Strategy is defined by this question: Why are some enterprises successful while others fail? The practice of innovation is defined by a similar question: Why and how do some enterprises innovate successfully while others fail?
Strategy and Innovation, as a practice, develops and integrates other functions – such as finance, marketing, and organizational behavior – to help us learn how firms gain and sustain competitive advantage. Strategy and Innovation focus on creating and capturing value for stakeholders with novel ideas, products, services, processes, and business models. While chief financial officers make financial decisions and chief marketing officers make marketing decisions, chief executive officers make decisions on corporate strategy and innovation.
Core Classes |
MGT 3659 - Foundations of Strategy This course covers the basic concepts and frameworks of both business-level and corporate-level strategy. Strategy usually refers to the identification of goals and the development of a plan of action for achieving those goals. The course will review the essential tools used to analyze and develop strategies. By combining lectures with business case studies, this course aims to build a rich strategy “toolkit” that will enable you to apply disciplined strategy principles in a variety of settings. A mastery of these tools is useful to executives, managers, consultants, entrepreneurs, government officials, investors, and other professionals engaged in formulating, evaluating, and implementing business strategies. |
Elective Classes |
MGT 3661 - Advanced Topics in International Business MGT 3662 - Management in the Healthcare Sector MGT 3663 - Technology Strategy In this course, technology strategy will be studied by analyzing the economic and strategic factors that guide – or should guide - firms’ decisions regarding the generation, commercialization, protection, and adoption of technological innovations. The emphasis is on the development and application of economic and strategy tools which are critical for insightful long term planning when deciding the sources of innovation (internal vs. external), how much to invest in internal R&D, whether to seek intellectual property protection, whether to develop and commercialize an invention in house or sell it through arm’s-length licensing contracts, or other cooperative strategies such as joint ventures or the sale of a technology-based firm’s equity. Technology markets are analyzed from both a seller’s and buyer’s perspective. Internal technology commercialization may entail the exploitation of first mover advantages or specialized downstream capabilities. Other topics covered include the analysis of situations, increasingly observed in several high-tech industries, where firms create and accumulate technological innovations without exploiting them directly, using them rather for technological negotiations with other firms or for preempting potential rivals from entering an industry.
This course examines topics concerned with the creation and maintenance of value by multi-business enterprises. Corporate strategy is concerned in part with issues such as the appropriate mix of business units, make-or-buy decisions, the acquisition or development of new business units, and the disposal of existing business units; these questions are often not relevant to strategy studied at the level of the individual business unit.
The Strategy Consulting Practicum integrates actual strategy issues currently confronting major corporations with an experiential course combining:
In this practicum, students organize into study groups for the practicum project. Each group conducts comprehensive strategy research and then proposes recommendations and actions to address present issues and to answer a strategic challenge question. Students write a formal strategy report and make a formal presentation of their results at the end of term. The purpose of this course is to expand and enhance understanding of the strategy process in action, including practical challenges and potential opportunities. The course includes exercises, discussions of case studies, field research, lectures, presentations by and discussions with guest speakers, and a group research project (i.e., the practicum project). This course develops skills and applies concepts students have learned in other business courses. The intensity of time constraints in this practicum reflects actual conditions in strategy work. This course helps prepare students to excel in entry positions at strategy consultancies and with corporate strategy staffs. Companies participating in the practicum typically recruit at Georgia Tech, and this course offers an opportunity for students to position themselves for internships or full-time positions. This course serves as the Integrative Management Capstone course for undergraduates at the Scheller College of Business. As such, the learning objectives include:
Behavioral economics enriches traditional economics by providing it with more realistic psycho-logical foundations. In the course, we study some of the most robust and important findings of the field, and examine their implications for individual decision making, marketing, finance, and man-agement. The course material can be interpreted as serving two goals simultaneously: 1) recog-nizing the systematic mistakes you (and all of us) make, and 2) using the tools of behavioral economics to solve firm problems. MGT 4803 - Global Strategy Global Strategy is generally about global strategic management and fundamentally about general management. Strategy informs general managers’ decisions about diversification across industry boundaries; global strategy similarly informs general managers’ decisions about diversification across national borders. This course is designed for students with an interest in companies that either (1) serve or plan to serve customers in multiple countries or (2) compete against companies operating in multiple countries; however, students with a general interest in global strategy can also derive significant benefit from this course. MGT 4803 - Managerial Economics & Strategic Behavior MGT 4803 - New Venture Strategies MGT 4803 - Strategic Entrepreneurship Today’s entrepreneurs and managers need to be able to recognize opportunities and cope with challenges created by technological developments, and entrepreneurial activity is particularly important in technology-intensive industries. As such, this course will focus primarily – though not exclusively – on technology-based startups. This course covers three broad sets of topics:
MGT 4803 - Technology Innovation Practicum Graduate students, along with faculty and industry mentors and coaches, supervise undergraduate students in this course, giving undergraduate students the opportunity to work with graduate students in hierarchical teams. |
Strategy and Innovation Concentration |
After completing MGT 3659: Foundations of Strategy (ACCT 2101 or MGT 3000 prereq), students wishing to complete the Strategy & Innovation concentration must take 6 classes earning a grade of “C” or higher in all courses to complete the concentration. Please note that due to the experiental learning elements of the concentration and the schedule of speakers, several of these courses must be offered in the late afternoon and evening. GROUP A: Take all 3 courses:
All students must take all three Group A courses. (Note: Pre-requisites are in parentheses. Pre-requisites will not be waived.) GROUP B: Choose at least 2:(Note: Pre-requisites are in parentheses. Pre-requisites will not be waived.) GROUP C: Choose 1 if you choose 2 in Group B:(Note: Pre-requisites are in parentheses. Pre-requisites will not be waived.) |
Strategy and Innovation Certificate (Non-BSBA Majors Only) |
Non-business school students wishing to complete the Strategy & Innovation certificate must take 4 classes earning a grade of “C” or higher in all courses to complete the certificate. Note that some courses require pre-requisites which students will be required to take. No course waivers will be offered. After completing MGT 3659: Foundations of Strategy, students wishing to complete the Strategy & Innovation will need to complete the following requirements: GROUP A: Take all 3 courses:
All students must take all three Group A courses. (Note: Pre-requisites are in parentheses. Pre-requisites will not be waived.) GROUP B: Choose 1 of the following:(Note: Pre-requisites are in parentheses. Pre-requisites will not be waived.) |