COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA 296-12

COURSE TITLE: Knowledge Management and Competitive Advantage

UNITS OF CREDIT: 1 Unit

INSTRUCTOR: Philippe N. Baumard

E-MAIL ADDRESS: pbaumard@berkeley.edu

CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION (HTTP URL): TBA

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Sundays, 10/23 and 11/6, 10AM-6PM

PREREQUISITE(S): none

CLASS FORMAT: Lectures and cases

REQUIRED READINGS: Reader, Textbook

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Midterm, homework sets, Final, class project.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
Building and managing knowledge has become a central part of today's most competitive business models. When a company enhances its customer's knowledge generation, it creates a strong barrier to entry to its markets, an inimitable relationship with its customers and strengthens its overall position in the market. This course is not about archiving, or information storage and retrieval. Instead, it will focus on building competitive knowledge for business strategy. Students will learn how to leverage knowledge in the corporate strategy process, particularly through the design of new activities and business models.

The course will provide students with real industry case studies, based on the instructors past experience with Fortune 500 companies. In addition, this course will present case studies of rapid prototyping in organizations that radically changed their product lines along with case studies of knowledge management failures in large corporations. We will also discuss how to make knowledge actionable for competitive advantage by studying companies such as Apple, Skype, Sony, Boeing and Airbus.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Professor Philippe Baumard is a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley Institute of Business and Economic Research. He has worked for several years in the telecommunication industry, including four years as Strategy Advisor to France Telecom corporate headquarters, where he contributed to the design of new business models and demand-innovation strategies. Prof. Baumard published eight books on topics ranging from strategic intelligence for business and government, competitive analysis, Tacit Knowledge in Organizations (Sage, 1999), Managing Imaginary Organizations (Elsevier, 2002). He has taught and consulted on knowledge and intelligence issues in many countries, such as China, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Norway, and of course, the United States.