Competitive Strategy and Organization Design Specialization

Advanced Competitive Strategy will introduce new topics and modules with even more real world examples and opportunities for student interaction than in the previous course Competitive Strategy (https://www.coursera.org/learn/competitivestrategy).

In Advanced Competitive Strategy, we will look at how companies can build up and maintain their customer base by increasing switching costs and facilitating strategic customer lock-ins. We will find out how firms can increase their profits by pursuing suitable price discrimination and product differentiation strategies. We will look at examples of what is acceptable behavior under the premises of EU competition and US antitrust policies and discover exciting ways of how companies can increase their returns by strategically making use of network effects and economies of size. We will further intensify our newly acquired knowledge about network effects and discuss strategies that are explicitly tailored to network markets. We will analyze the workings of mergers and acquisitions and, moreover, support you in considering alternative strategies that can help companies grow organically.

Strategic Organization Design will introduce new topics and modules with even more real world examples and opportunities for student interaction than its predecessors Competitive Strategy (https://www.coursera.org/learn/competitive-strategy) and Advanced Competitive Strategy (https://www.coursera.org/learn/advanced-competitive-strategy).

The final course in the Competitive Strategy and Organization Design specialization covers the internal workings of an organization and its interactions with the outside world. Where the first two courses mainly covered the way firms interact with the outside world, in particular competitors and complementors, the third course looks at the way a firm’s organization should be designed to compete effectively.

This industry project is designed to allow you to apply the knowledge you have gained throughout the specialization for advising a real company. Our partner company will approach you with two specific questions the company is currently facing and that relate to the content of the specialization. You are asked to choose one of these questions and conduct an in-depth research on the topic. You need to collect relevant information, analyze it and relate it to the content you have learned throughout the Specialization. Based on your findings you will write a final report summarizing your research and consult the company how to deal with the issues they are facing.