Teaching (MBA)

Business Strategy (MGMT 420: MBA Syllabus)

Course Description: This course covers the fundamentals of both business-level and corporate-level strategy.  The course is designed to introduce a wide variety of modern strategy frameworks and methodologies, including methods for assessing the strength of competition, for understanding relative bargaining power, for anticipating competitors’ actions, for analyzing cost and value structures and their relevance to competition, and for assessing potential changes in the scope of the firm (diversification and vertical integration).  Basic mastery of these tools has relevance to everyone seeking a career in business.

Competitive Strategy (MGMT 476: Executive MBA Syllabus)

Course Description: This course is structured similar to MGMT 420, but has a greater emphasis on competitive interactions, as well as in-class simulations. The class sessions are organized into four modules.  In the first module we will explore the nature of strategy and the forces of competition that operate at the industry level.  The second module explores generic strategies to achieve competitive advantage and provides some practice quantifying these advantages.  The third module examines strategic management in dynamic environments, exploring network effects, competitive dynamics and game theory. The fourth module explores cases on advanced topics such as “corporate strategy” where we shift our focus to issues such as managing diversified firms.

Empirical Methods in Strategy (Kellogg School of Management, MBA Syllabus)

Course Description: Despite the obvious importance of data-driven analyses for business decision making, most managers lack experience working with data, above and beyond the basics of spreadsheet analysis.  As a result, managers either perform inadequate evaluations of the data themselves, or turn the data over to statisticians who may lack the relevant institutional knowledge.  Ideally, data-driven evaluation should combine both skills (data analysis and business expertise).  This course is intended to help students obtain skills with data analysis.

 

Teaching (DOCTORAL LEVEL.)

Empirical Methods in Strategic Management (co-taught with Jason Snyder; Syllabus Part 1 & Part 2)

Course Description: Establishing causal relationships is the primary challenge that every empirical researcher faces. This course will help students appreciate the difficulties associated with establishing causality in empirical research and study common methodological remedies to these difficulties. We will pay close attention to the practical problems associated with the implementation of these methods.The articles chosen for the course cover a mix of economics and strategy related topics. For the empirically minded student, a large part of their future research will involve applying these methods to their substantive field of research.