This course provides an introduction to business and explores how economic value is created and destroyed in firms and industries. It emphasizes critical thinking and encourages collaborative learning and debate. Key modules cover markets, firm organization, and strategic interaction. Students will examine how markets operate, why they fail, and the government’s role in supporting them. The course also addresses theories of firms and individuals, firm organization, and competitive strategies. By the end, students will understand how functional areas like economics, finance, and marketing interconnect and will gain foundational insights for addressing complex business issues and crafting solutions in dynamic environments.

This course introduces the key concepts, tools, and principles of strategy formulation and competitive advantage. It is concerned with managerial decisions and actions that affect the performance and survival of business enterprises. It assumes a broad view of the environment that includes suppliers, buyers, competitors, the economy, technology, capital markets, the government and global forces and views the external environment as dynamic and characterized by uncertainty. The course is focused on the information, analyses, skills and business judgment managers must use to craft strategies to maximize long-term profits in the face of uncertainty and competition. It draws together and builds on the ideas, concepts, and theories from functional courses such as economics, accounting, finance, marketing and statistics. 

This course is designed to introduce the concepts, tools, and first principles of strategy formulation and competitive advantage. Students will focus on the analyses, skills, and business judgment that executives must use to craft strategies for maximizing long-term gains in the face of uncertainty and competition. The course is also designed to develop the “general management perspective,” often also called the general manager's point of view. This view is critical because fundamental strategic business decisions can only be effectively made by viewing a firm or organization holistically and over the long term. These decisions typically include the determination of organizational purpose, the pursuit of specific opportunities, the creation of competitive advantage, the allocation of critical resources, and the choice of competitive strategies.

The course draws from studies of technical change to provide a set of tools to craft a technology strategy as an integral part of business strategy. Technology strategy is “an integrated set of choices about how to use new technology to produce superior financial returns in the long run.” For businesses, making decisions about responding to a new technology developed by someone else or about introducing a new technology is integral to strategizing on how to compete in the marketplace. Furthermore, the focus on new technologies is essential because what matters from a competitive strategy perspective is technological change: technology carries the promise of making a strategic impact as long as not all businesses use the same technology.