SMO 641

BUSINESS STRATEGY
FALL TERM 2017

Section X01
Thursday, September 7 – December 8
6:30 – 9:30 p.m.
BUS 1-09

Instructor: Dr. Anthony R. Briggs

Office: BUS 4-20E
Phone: (780) 492-4993 (office)
Email: tony.briggs@ualberta.ca
Office Hours: Before class and by appointment

Required Materials: SMO 641 Case Pack ($4.25US/case)

Available @ http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/access/68861507
Course Web Site: https://ulearn.ualberta.ca/webapps/login

DESCRIPTION:

Business Strategy is intended to be a challenging and exciting capstone course for the MBA curriculum.
The material in this course is designed to keep your interest and attention. In my mind, the power of
strategizing and managing an organization down the road of success makes the course exciting to take and
fun to teach. I hope this course will be the best you have ever had and that it will be instrumental in helping
to make you more successful in your career and much wiser about the secrets of successful management.

COURSE DESIGN:

The primary objective of this course is to provide you with the tools you need to analyze, formulate and
make decisions on strategic problems facing leaders, managers and organizations. This class will focus on
both the making and execution of business strategy. The diagnosis of business problems is only a small
component of a successful competitive strategy. Making a particular strategy work, for a specific
organization in a particular market, is a critical and underemphasized element of strategic management.
You will be encouraged and challenged to work through the decision making and implementation of any
prospective strategies. To this end, you will learn how to use a broad menu of key tools for strategic
thinking and communication, and also explore cases pertaining to new and emerging issues in strategic
management.

SMO 641, Briggs – Course Syllabus Page 1 of 9 Fall Term 2017

Another objective of this course is to provide you with a final capstone experience to your MBA career. As
such, you will, working in a group environment, analyze a “live” organizational strategic case. By live, I
mean that a company has volunteered their organization as a living laboratory complete with history,
objectives, problems and potential solutions. Your job will be to understand their desire, analyze their
situation, and recommend a strategic course of action. To help you with this activity, there will be several
co-facilitators who will discuss specific issues of strategic management (globalization, market research)
and act as mentors for your project.

The last major objective of this course is to improve your teamwork skills and your written and oral
communication skills. Contemporary managers are valued not only for their skills at technical analysis and
problem solving, but also for their ability to communicate their solutions, persuade others of the viability
of their insights and construct creative solutions in a group context. After completing your MBA in
general, and this class in particular, you should be able to think critically in new and unfamiliar
circumstances through the application of conceptual and theoretical understandings of core business
fundamentals. You should also be able to apply qualitative and quantitative techniques to problem solving.

Note: The syllabus, as prepared, builds on earlier courses developed by Professors Marvin Washington
Dev Jennings.

LEARNING GOALS:

The Alberta MBA Program curriculum is based on the following set of learning goals:

Business Fundamentals Global Awareness

Teamwork and Leadership Skills Quantitative Skills
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Information Processing Skills
Communication Skills Ethical Awareness

EVALUATION:

Evaluation in the course will be based on three sets of assignments weighted as follows:

1. Individual Presentation and Class Participation

a. Individual presentation 20%
b. Individual class contribution 20% /40%

2. “Live Project” Development and Brainstorming Meeting

a. Team problem presentation 5%
b. Colleague feedback 5% /10%

3. Final “Live Project” Presentation and Written Report

a. Final Presentation 20%
b. Final Written Report 25%
c. Evaluation of team members 5% /50%

Course Total 100%

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DESCRIPTION OF COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

1. Individual Presentation and Class Participation

 Individual Presentation (20%)

You will have the opportunity to showcase your personal interests, presentation skills and strategy
knowledge through an individual presentation about an organization that you are interested in. The
organization can be a for-profit or a not-for-profit, public or private, and from anywhere in the world. The
presentation will have five components:

1. What is the organization and why is it of personal interest to you?

2. Does the organization have a strategy? What is it?
3. What is the most important problem this organization is facing?
4. What model would be the most useful to explain this problem?
5. How should the organization solve this problem? Can they implement this change?

