Kim Warren, Elective Course, London Business School




		Kim Warren Assistant Professor of Strategic and International Management London Business School




	The Strategy Dynamics Elective Course This is an optional course taken by a large fraction of students on all our degree programmes, not only full-time and executive MBAs, but also Masters in Finance students and visitors from other institutions world-wide. Although a radical departure from established approaches to understanding and communicating Strategy, the course and its underlying frameworks have been built on solid resource-based and competence-based foundations from the strategic management field. The course outline explains: the growth and decline of strategic resources through time the interdependencies between these processes the design of the organisation's strategic architecture (how the pieces fit!). the dynamics of competitive battles over time. the evolution of industry structure. the role of capabilities to up-rate performance. the design, control and communication of the strategic logic. [NOTE: A substantial innovation in learning materials is currently in progress (May 02) which will result in a redevelopment of the way this course runs]. My publications and learning materials provide easy access to the underlying principles, and provide the basis for a deeply involving learning experience. The learning style is strongly learner-focused, with students gaining insight not only from these class exercises, but also from applying the principles – both alone and in groups – to an astonishing array of cases. Recent studies, for example, have addressed questions such as how Perot Systems might achieve its multi-billion dollar growth objectives, how Sony could resist the attack of Microsoft's xBox game console, how the marketing of foreign direct investment into Venezuela was affected by a coup d'etat, how international policy choices might undermine the ‘business' of terrorism, and how to build and sustain a schooling effort in poverty-stricken parts of Bombay. Sample Student Papers As an indication of what can be achieved with the Strategy Dynamics method, here is a sample of individual and group student papers (written to conform with the requirements listed in the course outline). Critical to these assignments are (a) the explicit use of the strategy dynamics frameworks for analysing the firm's architecture, and (b) the explicit representation, with time-charts, of data relating to the case. Although they are all good examples of this work, they are not guaranteed to be error-free, nor to encompass all of the potentially important analysis. Note that most of these papers were carried out on the basis of information obtained from outside the organisation, with no access to internal staff or information-sources. Group reports eBay group report Orange PLC group report Individual papers Brands microworld experiments and games consoles study Professional Services microworld experiment and newspaper case study Cirque du Soleil paper Iglu.com microworld experiments and Fitness Centres study Back to Top Back to Home Page

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