COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA 277-11
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
August 24
September 7, 14, 21
October 5, 12, 19, 26
November 2, 9
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 holds 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).