This assignment will be a 4-6 minute presentation. To ensure we don’t have too many similar
organizations, each project group will submit a list of unique organizations for each individual in that
group. I will accept up to three of the same organization on a first come, first served basis, so it is in a
groups interest to send their list as soon as they can coordinate. More details on this will follow.

Individual presentations are graded out of twenty points. The quality of the content for the five items above
will each be graded out of three. The remaining five points will be assessed on the quality of the
presentation, the use of visuals and good mechanics on structure and timing.

This evaluated component seeks to achieve the business fundamentals, critical thinking and problem
solving skills, and communication skills learning goals.

 Class Participation (20%)

In strategic settings, where performance is often an outcome new ideas and communication, it is very
important that the student is engaged with the material and understand different perspectives. The
participation grade will be primarily associated with the cases, to encourage students to interact with the
discussion.

Your participation grade will be a combination of your in class engagement and your regular submission of
four mini-responses (300 words max) corresponding to each case. The mechanics of this process will be
provided on uLearn later in the class. Cases and class discussions are meant to be fun and interesting, but if
you are uncomfortable engaging in class, please come and talk to me and to develop this skill. Note that
across case days I will aim to call our each student at least once.

This evaluated component, though the varied nature of cases, seeks to achieve the all of the
requisite learning goals.

2. “Live Project” Development and Brainstorming Meeting

Individuals (with strong guidelines from the instructor) will work in a group of 5 or 6 members. The
project will vary by the sponsoring organization, but all sponsors were told that: (1) their project has to be
strategic in nature, (2) has to be integrative across multiple functional areas (finance, operations,
marketing, human relations, etc.) and (3) should be able to be completed in 10-12 weeks. The teams should

SMO 641, Briggs – Course Syllabus Page 3 of 9 Fall Term 2017

expect three meetings with their sponsors during the semester. We will have a formal check-in at least two
times during the semester where you will get a chance to discuss aspects of your project in class.

Project teams will be chosen and developed in the following way:

1. Decide which projects are of most individual interest to you. You should choose projects
which will have the greatest personal or future work related benefit to you.
2. Once you have prioritized your projects, email me a one or two paragraph statement of interest
on the top three projects you would like study and why, due no later than September 18th.
3. We will form teams of about 5-6 students each, in class, based on these interests. Students will
be assigned by a combination of the strength of their statements and the priority in which those
statements are submitted.
4. Once teams have been chosen, and groups finalized, you will need to make contact with the
organization. Per the ethics requirements, do not contact your organization until your group
has permission from the instructor to do so.
5. After meeting with the organization, you will need to submit and get approval for a formal
scope document (detailing the deliverables of the project), due no later than October 2nd.

 Team Problem Participation (5%) – DUE November 2

In a traditional consulting environment, teams will seek help from their peers to identify problems and
solutions. To improve the quality of Live Projects, each team will be assigned to provide feedback to one
other team, in a live setting, to identify potential problems and/or recommend potential solutions. Each
team will provide a non-confidential and brief 6-12 slide presentation on their project. In this presentation
the team will address the existing strategy of the organization, the strategic problem and their initial
approach to address that problem. The idea of the presentation is to identify and communicate the key
problems faced by the organization such that others can help. Time will be made available in class for
teams to walk through their presentations.

 Colleague Feedback (5%) – DUE November 9

Teams will provide a markup of the original slide deck, and up to one page in comments, for feedback.
Again, time will be available in class for teams to have a question/answer dialogue on the feedback.

3. Final “Live Project” Presentation and Report

 Live Project Presentation (20%) – DUE November 30 or December 7

Each group with make a formal presentation based upon their project. The presentation should be 20
minutes long and allow for 5 minutes of questions (25 minutes in total). I encourage students to read Guy
Kawasaki’s (2008) notes in “Reality Check” on high quality presentations. You will want to design your
presentation so that we are convinced of your plan!

