AGILE AND DISRUPTIVE BUSINESS STRATEGY (3 SCU)

Learning Outcomes:

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: understand a disrupted world and why it is crucial for today’s organizations; orchestrate and influence change and dynamic alignment; develop the knowledge and skills to support a strong corporate philosophy and strategy; translate strategic agility into a robust business model; and maintain adaptability and resilience through learned optimism.

Topics:

The Agile and Disruptive Business Strategy course provides students with a framework to understand the structure and dynamics of agile businesses, together with an approach for their effective strategic management. It is focused on domains in which enterprise systems are important, because products, processes, and business models are parts of larger and more complex business eco-systems, or they are comprised of systems. The domains that will be covered include environmental changes, disruptive innovations, strategic agility, business ecosystem development, business model creation, and strategic adaptability. The course will be of particular interest to those interested in creating a business in which strategic agility and resilience will likely play a major role, and those interested in managing these businesses. The emphasis throughout the course is on the development and application of ways of thinking or mental models that bring clarity to the complex co-evolution of disruptive innovation, the demand opportunity, systems architecture, business ecosystems, decision-making, and strategy implementation within the business. This involves the application of a set of related theories and powerful analytical tools that are critical for the effective development of business strategy for agile business. These tools provide insights when anticipating and deciding how to respond to the behavior of customers, complementors, and competitors, and when deciding which innovations to invest in, opportunities to target, or partnerships to pursue. The objective of the program is to improve (significantly) the odds of success when figuring out how to create and capture value, make difficult decisions, and develop and deliver technologies, platforms, and products. The course uses case studies and presentations, and also relies upon independent study by students. The case studies provide an extensive opportunity to integrate and apply these tools and theories in a practical, business policy context. The readings support the case study and provide a strong theoretical framework to support the practical analysis of real-world cases.