Business Strategy and Financial Performance Programme Onboarding

In Launch Week, we establish why it is important for business professionals to understand and implement strategy to make timely, sustainable decisions for their organization. Using global examples from the beverage, pharmaceutical, and digital industries, you will be introduced to strategic principles and the relevance of using strategy in today’s turbulent times. We reflect on how data, devices, and detection can influence decision-making now and in the future, and how ESG, social values or other externalities also impact decision-making. This week will lay the groundwork for the remainder of the programme.

You will find also guidance on how to make the most of the course, information on course completion and certification requirements, and an overview of the journey you will take over the programme. You will learn how to navigate the platform and about the different functionalities available.

You will also find out about the “Action Learning Project” (ALP). The ALP is an integral part of the online course. It offers you the opportunity to apply your learning to explore ways to contribute to strategy design and execution in companies. The objective of the ALP is to reinforce your learning and develop a tangible action plan for strategy execution. During this week you must submit the scope of your ALP.

Note: In order to successfully pass this programme, you must complete your ALP to a high standard. This is one of the most important components of the programme.

The week starts by exploring the question, what is strategy? You will focus on two complementary answers. The first is that strategy is about helping organizations fit into their external environment, often in the face of accelerating pressures for change. The second is that strategic thinking should enable companies to invest in such a way so as to drive superior performance. You will relate these ideas to a simple definition of strategy and the classic SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) framework. You will also practice using the PESTLE framework to analyse the environment and industry around an organization. This week provides important foundations for the rest of the programme.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding what strategy is really about
• Ensuring fit with a dynamic external environment
• Examining performance differences within and across sectors
• Analysing trends in the industry and the environment
• Meeting the challenge of market turbulence and disruption 

A focus on value provides a powerful compass for navigating changes in an industry. The second week of the programme introduces the key concepts of value creation, value capture, willingness-to-pay (WTP) and resource costs and illustrates how to use them to assess the impact of new products and technologies. For example, how can you identify new opportunities based on the market demand for sustainable and environmentally-friendly products, such as electric vehicles? We shift our focus from the external environment to how you can formulate compelling new value propositions. The value-approach is used to deepen the analysis of the external changes impacting your business, developing a more structured approach to disruption and shifts in market size. 

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding the challenge of creating and capturing value
• Driving competitive advantage through added value
• Balancing willingness-to-pay and resource costs
• Identifying willingness-to-pay drivers in B2B and B2C settings
• Understanding and anticipating shifts in market size

Week three continues our focus on how strategy can transform the industry landscape, with a shift in focus to added value, social value and willingness-to-supply (WTS). We will consider how external changes, competitive pressures, and positive feedback can shift the set of activities and players in an industry value chain. How can you assure that you have a robust business model that not only sustainably creates value for customers and society but also positions you to capture a significant share? You will also study the case of TripActions, a travel management scale-up, and how it responded strategically to significant disruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This week, we also introduce you to the financial aspect of Strategy. We begin by examining the role and relevance of financial reporting in the context of an organization’s strategy.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding the fundamental strategic question of who captures value and how much
• Identifying the industry value chain and using it to map shifting dynamics (activities and players) within the industry
• Analysing the impact of competition on value using the Five Forces framework
• Recognising the impact of a company strategy on its financials
• Understanding the basic financial statements and learning who uses these statements 

Financial reports provide information about how a company allocates its resources and how well it uses those resources to execute its strategy. Hence, financial acumen is a key part of successful strategic thinking. With this in mind, we begin the week by discussing the balance sheet and income statement, which are the two key financial statements. We discuss why these statements are presented to investors and the information they convey. We also discuss the challenges of reporting actions aimed at environmental sustainability, and obligations to stakeholders.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding the Balance Sheet in the context of strategic initiatives and investments
• Reviewing the elements of the Income Statement and how to use it to measure performance
• Interpreting Revenues as the value delivered to the customer
• Examining Expenses from the perspective of what it takes to deliver value

During this week we deepen our understanding of financial reports and discuss how to use them to evaluate a company’s strategy execution. We discuss key financial reporting issues including the difference between cash and accrual accounting, capitalising versus expensing costs, and subsequently move on to studying the cash flow statements to understand the sources and uses of cash. We finish the week by introducing a key financial indicator: return on invested capital (ROIC). We discuss how to interpret ROIC, how to use the income statement and balance sheet to calculate it, and how ROIC is linked to financial sustainability.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding the difference between cash flow and earnings
• Analysing the statement of cash flows to understand sources and uses of cash
• Understanding the concept of the Return on invested capital (ROIC) and its link to financial sustainability
• Differentiating between expensing versus capitalising cash flows and their effect on ROIC
• Learning about management choices that influence the numbers

Strategy creates not only threats to current business but also opportunities to create whole new businesses as well as to enhance your position in existing markets. What does it take to seize these opportunities? With the help of a new strategic tool - the company value chain - you will discover how key activities within an organization are critical to delivering new value propositions and how those activities themselves can be transformed for enhanced value. Moreover, drilling competitive advantage down into the tissue of the organization is also critical for assuring the sustainability of your advantages. In addition to examining generic strategies for competitive advantage, you will explore how Blue Ocean Strategy, support function strategy and shifting from business to corporate strategy can enhance an organization’s value.

Learning Objectives:

• Crafting your value proposition to drive added value and competitive advantage
• Aligning your organizational activities with your value proposition
• Evaluating which opportunities to implement generic strategies, Blue Ocean Strategy or support function strategy
• Differentiating between business strategy and corporate strategy

How to effectively and systematically execute on a strategy? This week focuses on the tension between the need for greater strategic agility and the traditional need for a longer-term orientation to assure that the company builds the key resources required for success. With ever greater industry “clock speed,” strategy analysis and formulation needs to become an ongoing process driven by feedback from strategy execution. At the same time, success still depends critically on developing an integrated strategy over time where the value proposition, organizational activities and underlying resources are aligned. Strategic partnerships offer an important route for achieving agility given current resource constraints, while also allowing you to build the new resources needed for the future.

Learning Objectives:

• Aligning value, activities and resources to drive strategy execution
• Learning how to rethink the strategy process for agility
• Balancing strategic agility with the need for long-term stability
• Exploring how strategic partnerships can fuel growth while mitigating risks

The final weeks are for you to synthesise your learning from the programme into a compelling Final ALP Assignment submission. It will also offer an opportunity for you to give feedback to and receive feedback from your peers for the ALP Final Assignment. No new course content will be released in these weeks.