Your team will present your recommendations on one of the above days. These will be presented to the
project organization, the instructor and often one visitor. Presentations will be open to the class, but in
some circumstances may be closed at the request of the project organization. With special permission, the
presentation may be outside of the scheduled time, but this will be only in very rare circumstances, with
consent of the whole team, to needs of the project organization.

For the presentation days, just like in regular businesses, there will be a need to share a lot of information
with limited time and we need to make sure that there is time for everyone to present. Teams must stay
within one minute of their allotted time or will be interrupted and receive deductions.

SMO 641, Briggs – Course Syllabus Page 4 of 9 Fall Term 2017

The presentation will be evaluated using the following criteria:
Content (10%)
1. Tells a good story
2. Uses strategy concepts and frameworks well
3. Defines a clear strategy for the organization
4. Provides a strong rational for future relationships
5. Provides a clear decision forward, including implementation and effects on performance
Form (6%)
1. Professional and within time
2. Creative presentation of information
3. Coordination and effective, full use of team
Questions from the Audience (4%)
1. Question 1
2. Question 2

This is a team grade. Everyone should speak to some aspect of the presentation. Teams should bring 5
physical copies of the slides, “note” format with 3 slides/page. Use your team effectively!

 Live Project Report (25%) – DUE 10pm December 7th

The project report should be no more than 30 pages of text (double-spaced), not including the appendices.
You should discuss the current strategies and potential relationships using multiple frameworks from this
class. The report should be submitted via email to me, cc’ing the project sponsor. After the deadline above,
I will immediately deduct 10% per day for each day it is late. The paper will be assessed as follows:
Use of Strategic Frameworks (10%)
1. Clear narrative for the report including an executive summary, organizational background and
context, the key problem and key findings
2. Interesting strategies identified and assessed
3. Good use of organizational example and good detail to illustrate strategies
4. Effects on firm performance are clear and well-defended
Strategic Plan (10%)
1. Creative/clever ideas about future relationships
2. Clear decision with pros and cons discussed
3. Implementation considered
4. Figures support analyses in depth/breadth
Writing Quality and Information Richness (5%)
1. High quality/creative appearance
2. Good grammar, well-organized, with nice flow
3. Information richness in Tables/Appendices
Note: All projects must follow research ethics board guidelines found at
http://www.business.ualberta.ca/Research/ResearchEthicsBoard/PoliciesProcedures.aspx

 Evaluation of your Team Members (5%) – DUE 10pm December 7th

Sixty percent of your grade is determined based on working in a group setting and there needs to be
consideration for varying contributions from group members. To account for individual differences, each
group member will provide a confidential/anonymous evaluation to me, via email, of themselves and their
group member’s performance throughout the semester.

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For the evaluation of team members, you will be given a hypothetical $10,000 for each member in your
group (i.e. with 5 members you will have $50,000 to allocate). You are asked to split the money based
upon contribution each team member made to the group (including yourself) and provide a brief rationale
consistent with your evaluation. An individual with an average allocation of $10,000 will receive the full 5
points. If the average is different, students will receive bonuses or deductions of 1 or 2 points (i.e. 3 of 5
points, or 7 of 5 points) at the discretion of the instructor.

Overall, the “Live Project” assignment seeks to achieve the business fundamentals, teamwork and
leadership skills, critical thinking and problem solving, communication skills, ethical awareness and
quantitative and information processing learning goals.

COURSE POLICIES:

Materials
All materials will are digital, either available through the course pack, the library as an online resource, or
through uLearn. Recommended reference texts, while not required include Strategic Management and
Competitive Advantage (Barney and Hesterly 5th Edition, 2014), Strategic Management Concepts (Hitt and
Ireland, 2014), or Contemporary Strategy Analysis (Grant, 2013).

Slides and Notes. To aid your preparation for class, key slides for the week are normally posted in
advance, typically by Sunday night on uLearn under SMO 641. To make the class more interactive and
interesting during classroom discussion, some slides may be omitted until they are presented in class.

