and Syllabus Schedule: Business 290
Strategic Thinking
Instructor: Prof. Robert Chapman WOOD Fall 2008
Department: Organization & Management College of Business, San Jos State University Office: Business Tower 656, Office Phone: [phone] Ver. 2.00 Cell phone: [phone] Email: [e-mail] (email is usually the fastest and most reliable way to reach me) Website: http://www.cob.sjsu.edu/wood_r Office Hours: Wednesday and Thursday, 4:20-5:40 p.m. Organization & Mgmt. Dept. Office Business Tower 650; Phone: [phone] Department FAX: [phone]. (If sending material to the instructor by fax, please also send an email to make sure he knows it is coming.)
This course is designed to be the capstone of your M.B.A. program. We will do two distinct but related things. First, we will study the field of corporate and business strategy what businesspeople and academics have learned about how managers and entrepreneurs position and direct their organizations to achieve their major objectives. Second, each of you, individually or in two-person teams, will produce a business or strategic plan. Your job is to think through a business idea and how you would make it work, and to demonstrate in a written report that you have thought through all the key issues. Your plan should draw on everything youve learned during your MBA program and your career that can contribute to the success of your idea. The hard work -- thinking about, analyzing, and writing up a plan -- falls squarely on your shoulders. I will provide a checklist that indicates what sort of information should be included and I will give you access to some model plans from other classes. However, every plan is different. Your critical intelligence will be key to determining what issues your plan needs to address. The plan represents the culminating experience of your MBA education and is the equivalent of the graduation thesis required in other masters programs. How We Work Together. The course involves a significant amount of reading. You are responsible for understanding the material in the text and the cases. I will lecture on strategy concepts and lead discussions both on the applicability of the theory to businesses that you and I have been involved with and on the cases you will read. We will work together to decide how the concepts and techniques we discuss in class will be applied to your plan. You, however, are responsible for the final product -- a well researched and written plan. Your part is much 1
more time consuming and demanding than my own, except that I am working with many of you at the same time. Your Business or Strategic Plan. The major stages of developing your business or strategic plan are as follows. In the first stage, you will prepare a comprehensive inventory of the resources you or your organization possess that are relevant to the idea you are working on. And you will identify where important resource gaps exist. (If you are preparing a plan for a start-up, you will inventory the resources readily available to you and identify those that will be difficult to obtain.) In the second stage, you identify the ways and means whereby your organization will convert resources into capabilities. In the third stage you examine in detail the market or problem you are addressing, your competitors, and the competitive environment. You will estimate the size of the market or the opportunity and you will identify which economic, industry, and organizational resources and capabilities are most important for competitive success. The fourth stage concerns how the resources and capabilities you create will lead to a strong market position and how you will ensure that you can defend your strengths from imitation by competitors. The final stage is the completion and presentation of an integrated plan with: an executive summary, market and industry analyses that build on and include all the above analysis, development timetables, a schedule of deliverables for the business, and budget and financial data, including projected revenues and costs associated with the project.
Your plan should include business and revenue models. Normally these will be cash flow positive in 24 to 36 months. (See the instructor if you believe your project may not be able to produce positive cash flow within 36 months of inception.)
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The instructor will retain one copy of each plan. If you want a copy of the final plan returned, please turn in two. (The copy for the instructors records may be in electronic form. Please mark your plan CONFIDENTIAL if you dont want it shared with students in future classes.) Plans will be judged on: 1. Coherence. Does everything hang together to give a clear picture of the new business or initiative? 2. Completeness. Do you address each important issue that must be addressed for the business or initiative to succeed? 3. How Convincing? Do you persuade readers, especially the kinds of readers who could provide resources for the new business or initiative, that your plan can succeed? Student learning objectives: Corresponding to the two related tasks we will undertake, the class has two kinds of learning objectives. First, students will learn to analyze what makes firms (and initiatives within firms) successful and to determine what they can do to make their own businesses and their contributions to others businesses truly valuable. Second, they will learn to present business ideas in a way that will persuade others to support them and provide needed resources. Course Grading: Classroom participation - 22%; Long-term competitive advantage paper (Due session 2) 6% Progress of your project at milestones indicated in the schedule below -10%; Comprehensive project - 62% of which Oral presentation 14% Written report 46% Comments on others projects 2% People who work on the reports in two-person teams will each have to write a brief, professional memo on the strengths and weaknesses of the other persons contribution to the project. Important note: Since the comprehensive project for Business 290 is the culminating experience of your M.B.A. program, the Lucas Graduate School of Business requires all M.B.A. candidates to complete the project with a grade of B or better in order to obtain a degree. A student who receives good grades on class participation but does not complete a 3
project that earns a B will not be permitted to graduate. Moreover, your oral presentation is your oral exam. You must persuasively present and defend your business or strategic plan. A student who does not receive a B or better in presentation to the class may be required to present the plan again to the instructor privately. If you or your employer believe your project should not be displayed to the public, you may request that the professor not discuss it except with you. Please notify the professor if you wish to keep your project from public discussion. You will have to present the project orally to the instructor in lieu of a class presentation.
