!
Business Strategies
In this video, we introduce ourselves to the topics that are ahead of us in the third section of this course.
Every organisation has some competitors. Thereafter, every organisation needs some generic competitive strategies. What are those?
There is always one company that offers lowest price for a product. These are usually called cost-leaders.
If a company is able to produce a premium, or a very different product from its competitors, this company will be called differentiator.
If we are neither cost-leader, nor differentiator, we might very well be focusers. We focus on a very particular niche within a market.
In this video, we summarise previously discussed strategies into a simple Strategy clock model.
If there is a competitor that poses a direct threat to our business, we might opt to go for some of the interactive competitive strategies.
A very famous concept of Game Theory is applicable in many fields, however when it comes to interactive business strategies, it is an absolute must!
Corporate Level Strategy
In this video, we introduce ourselves to the topics that are ahead of us in the fourth section of this course.
If we are a corporate level manager, there are several directions that we can aim for. In this video, we will learn what options we have.
If we diversify our business to a new domain, our effectiveness might suffer. Why is this so?
There is an option called integration. Herein, we take over our supplier or our customers. Is it a good strategy?
If we have a lot of companies in our corporate portfolio, how can we keep track of all of them? We use portfolio matrices.
Innovation
In this video, we introduce ourselves to the topics that are ahead of us in the fifth section of this course.
To innovate, is not a straightforward process. There are several dilemmas that we need to tackle.
How does innovation spread among customers or our competitors? Innovation diffusion depends on several factors.
Is it always the best to be the innovator? Well, sometimes it might be better and more efficient to be the follower.
You have arrived to the end of Sections 3-5, where we discussed strategic choices of an organisation as well. as innovation We also learned couple of handy ways how one can analyse and utilise them. It is hence time for a practice test, which counts at the end of the course, if you would like to receive a diploma of attending this course.
Minimum percentage to pass this test is 75%.
Remember, you can take the test as many times as you want, or just go back to the videos where all the knowledge neccessary to pass this test is.
Good luck!