Format for Assignments

All written assignments should be 11 or 12 point font, one and a half or double-spaced with one inch
margins all around. Title pages, reference sections and appendices are not included in page count.
Diagrams, figures and tables are encouraged and key should be presented in the body of the paper.
References should be cited using APA Style. Assignments are to be submitted by email (as a PDF or MS
Word attachment) typically by 10:00 pm.

Grading
The instructor will grade most assignments. The final presentation grade will consider feedback from
ASoB visitors. The final report will be graded by the instructor and a PhD candidate. Detailed grades will
be posted on uLearn as soon as they are computed. Please review them and send any feedback about any
potential errors. You are welcome to discuss your class performance and standing in the course by
appointment. On e-mail request, I will provide detailed comments on the final paper.

Grade Distribution
I will follow the official grading policy found in §23.4(4) of the University Calendar. Grades will be
calculated using a combination of the recommended distribution and absolute measures. If the class as a
whole is highly engaged, lower grades will be rare and the class distribution will be higher than guidelines.

Late Policy
Student missing the case presentations will be required to write a 3-5 page case analysis due one week after
the missed case. Other late assignments, such as the Final Report, will lose 10% of the final grade
immediately for every day that it is late. Papers will not be accepted five days past the deadline.

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UNIVERSITY PROCEDURES AND POLICIES

Policies about course outlines can be found here and in §23.4(2) of the University Calendar.

Missed Assignments: Approval for an excused absence from term work is at the discretion of the instructor
as per §23.3(1) of the University Calendar. Any student who is incapacitated because of illness, is suffering
from severe domestic affliction, or has other compelling reasons (including religious conviction) may
apply for an excused absence for a missed assignment. If you have a conflict please discusses it with me
beforehand and I will be happy to find a good solution with you. In fairness to other students, I will rarely
accept excuses once an assignment deadline has passed.

Appropriate Conduct: My goal in this course is to create a supportive environment for learning based on
open, constructive debate. This requires all of us to be engaged with the material and with each other in a
professional manner, with courtesy and respect for each other’s individuality. Discrimination, malicious
criticism, and disruption of class are examples of conduct that are not acceptable.

Lecture Recordings: Audio or video recording of lectures, labs, seminars or any other teaching
environment by students is allowed only with the prior written consent of the instructor or as a part of an
approved accommodation plan. Recorded material is to be used solely for personal study, and is not to be
used or distributed for any other purpose without prior written consent from the instructor.

Academic Integrity: The University of Alberta is committed to the highest standards of academic integrity
and honesty. Students are expected to be familiar with these standards regarding academic honesty
and to uphold the policies of the University in this respect. Students are particularly urged to
familiarize themselves with the provisions of the Code of Student Behaviour (online
at www.governance.ualberta.ca) and avoid any behaviour which could potentially result in suspicions of
cheating, plagiarism, misrepresentation of facts and/or participation in an offence. Academic
dishonesty is a serious offence and can result in suspension or expulsion from the University.
______________
Note: This syllabus may be subject to minor modifications (September 7, 2017).

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 COURSE OUTLINE
 Required/Reference reading
o Supplemental reading

PART 1: STRATEGIC THINKING

September 7 WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION

o Mintzberg, H., Lampel, J. and Ahlstrand, B. 1998. Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour through the
Wilds of Strategic Management: New York: The Free Press. Chapters 1 and 12. uLearn
 Christensen, C. (2010) How Will You Measure Your Life? Harvard Business Review. 88 (7/8),
46-51. HBSP
o Course structure, ethical guidelines and Live Case projects will be discussed