Required reading: Gordon Walker, Modern Competitive Strategy, McGraw-Hill Irwin, SECOND EDITION, 2007. Geoffrey A. Moore, Dealing with Darwin, Portfolio, 2005. (Recently published paperback edition is OK.) Case, Wizards of the Coast, to be distributed at first class session. Course packet containing cases and supplementary readings. (Available for purchase at Maple Press, 481 E. San
Carlos St.)
Additional required reading may be handed out in class. Other Reading materials: It is assumed that all students own a college-level dictionary and will consult it regularly. Strongly recommended: A grammar guide such as The Bedford Handbook (Bedford/St. Martins). Many students find this helpful in writing. Some students have found helpful the web pages created by Prof. Charles Darling of Capital Community College in Connecticut: http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/ Regular reading of The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times and/or Fortune magazine. (Discounted subscriptions will be available.) Newspapers should play a significant role in your strategic career (at least until display devices make it possible for online sources to display wide as a variety of information as quickly as 4
newspapers.) No other medium can keep you up to date on how global changes are affecting your business as well as an hour or more a week spent on one or more newspapers. Paper is not yet obsolete!
Schedule
Session 1. August 28, 2008. Introduction to the course. Your business plan or strategic plan. How to analyze a case Discussion to be based in part on Ch. 1 of Walker and Wizards of the Coast case. It is not necessary to read these before class, but since the homework is relatively heavy for Session 2, students may want to do these readings before Session 1. The Wizards of the Coast case should be available for pickup in the MBA office on campus starting Aug. 22 after 2 pm. Formation of temporary groups of 2 or 3 to do competitive advantage paper for next week. Session 2. September 4, 2008. Drivers of Competitive Advantage Walker, Chapters 1 and 2 Hamel & Prahalad, The Core Competence of the Corporation (in packet) Case: Wizards of the Coast Competitive advantage paper: In groups of two or three, identify a business that has or used to have sustained competitive advantage for approximately ten years or more. Tell why the advantage lasted or has lasted so long. To do this you will need to find two or more writings on the company, at least one of them containing a detailed discussion of why it achieved and maintained competitive advantage. One good approach is to look in back issues of magazines such as Fortune, Forbes, or Business Week for an article that will tell why one business advantage grew and persisted. Write a summary of the reasons the business achieved sustained competitive advantage, not to exceed four pages. Informal problem statements for your business or strategic plan may be discussed with the instructor Session 3. September 11, 2008 5
Drivers of Competitive Advantage, cont. Industry Analysis Case: Ivey School of Business case, Starbucks (in packet) Walker, Ch. 3 Initial problem statements due. If problem statements are sent to the instructor at least two days before class, he can provide feedback at the class meeting.
