Strategic Management and Competitive Advantage

Name: Strategic Management and Competitive Advantage
Rating: 5.0 (5 reviews)

Learn strategic choice, industry analysis, competitive positioning, business-model design, execution, & sustainable adva

Created byDr. Law Payne

Last updated 10/2026

English

What you'll learn

Evaluate strategic choices by determining where an organization will compete and how it intends to create differentiated value.
Analyze industry structure, competitive forces, market pressures, and organizational positioning using advanced strategy concepts.
Apply the VRIO framework to determine whether organizational resources and capabilities can produce sustained competitive advantage.
Design coherent business models that align customer value, essential activities, revenue logic, capabilities, and strategic trade-offs.
Translate strategic priorities into accountable actions, aligned resources, measurable outcomes, and effective execution systems.
Assess whether a competitive advantage is temporary, durable, or vulnerable to imitation, substitution, and market change.

Course content

1 section • 5 lectures • 1h 1m total length

Strategy Is a System of Choices12:30
Objective: Explain why strategy requires an integrated set of choices about where to compete, how to win, and what not to pursue.
Description:
This lecture establishes the foundation of the course by distinguishing strategy from goals, slogans, and operational improvement. Students examine strategy as a coherent system of choices involving customers, markets, value creation, capabilities, and trade-offs. The Apex Mobility Systems scenario introduces the strategic challenge that continues throughout the course.
Industry Structure and Competitive Position12:28
Objective: Analyze how industry forces and competitive positioning influence organizational profitability and strategic opportunity.
Description:
This lecture moves outside the organization to examine the competitive environment. Students explore rivalry, suppliers, buyers, substitutes, new entrants, and broader market pressures. The lecture explains why organizations operating in the same industry can experience dramatically different results and how leaders can establish a more defensible competitive position.
Resources, Capabilities, and the VRIO Advantage11:30
Objective: Apply VRIO analysis to evaluate whether organizational resources and capabilities can create sustained competitive advantage.
Description:
This lecture turns the analysis inward. Students distinguish resources from organizational capabilities and apply the VRIO framework: valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and organized to capture value. The lecture also examines capability systems, causal ambiguity, organizational history, and the leadership practices required to protect and renew strategic strengths.
Business Models, Trade-Offs, and Strategic Fit12:13
Objective: Design a coherent business model that aligns customer value, operational activities, revenue logic, capabilities, and trade-offs.
Description:
This lecture explains how organizations create, deliver, and capture value. Students compare alternative business models and examine how each model changes talent, technology, customer relationships, cost structure, risk, and control. Particular attention is given to strategic fit and why mutually reinforcing activities are more difficult for competitors to imitate than isolated practices.
Strategy Execution and Sustainable Advantage12:37
Objective: Translate strategic intent into aligned priorities, accountable execution, measurable performance, and continuous strategic renewal.
Description:
The final lecture connects strategic thinking with organizational action. Students examine execution architecture, cascading priorities, decision rights, resource alignment, incentives, performance measurement, and leadership attention. The lecture concludes with a dynamic model of sustainable advantage based on sensing change, choosing deliberately, executing effectively, measuring results, learning, and adapting.

Requirements

No specialized software or previous strategy coursework is required.
A basic understanding of business and organizational leadership will be helpful.
Learners should be prepared to analyze complex organizational decisions rather than search for one universally correct answer.
The course is appropriate for advanced learners but remains accessible to motivated professionals and graduate students.

Description

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Strategic success is not created by a mission statement, an ambitious goal, or a collection of disconnected initiatives. It emerges from a coherent system of choices concerning where an organization will compete, how it will create value, which capabilities it must develop, and what it will deliberately choose not to pursue.

In Strategic Management and Competitive Advantage, Professor Law introduces an advanced, applied approach to strategic analysis and execution. The course is designed for graduate students, doctoral learners, managers, executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and professionals who want to think more rigorously about organizational strategy.

Throughout the course, you will examine strategy as an interconnected system rather than a static plan. You will learn how industry structure affects profitability, how organizations establish a defensible competitive position, and how internal resources and capabilities contribute to competitive advantage.

You will apply the VRIO framework to distinguish ordinary organizational resources from capabilities that are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and properly supported. You will also investigate how business models create, deliver, and capture value—and why meaningful strategy requires difficult trade-offs.

The course concludes by connecting strategic thinking with execution. You will explore how leaders translate strategic intent into priorities, ownership, resources, performance measures, and organizational learning. You will also examine why competitive advantages erode and how organizations can renew them as markets, technologies, and customer expectations evolve.

A continuing organizational scenario involving Apex Mobility Systems connects the concepts across the lectures. This allows you to approach strategic challenges as an executive decision-maker rather than simply memorizing terminology.

By the end of the course, you will possess an integrated framework for analyzing competition, evaluating organizational capabilities, designing coherent business models, and converting strategy into sustainable performance.

Who this course is for:

MBA, DBA, and doctoral students studying strategy, leadership, management, or organizational development.
Business professionals who want to strengthen their strategic thinking and decision-making abilities.
Managers and executives responsible for competitive positioning, organizational performance, or strategy execution.
Consultants and analysts who evaluate markets, capabilities, business models, and competitive threats.
Entrepreneurs and business owners making decisions about customers, differentiation, growth, and resource allocation.
Emerging scholars and educators seeking an applied introduction to advanced strategic-management concepts.

Strategic Management and Competitive Advantage

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