In these complex times with increasing competition, a rapidly changing environment and ever-demanding customers, strategy has become even more central to the sustainability of the organisation’s revenue and profit growth. Many organisations fail because they are unable to position themselves incisively and adapt to exploit rapidly evolving opportunities or combat competitive threats. Strategy is about making and executing on the choices with respect to product markets and ways of competing in them within the context of the organisation and its environment.

The subject of strategy has undergone significant developments to address the new challenges faced by business. This strategy design programme will focus on the content and process of strategy formulation in the rapidly changing South African and global business landscape.1 Participants will be exposed to the latest thinking, concepts and analytical tools in corporate and competitive strategy. The programme takes a multiple-school perspective of strategy and presents a blended approach in a user-friendly, pragmatic format.

The programme follows a structured approach and enjoys the very best of South African strategy faculty. It makes use of classic and contemporary local and international case studies in an open discourse and action learning format. This facilitates participant-centric and local-global context learning and will force the participants to ask serious questions about their assumptions and concepts about strategy.

How you will benefit

This strategy design programme will expose participants to the latest thinking, concepts and analytical tools in corporate and competitive strategy, so that delegates can apply these concepts to their own business context. Through its highly interactive and action-oriented format, the programme will facilitate cross-learning and ensure that delegates leave with an urgency to implement the learning to key challenges in their own business strategy.

• Focus on the content and process of strategy formulation in the rapidly changing South African and global business landscape;
• Understand the strategic context of your own organisation;
• Recognise elements of distinctive competences through an understanding of the resource-based view (RBV) and institutional school of strategy;
• Develop a pragmatic mastery of the subject of strategy design and its formulation;
• Gain insight into the various schools of strategy and the inherent assumptions;
• Focus the dynamic between the business unit strategy and corporate strategy;
• Demonstrate a good sense of analytical processes and understand the choices involved in designing pragmatic and competitive business strategies; and
• Design an action-oriented and goal-specific 360-day strategy deployment plan for your business to put the learning into practice.

Key focus areas

• The concept of corporate and competitive strategy;
• The importance of industry structure and positioning in
• the development of business unit strategy;
• The role the context (environment) plays in the development of corporate and business unit strategy;
• The concept of institutions and the role that institutions play in strategy development in emerging markets;
• The concepts of blue ocean strategy and strategy as revolution;
• The RBV of strategy and the concept of distinctive competences; and
• The attributes of a good strategy design.

Who should attend?

The programme is ideal for business unit leaders and functional heads. Senior managers, business consultants and strategy staff who wish to update and hone their ability to develop and understand the latest thinking in strategy will also benefit from attending this programme.

Faculty

Dr. Raj Raina

Dr. Raj Raina obtained his Doctorate in Management with specialisation in business policy from the Indian Institute in Management Ahmedabad, India in 1989. He is a senior lecturer in strategy at GIBS and has over 20 years of strategic management, consulting and operational experience. He has worked for international organisations such as the World Bank, IBM and Coopers & Lybrand, as well as local enterprises such as MTN, Continental Tyres and LNJ Group. He has worked extensively in India, France, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa.

Professor Nick Binedell

Professor Nick Binedell is the founding director of the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg. His academic qualifications include a PhD from the University of Washington in Seattle, an MBA from the University of Cape Town and a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Rhodes University.

His areas of expertise are in the fields of business strategy formulation and general management. For the past 20 years he has been a lecturer and consultant working in South Africa, Europe and the United States.

Duration: Seven evenings, one day