The ever-increasing technological pace creates new industries while destroying old ones, a disruptive transformation that is often difficult for firms even if they are highly innovative. In fact, the classical strategy toolkit is not adequate to cope with these transitions driven by the appearance of new complementary goods that change the game. For instance, the longtime leader in the analog photography industry, Kodak, managed to recover leadership in a digital world despite a very late start, but this huge effort was worthless because it got replaced by the producers of smartphones, goods which initially complemented Kodak’s offerings.
This course aims at introducing frameworks that allow a firm to formulate its business strategy when industry boundaries are changing because of technological disruption. Such frameworks build on the notion of ecosystem, so identifying the ecosystem where a firm operates and how technological changes affect its competitive dynamics is a key aspect of the learning experience. The course will also examine how a firm can defend its position in an ecosystem, or how it can attack established firms based on this understanding of industry boundaries being blurry.
The course is self-contained because the classical tools for strategic analysis are also introduced, and the impact of disruptive innovation on competition is examined too. Ecosystem disruption is also analyzed in the context of platform markets. Therefore, the toolkit can be fruitfully applied to industries as diverse as automobiles, banking, taxis, retail, health care or semiconductors, among many others.
Faculty: Prof. Francisco Ruiz-Aliseda

Course Date & Time

Thursdays 11:00-13:00 New Haven Time