ECTS : 3
Description du contenu de l'enseignement :
The course includes 10 sessions of 3 hours, organized toward 3 key challenges that strategists face. Each session addresses one specific issue. Two "intermediary" sessions allow students to present the progress of their projects.
- S1. Introduction: strategic management, past and current issues. This session traces the main evolutions of strategy as a discipline, and highlights the major issues currently facing organizations (which structure the three parts of the course), particularly those linked to digital transformation and social and environmental challenges. This session also presents the methodological elements needed to carry out the case studies and the group project.
> PART 1: RETHINKING VALUE CREATION
- S2. Why and how to rethink a company's business model? This session presents various conceptions of the business model as tools to define new value creation mechanisms, and introduces the challenges related to business model innovation.
- S3. Under what conditions can an innovation create a market disruption? This session addresses "breakthrough strategies", by analyzing how an innovation (product, process, business model, etc.) can not only destabilize the rules of the game of a market ("disruption"), but also generate a new market ("blue ocean").
- S4. How do platforms change the way value is created? This session discusses platforms as a new organizational model to challenge established firms in a sector and to propose new business models. The success factors of platforms are discussed.
- S5. Intermediate synthesis: presentation of group projects.
> PART 2: INFLUENCING AND INTERACTING WITH THE ENVIRONMENT’S ACTORS
- S6. Competition or cooperation: why and how to structure a business ecosystem? This session looks at the limitations of traditional tools for representing firms' environments and the contribution of the notion of business ecosystems. The new forms and dynamics of competition based on cooperation with networks of actors, including competitors, to form these business ecosystems are also discussed.
- S7. How can a firm shape the institutional context to its own advantage? This session shows how the institutional environment (State, regulation, etc.) conditions a firm's strategy, but also how a firm can influence this environment to its advantage ("non-market strategies" such as lobbying, etc.).
- S8. Intermediate synthesis: presentation of group projects.
> PART 3: LegitimiZing STRATEGY
- S9. Governance: how to align strategy with stakeholders’ expectations? This session analyses how the legal form of an organization partly determines its strategic choices, and discusses the main governance mechanisms for aligning the strategy with the challenges of the organization’s stakeholders.
- S10. How to think about strategy in the era of major social and environmental challenges? This session addresses the social and environmental issues that now underpin the definition, planning and implementation of strategy, as well as its legitimization by stakeholders.
Compétence à acquérir :
The objective of the strategic management course is to provide keys to understanding and analyzing these strategic situations. At the end of this course, the student will be able to:
- Know and understand the main strategic issues that companies are currently facing;
- Master essential theoretical concepts to shed light on these issues and mobilize them as a framework for analysis;
- Elaborate a structured and reflexive analysis of a company's strategic situation.
Mode de contrôle des connaissances :
The course’s’ evaluation is structured as follows:
1. Continuous assessment (50%)
· Group project (40%) (collective work) : Strategic report on a company case, analyzed through one of the course topics (30 pages max.)
· Each group of students must analyze a company of their choice from the point of view of the social and environmental problems or issues it faces. The proposed analysis must be based on at least one course theme. In sessions 5 and 8, oral presentation (15 minutes), in groups of 4-5 students, to discuss progress and problems encountered.
· Case study (10%) (individual) : On the basis of a press corpus, students must analyze the strategic situation of a company by formulating a problem linked to at least one theme of the course. They must then respond to this problem with a structured, well-argued analysis, and conclude with recommendations.
· Classroom participation (facultative) : (bonus/malus on the individual grade, optional, depending on the teacher’s choice) : Participation is evaluated according to the modalities indicated by the teacher, which may be: presentation of a press review, contribution to classroom discussions, attendance…
2. Final exam (50%)
· Case study : Individual exam (3h): Same instructions as those of the case study in continuous assessment (the case studies proposed in continuous assessment allow for practice).
Bibliographie, lectures recommandées :
JOHNSON G., SCHOLES K., WHITTINGTON R., ANGWIN D., REGNER P. Exploring Corporate Strategy, Pearson, 13th edition, 2023.
CUSUMANO M.A., GAWER, A., YOFFIE B., The business of platforms: Strategy in the age of digital competition, innovation, and power, Harper Business, 2019.
ADNER R., The wide lens: A new strategy for innovation, Penguin, 2012.