Introduction to Strategy (Coursera)

The art and science of strategy is important because it offers tools to support decision making in volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and ambiguous scenarios. As a strategist, you will need to make decisions with information incomplete and often contradictory. The lack of access to information can be partially addressed with the analysis techniques that you will learn in this course.

This course will be focused and will offer some of the most important tools for the elaboration of the strategy and will develop your ability to use them.

This course is part of the following programs:

- Supply Chain & Operations Specialization

- Innovation & Entrepreneurship Mindset Specialization.

What you'll learn

- Understand a business scenario

- Use strategic tools

- Identify another player’s strategy

Syllabus

Introduction to Strategy

This week's goal is to introduce the concept of strategy. We will discuss how strategy is an ancient concept, whose basic principles are the same since ancient times until today. We present the mission, vision, and values and describe the importance of understanding the external environment in which the company is inserted.

Internal Analysis

In this week we will discuss the internal analysis techniques, that is, the activities directly and indirectly related to the company's purpose, and the VRIO technique, which helps us understand which of the internal resources determine the sources of competitive advantage.

SWOT - TOWS

This week is dedicated to the study of the SWOT - TOWS technique, which allows you to identify how to use internal resources (both strengths and weaknesses) to deal with the opportunities and threats generated by the external environment. The student will realize that this technique is different from the traditional SWOT technique.

Strategic Monitoring

Week 4 is dedicated to the discussion of Strategic monitoring techniques. Strategic monitoring is important because macro-environment variables change frequently. Therefore, it is important to use a professional system to identify changes, understand what they mean and how they affect the company's business.

Generic Strategies

Week 5 is dedicated to the study of generic strategies, as presented by Porter. A generic strategy is a way for the company to position itself within the industry, and each of the generic strategies indicates how to use company elements to avoid direct competition against other companies that use other generic strategies.