The course begins by giving participants a good basic understanding about what strategy is all about in a “general sense” and introduces some foundation ideas about strategy – again in a general sense – including the different approaches to the strategy developing process.

Module 2 develops some key ideas about thinking strategically, and what capabilities/understandings are needed to be able both to think about change – the essence of thinking strategically – and also how to organize strategic ideas through various focused analytical management frameworks that are organized around the “where are we now/where do we want to go/how do we want to get there” big picture management framework

Module 2 is more conceptual in nature in thinking about business and corporate strategies, and this leads into Module 3, focused on “business strategies” and validating ideas developed in the previous module. In fact, Module 3 is focused on developing key understanding about business strategy, the heart of a company’s efforts to create value and win in the marketplace at the business unit level, and will provide detailed analytical tools/understandings about how to concretely/step-by-step build up business strategies.

The business strategy Module 3 focused mostly on discussions at the business unit level, where perhaps the main competition occurs in the “fight” for customer value and attention. However, in this final Module 4, the learning discussion moves up to the corporate strategy level, which is focused on deciding what businesses or industries the firm should be competing in – in the context basis of the mission and vision and core value seeking priorities. And should the firm actually be competing in that industry to create new stakeholder value, and f the answer is yes, how can the parent company add value to that effort so that the firm can have a better competitive advantage at the business unit level.