Strategy Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage

DAY 1

Business Strategy, Strategic Management, and Strategic Choice

• Generic Competitive Strategies

• Structural Analysis of Industries and Companies

• “Competitive Positioning” versus “Blue Ocean” approaches

• How value migrates over Time

• Customer Selection and the Principle of Differentiated Customer Engagement

• The Integrated Supply-Demand Chain as the Basis of 21st Century Strategic Thinking

• Choice and Complexity – The Fundamental Problem in Strategic Thinking and Planning

• Mini-Case on Strategic Choice

DAY 2

How to Build a Robust Strategy

• The Interface of External and Internal Analysis: Trade-Offs and Balance

• The Concept of Shareholder Value and its Relationship to Strategic Planning

• Financial and Non-Financial Aspects of Strategy, Objectives and Mechanisms

• Advanced Application of the “Balanced Scorecard” Principles

• Diagnosing Strategic Problems and Opportunities

• Strategic Choice – Offensive versus Defensive Strategic Programmes

• How to Build and Use the “5-page Strategy Framework”

• Mini-Case on Strategic Choice

DAY 3

The Concept of Competitive Advantage and the Ways of Securing Competitive Advantage

• Review of the tools used so far

• Competitive Advantage through Cost Leadership

• Competitive Advantage through Product/Service Differentiation

• Competitive Advantage through Differentiation of the Business Model

• Combining Cost Leadership with Differentiation: Singapore Airlines Mini-Case

• Balancing Cost Leadership and Differentiation in Delivering Value to Customers

• Introduction and Briefing for the main Case Study

• First-phase group work on the main Case Study

DAY 4

Strategic Risk and Global Strategic Management

• Identifying and Assessing Risk and Uncertainty

• Tools and Techniques in Managing Risk and Uncertainty

• The Essence of Globalization and Global Business Strategy

• Globalization – Managing the Strategic shift from between National/International/Global phases

• Globalization – Managing Organizational Change and the Human Resource dimension

• How to Build and Manage a Strategic Planning team

• Managing the Interface of Strategy and Global Operations

• Second-phase work on the main Case Study

DAY 5

Building Tomorrow’s Organization out of Today’s Organization

• Final-phase work on the main Case Study

• Group Presentations of the main Case Study

• Strategic Renewal: The Life-Cycle Principle Applied to Business Strategy

• The Importance of Vision and Values in Driving Strategic Development and Organizational Change

• The Senior Executive as Strategic Leader and Communicator

• The Senior Executive as Coach and Mentor - Getting Strategic Thinking into all Levels of Management

• Conclusions (1) - Building Tomorrow’s Organisation out of Today’s organization

• Conclusions (2) - The Corporate and Individual Value of Strategic Thinking