Session 4. September 18, 2008 Industry Analysis; Thinking about External Threats Adrian J. Slywotsky and John Drzik, Countering the Biggest Risk of All Case: HBS case No. 9-703-489. The Pharmaceutical Industry: Challenges in the New Century. Revised problem statements due. Session 5. September 25, 2008 Competing over Time Walker, Ch. 4 Moore, Ch. 2 Case: HBS case No. 9-706-421. Strategic Inflection: TiVo in 2005 draft of Resource Inventory and Gap Analysis may be handed in Introduction to Technology Strategy Grant, Chapter 11 (in packet) Session 6. October 2, 2008 Technology Strategy Grant, Chapter 11 (in packet) (continued) Moore, Chapters 4 and 5 HBS case No. 9-806-105. Google Inc. Resource Inventory and Gap Analysis due
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Some time between September 25 and October 30, each student or group of students must meet with the instructor to discuss progress on the plan
Session 7 October 9, 2008 Strategy execution. Hamel & Prahalad Strategic Intent Walker, Chapter 5. Case: Replacements Ltd. (If you are pressed for time, its OK to skim the section on Promotion from p. C73 to C78.) Section 8. October 16, 2008. Global strategy Walker, Ch. 8. Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (in packet) Stanford Case: China Internet and Search Market Session 9. October 23, 2008 Small Business Management HBS case: Robin Hood (to be passed out in class) Vertical Integration and outsourcing, Partnering Walker: Ch. 6 and Ch. 7, pp. 183-199. Stanford case: Flextronics: A Focus on Design Leads to India Competitor and industry analysis due, with market size calculations
Session 10. October 30, 2008 Outsourcing and partnering, continued New Business Development, Managing Multi-Business Firms Harvard Business Review brief case: Eliminate the Middleman Walker, Ch 9, Ch. 10 pp. 255-270. Bjelland and Wood, Five Ways to Transform a Business (in packet) 7
Session 11. November 6, 2008 Strategic planning and strategic thinking Ch. 12, pp. 307-321. Case: HBS Case No. 402-016. IBM Software Solutions, pp. 1-6.
Session 12. November 13, 2008 No class! (Instructor is scheduled to be out of the country.) Focus this week on writing your business/strategic plan. Concentrate especially on identifying how you will create sustained competitive advantage.
Session 13. November 20, 2008 Innovation in established firms Presentations Case: HBS Case No. 402-016. IBM Software Solutions. (all) Optional reading: Bjelland and Wood, An Inside Look at IBMs Innovation Jam Analysis due on how your new business or initiative will produce sustained competitive advantage. What resources and capabilities will make your advantage sustainable? What will prevent the sources of your advantage from being effectively imitated? If you are creating a business that will take on an existing, predictable role in a fragmented industry (a small accounting firm, for instance), you may choose to describe the position you intend to achieve in the industry and how you will sustain it. If you are planning for an initiative in an existing firm, please seek ways that your initiative will contribute to the present or future sustained competitive advantage of your firm. If you carefully analyze the firms needs and what your initiative can produce and conclude that the initiative cannot produce anything important, rare, and hard to imitate by other firms, and you believe the initiative is nonetheless 8
important because it is necessary for your firms future, explain those facts in your analysis and discuss the situation with the instructor.
November 27 NO CLASS! Happy Thanksgiving! Session 14. December 4, 2008 Presentations, Celebration Final written report due.
Notices INSTRUCTORS ACADEMIC INTEGRITY POLICY In accordance with the policies of San Jose State University, the Lucas Graduate School of Business, and the Department of Organization and Management, no academic dishonesty will be tolerated in this course. Any evidence of cheating on any academic exercise or plagiarism on any written work will normally result in a grade of F being assigned. (Plagiarism is any effort to pass the work of someone else as your own. For example, use of material from Worldwide Web pages without attribution is plagiarism. More information on plagiarism and how to avoid it is available at the San Jose State University library web site: http://www.sjlibrary.org/services/literacy/info_comp/plagiarism.htm.) In addition to resulting in a grade of F, academic dishonesty will also result in a report being made to the San Jose State University Office of Student Affairs. This may result in suspension or expulsion from the university. See the Universitys Academic Integrity Statement and link below and Academic Senate Policy S04-12.
Penalty for late or missed work: Late work can receive severe penalties, typically two half grade steps per week of lateness (e.g., a B paper turned in a week late is likely to receive a C+; two weeks late it will receive a C-). If you need extra time on a major assignment, consult with the instructor early. In any case, it is still much better to turn in work late than not to turn it in at all.
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5. University, College, and Department Policy Information: a) Academic integrity statement (from Office of Judicial Affairs): Your own commitment to learning, as evidenced by your enrollment at San Jos State University and the Universitys Academic Integrity Policy requires you to be honest in all your academic course work. Faculty are required to report all infractions to the Office of Judicial Affairs. The policy on academic integrity can be found at http://www2.sjsu.edu/senate/S04-12.pdf b) Campus policy in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act: If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a disability, or if you need special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please make an appointment with me as soon as possible, or see me during office hours. Presidential Directive 97-03 requires that students with disabilities register with DRC to establish a record of their disability.
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