September 14 PRINCIPLES OF STRATEGY

 Porter, M.E. 1996. What is Strategy? Harvard Business Review, 74 (6): 61-78. uLearn
 Hambrick, D.C. & Fredrickson, J.W. 2001. Are you sure you have a strategy? Academy of
Management Executive, 15 (4): 48-59. WEB
 Porter, M.E. 2008. The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy. Harvard Business Review.
86(1): 78-93. uLearn
 Barney, J.B. 1995. Looking Inside for Competitive Advantage. Academy of Management
Executive, 9 (4): 49-61. WEB
 Ghemawat, P.J. and Rivkin, J.W. 2006. Creating Competitive Advantage. Harvard Business
School Case. HBSP
DUE September 18th – Interest statement for Live Case

September 21 COMPETITIVE DYNAMICS

 Christensen, C.M. and Raynor, M.E. 2003. The Innovators Solution: Creating and Sustaining
Successful Growth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Chapter 2. uLearn
 Kim, W.C. and Mauborgne, R. 2007. Chapter 1. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create
Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant. Boston: Harvard Business
School Press Chapter 1 (p.3-23). uLearn
 Roberts, E.B., and Berry, C.A. 1985. Entering New Businesses: Selecting Strategies for Success.
Sloan Management Review, 26 (3): 3-17.1998. WEB

September 28 STRATEGY and GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS

Guest Facilitator – Prof. Barry Scholnick
o Chand, M. and Tung, R. L. 2014. The Aging of the World’s Population and its Effects on Global
Business. Academy of Management Perspectives, 28(4): 409-429.
o Gupta, A.K. & Govindarajan, V. 2001. Converting global presence into global competitive
advantage. Academy of Management Executive, 15 (2): 45-56. WEB
DUE October 2nd – Scope document

PART 2: PRACTICE OF STRATEGY

October 5 DEFINING AND COMMUNICATING PROBLEMS

o Christensen, C. M., Wang, D. and Derek van Bever. 2013. Consulting on the Cusp of Disruption.
Harvard Business Review. 91(10): 106-114. uLearn
o Hamm, J. 2006. The Five Messages Leaders Must Manage. Harvard Business Review. 84(5):
114-122. uLearn
 CASE: Hindustan Petroleum: Driving Change through Internal Communication

SMO 641, Briggs – Course Syllabus Page 8 of 9 Fall Term 2017

October 12 LEADERSHIP AND TRANSFORMATION
Guest Facilitator on Secondary Research – Business Librarian, Janet Williamson
o Kotter, J. P. 2001. What Leaders Really Do. Harvard Business Review. 79(11): 85-96. uLearn
 CASE: Danica Purg: Entrepreneurial Leadership in Shaping Leadership Development (A)

October 19 Individual Presentations

October 26 Individual Presentations

PART 3: FRONTIER TOPICS

November 2 EXPONENTIAL ORGANIZATIONS

o Diamandis, P. and Kotler, S. 2016 Goodbye Linear Thinking: Hello Exponential. uLearn
o Kane, G. C., Palmer, D., Phillips, A.N., Kiron, D. and Buckley, N. 2016. Strategy, Not
Technology, Drives Digital Transformation. MIT Sloan Management Review. WEB
o Ross, J.W., Beath, C.M. and Quaadgras, A. 2013. You May Not Need Big Data After All.
Harvard Business Review. uLearn
 CASE: Disruption in Detroit: Ford, Silicon Valley and Beyond

November 9 MEANINGFUL WORK AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

o Bradach, J. L.; Tierney, Thomas J.; Stone, Nan. 2008. Delivering on the promise of non-profits.
Harvard Business Review, 86 (12,): 88-97 uLearn
o Amit, R. and Zott, C. 2012. Creating Value through Business Model Innovation. MIT Sloan
Management Review. WEB
 Christensen, C. (2010) How Will You Measure Your Life? Harvard Business Review. 88 (7/8),
46-51. uLearn
 CASE: New Resource Bank: In Pursuit of Green

November 16 READING WEEK – NO CLASS

November 23 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Dinner

November 30 Live Project PRESENTATIONS

December 7 Live Project PRESENTATIONS

Live Project Report and Team Member Evaluations DUE

SMO 641, Briggs – Course Syllabus Page 9 of 9 Fall Term 2017