Business Strategy

Classes are coming to an end. So I'm going to blog briefly about each as they close.

Business Strategy effectively finished for me yesterday as we presented the results of our final project.

To describe the course as briefly as possible Business Strategy is about determining why some firms succeed and others fail. Therefore, making it more likely that we can get our businesses in the first group. Generally the consensus from those I've spoken to about the class was that they thought it was a bit so-so. Personally, I enjoyed it. I thought for sometime that one of the things I was missing was frameworks to apply all the knowledge I was learning in classes like Marketing, Operations, and yes, even Finance. Strategy was all about learning and applying these frameworks.

The class was graded 1/3 contribution, 1/3 cases and assignments, and 1/3 a final project. I think I have an A (or maybe an A/B) for my contribution, I know I have an A for my assignments. I'm not sure about our final project. Our presentation was OK, but my part was the weakest. However, my part did nail the key (correct)finding that we had, that the company we were studying was failing to communicate effectively to consumers its key point of differentiation (service quality), and that without that all the top-level quality metrics in the world wouldn't help. Hopefully it'll all even out and I'll get an A in the class, but we'll see.