Corporate Strategy

1.5 units

Most major companies in the world are not single-business operations but portfolios of businesses spanning multiple locations. Single business firms today ultimately become multi-business firms to sustain their growth as they exhaust opportunity in existing markets. This course provides tools, frameworks and processes that help you understand the unique opportunities and challenges for firms spanning multiple products, business units, and geographic locations. Specifically, we will adopt the perspective of top management teams and discuss (1) How multi-product, multi-business, and multi-location firms create value beyond what investors could enjoy using a stock portfolio; (2) How firms identify and explore new growth opportunities without compromising their core competence; and (3) How corporate managers develop structure, systems and processes to manage the mix of businesses effectively. We will use a mixture of cases, lectures, in-class exercises, and discussions of current events. The goal is to develop the skill set and logical clarity necessary to analyze complex problems involved in corporate strategy.