Please note that this description was taken from Fall 2011. New information will be posted when available.

COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA 217-11

COURSE TITLE: Competitive Strategy: The Dynamic Capabilities Approach

UNITS OF CREDIT: 2 Units

INSTRUCTOR: Paul Tiffany

E-MAIL ADDRESS: tiffany@haas.berkeley.edu

CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION (HTTP URL): Podcast

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Saturdays 9AM-12PM, 10 weeks

PREREQUISITE(S): EWMBA Core Curriculum

CLASS FORMAT: We will utilize a number of pedagogical approaches in this course, including lecture/discussions sessions, case studies, and participant exercises. Students should be prepared to engage course materials with vigor, actively participate in classroom discussions, and embrace your classmates as professional colleagues in our quest for the new truth about business organization management.

REQUIRED READINGS: Textbook and cases

FINAL GRADE:Class Attendance and Participation: 25%; Case/Article Write-Up: 25%; Group Project: 50%

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: Competitive Strategy: The Dynamic Capabilities Approach is a course that deals with the management of strategic adaptation and change. We are currently living in one of the most intense eras of market transformation in recent history, and many firms and organizations are having serious difficulty in adapting to new realities, as traditional managerial theories and tools are not working as well as needed.

Dynamic Capabilities can be described as “the firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments.” Traditional strategic management concepts, such as the famed “Porter model” of competitor analysis, are under stress for their inability to resolve problems presented by the global, technologically driven, knowledge-based, and extremely dynamic marketplace that characterizes many industries today. As an example, our conventional models of management continue to presume that firms compete primarily in a manufacturing environment in which scale, heavy fixed investment, externalization of production byproducts (such as waste), unlimited supplies of inputs, rigid organizational hierarchies, tightly controlled management-subordinate relationships, and defined industry structures (typically oligopolies) are the order of the day. Clearly, this characterization is becoming less prevalent if not outright obsolete; indeed, clinging to it may be the reason for the failure of so many firms in the face of market change.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: PAUL TIFFANY currently teaches several courses at Haas including undergrad business & public policy and MBA competitive strategy. Tiffany also teaches strategy and global management at Wharton. He has been teaching at Haas since 1994, and at Wharton since 1983. Tiffany hold a MBA from Harvard, and a Ph.D. from Berkeley, and has extensive consulting/executive training for many firms world-wide. Author: THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN STEEL (Oxford Univ. Press), BUSINESS PLANS FOR DUMMIES (IDG Books).