Dr Lourdes Sosa Gonzalez

Dr Nadia Millington

Professor Youngjin Yoo

This course is not available as an outside option to students on other programmes.

This course is compulsory on the Executive Global MSc Management. This course is not available as an outside option. The information in this course guide pertains to the 2025-2027 cohort.

This course will focus on designing strategic recommendations for managers to improve (and defend) their firms' competitive positions, address digital innovation, entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship.

To do so we will first review industry-wide as well as firm-specific determinants of short-term profitability. On that foundation we will look at long-term determinants of profitability including dynamic capabilities and innovative ability. Additionally, the course will provide a clear understanding of the various types of innovation, how firms identify and predict sources of challenges associated with implementing innovation, how to utilise design thinking and lean design to problem solve and generate innovation.  

The course will also focus on entrepreneurship, with a special focus on social entrepreneurship: start-ups which aspire to achieve social good in a profitable and financially sustainable way. It will introduce several distinct logics of venture creation, highlighting the unique mindsets and processes that underpin them. Through experiential exercises and onsite visits, students will gain the analytical flexibility to assess and design the path best suited to a venture’s context. 

Finally, the course will equip managers with a rigorous framework for understanding how generative AI is fundamentally reshaping business strategy. It will examine how three sequential technological revolutions—digitization, platformization, and generative AI—have each fundamentally altered the logic of business and help firm’s develop actionable strategies for competing in an economy where value creation follows entirely new logics.

Topics include business models, value proposition, strategic resources and inimitability, dynamic capabilities, disruptive innovation, theory of change, social impact, AI strategy.
 

Taught over three modules of the Executive Global MSc Management programme.

Debate / role play.

Students work in teams and use information on a firm from a written case study (pre-read) to apply concepts and discuss live both the interdependent logic of the concepts and the in-depth use of each concept individually. 

The course relies on journal articles, cases, and books (for example, Strategic Management Journal). A complete reading list will be provided at the start of the course. Sample texts may include the following:

• Christensen, C., Bower J. (1996) Customer Power, Strategic Investment, and the Failure of Leading Firms (Strategic Management Journal);
• Teece, D., Pisano, G., Shuen, A. (1997) Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management (Strategic Management Journal);
• Sosa, M.L. (2011) From old competence destruction to new competence access: evidence from the comparison of two discontinuities in anticancer drug discovery, Organization Science;
• Sosa, M.L. (2013). Decoupling market incumbency from organisational prehistory: locating the real sources of competitive advantage in R&D for radical innovation, Strategic Management Journal;
• Dees, J. G. (1998). The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship. Stanford University: Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership
• Santos, F. M. (2012). A Positive Theory of Social Entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Ethics, 111(3), 335-351;
• Giacomin Joseph (2014) What is Human Centred Design? The Design Journal. Vol 17(4) pp 606-623.

Course participation (10%).

Presentation (30%).

Essay (30%).

Powerpoint slides (30%).