Strategy
Curriculum
MBA Required Curriculum (1st Year)
Strategy
The objective of this course is to help students develop the skills for formulating strategy. It provides an understanding of:
- A firm's operative environment and how to sustain competitive advantage.
- How to generate superior value for customers by designing the optimum configuration of the product mix and functional activities.
- How to balance the opportunities and risks associated with dynamic and uncertain changes in industry attractiveness and competitive position.
Students learn to:
- Develop a mastery of a body of analytical tools and the ability to take an integrative point of view.
- Use these tools to perform in-depth analyses of industries and competitors, predict competitive behavior, and analyze how firms develop and sustain competitive advantage over time.
Particular attention is paid to competitive positioning; understanding comparative costs; and addressing issues such as cannibalization, network externalities, and globalization.
All first-year HBS MBA students have a series of required courses, as listed below:
Term I Courses
These five courses focus on the internal functional operations of business enterprise.
Term II Courses
These six courses cover the relationship of the organization to larger economic, governmental, and social environments.
MBA Elective Curriculum (2nd Year)
Strategy
| Course Title | Faculty Name | Term |
|---|---|---|
| Competing through Business Models | Ramon Casadesus-Masanell | Fall 2009 |
| Competing with Social Networks | Mikolaj Piskorski | Winter 2010 |
| Competitive Dynamics | Dennis Yao | Winter 2010 |
| Corporate Strategy | Julie Wulf | Winter 2010 |
| Executing Strategy | J. Bruce Harreld | Winter 2010 |
| Games of Chance and Games of Strategy | Elon Kohlberg | Fall 2009 |
| Global Strategic Management | David Collis | Fall 2009 |
| Microeconomics of Competitiveness | Michael Porter | Winter 2010 |
| Strategic Reasoning Laboratory: How to Think Like Great Strategists | Giovanni Gavetti | Winter 2010 |
| Strategies Beyond the Market | Felix Oberholzer-Gee | Fall 2009 |
| Strategy and Technology | Andrei Hagiu | Fall 2009 |
Doctoral Programs
Detailed curriculum information and requirements for each doctoral program associated with the Strategy unit can be found on the Doctoral Programs Web site, linked below.