Global Strategy (2225.YR.004722.1)

General information

Type:	OPT	Curs:	1	Period:	S semester
ECTS Credits:	3 ECTS

Teaching Staff:

Group	Teacher	Department	Language
Year 1	Constance Lutolf-Carroll	Dirección General y Estrategia	ENG

Who can enroll in this course?

Global Strategy (GS) is open to all ESADE Full Time MBAs who have completed the core courses. There are no incompatibilities. There are no overlaps with the other electives taught by the same professor.

This course relies upon the concepts and frameworks discussed in the core strategy courses taught by Professors George Chondrakis and Jan Hohberger (General Management and Strategy I and II) Dimo Ringov (International Business Strategy), and Ruth Aguilera (International Management and Leadership).

Global Strategy will delve more deeply into advanced topics pertaining to global strategy formulation and execution. The course focuses primarily on large, complex, multinational firms. There will be exceptions when we pause to consider family businesses in niche segments seeking to gain scale on a regional or global basis, but in most of the cases we will be doing, we will concentrate on major multinational enterprises facing global execution challenges in developed markets or emerging markets or both.

3 ECTS = 25 hours/ECTS = 75 total hours split up as follows:

+ 28 teaching face-to-face
+ 2 hours of asynchronous activities (off-line)
+ 45 hours off-line of individual and team preparation including final exam studying and preparation.

ONLINE: (Synchronous)
- Discussing and debating the cases in class, 14 hrs
- Giving group presentations in plenary, 3 hrs
- Mini-lectures, doing role plays, in-class exercises in plenary, team breakouts, 7 hrs
- Coffee breaks, 4 hrs

ASYNCHRONOUS
- Watching videos off-line for lectures or case wrap-ups, 2 hrs

OFFLINE
- Individual reading of cases, articles and book chapters, 16 hrs
- Group discussion and preparation of the cases, 8 hrs
- Working in teams off-line to prepare written case assignments, 7 hrs
- Individual reading, reflection, studying, writing of final take-home exam = 14 hrs.

Total hours: 75 hours.

Global Strategy (GS) is designed to sharpen a participant's skills and savvy in formulating and implementing corporate and business strategies in a global environment. The main goal of the course is to enhance student awareness about the complexity and challenges of managing a global business in today's turbulent times.

By taking this course, students will improve their analytical thinking and problem-solving skills as well as their creative envisioning skills. Emphasis will be given during the course on developing student competencies in order for them to become more successful senior managers.

No simple prescription exists to the manager's question: What is the best way to convert global presence into a global competitive advantage? Each firm needs to find its own way. Typically, corporate and global strategies have evolved dynamically. The strategic change may have been triggered by internal forces coming from within the firm or the changes may have been driven by external forces in the firm's competitive environment. The internationalization path responds to the market and non-market (political and social) forces surrounding the firm. The path pursued may also be the results of the cultural preferences and beliefs of the firm's founders. Today, social media and digitalization forces are rapidly increasing the speed at which internationalization strategies must be chosen and implemented. These, and other topics, are just some of the issues we will explore in this course.

Participants taking global strategy should come away with (1) a much deeper awareness about firms internationalization processes; (2) a better understanding of the theories guiding best practices for multinational coordination and organizational design; and (3) enhanced skills at conceptualizing, communicating, and implementing global strategies in a multi-cultural context.

FACULTY BIO

Constance Lütolf-Carroll is Senior Lecturer and faculty member of the Strategy and General Management Department at ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University. She joined ESADE in 1986 and has developed a variety of courses in strategy, finance, and entrepreneurship for its MBA, EMBA, CEMS-MIM, and other degree programs. She has taught for PwC, BAYER, IBERDROLA, and REPSOL in ESADE's custom executive education programs.

She is the principal author of the bestselling textbook, From Innovation to Cash Flows: Structuring High Technology Alliances (2009) published by John Wiley & Sons (Wiley-Finance Series). She was named Finalist for the ESADE Business and Law School Teaching Excellence Award in 2017.

Connie is concurrently Visiting Professor at RSM Erasmus (where she has taught in the EMBA/MBA program every year since 2001), and Senior Visiting Professor at SDA Bocconi for the Master in Corporate Finance program (every year since 2005). She was co-founder and board member of Netspan AG, a digital technology company, based in Switzerland. She currently owns her own consulting firm Luetolf-Carroll GmbH that advises startups.

Connie holds a BS with honors in civil engineering from UC Berkeley, where she was a Regents' Scholar, and graduated with an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

For more details, refer to her ESADE Faculty CV. http://www.esade.edu/faculty/constance.lutolfcarroll

The specific learning outcomes are to:
- Enhance a participant's awareness about the complexity and challenges of managing a global business in developed and emerging markets.
- Improve a participant's ability to spot business opportunities, analyze societal trends, create and configure business models to take advantage of such market and non-market opportunities.
- Develop a student's ability to formulate global business strategies and consider the consequences of implementing them.
- Enhance a student's ability to weigh various qualitative and quantitative decision factors and exercise independent judgment when making international market entry decisions.
- Improve discussion leadership and a participant's ability to reach a consensus in diverse cross-cultural teams.
- Enhance oral and written communication capabilities individually and in teams.

1. Sessions 1 & 2: How NOT to Choose Markets and Entry Mode When Growing Globally. Learning from Failure. Cases: Ben & Jerry's in Japan; and Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ben & Jerry's Homemade ice cream is a product many of us enjoy eating. However, the Ben & Jerry's Japan case (Session 1) gives examples about international market entry failures, a topic discussed infrequently in business schools. We can learn a lot from examining failures, hence this choice of case. In Session 2, we will discuss the sustainability of Ben & Jerry's corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda. Partly because of the company's failures overseas, it now finds itself under serious takeover threats. Will the successful suitor discontinue or maintain B&J's pioneering environmental and social justice programs?

2. Session 3: Regional Expansion Strategies Case: MercadoLibre MercadoLibre copied EBays online market concept and quickly grew to become the dominant player in Latin and South America. The company has thrived so far, but what other challenges lie ahead?

3. Session 4: Systematically Choosing Export Markets in the Middle East Case: Chabros - World of Wood Rarely have pure export businesses been discussed in the core courses, yet for many family businesses, their survival depends on growing as global exporters. This is true in Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and especially in Lebanon. Chabros is an example of a company domiciled in Lebanon, a war-wracked region. Chabros has had some successes conquering foreign markets, but doubts remain going forward.

4. Session 5: Corporate Strategy Rationale: Strategic Fit, Complementarities, and Valuation Cases: Solar City Corporation: Challenges in the Value Chain and Tesla's Solar City Acquisition. In Session 5, we will question the wisdom of Elon Musk's proposed takeover of SolarCity, a solar power contractor and distributor. Tesla has plans to build gigafactories of lithium batteries solar powerpacks and power walls as well as build innovative solar roofs. To do so, Musk claims he needs Tesla to merge with SolarCity, a firm he encouraged be co-founded by his cousins. However, Musk and several other Tesla directors have conflicts of interest at Board level with SolarCity. Should Tesla's board agree to the merger? What is the strategic rationale for this merger? Does it fit with Tesla's global vision? What are the risks? Who benefits most from the terms of the deal: Tesla or SolarCity? Shareholders or bondholders?

5. Session 6: The Role of Vision & Values in Setting a Strategic Direction for the Corporation Case: Tesla Motors in 2021: Competition Revs Up. In Session 6, we will discuss the accomplishments of Elon Musk and Tesla in making and selling electric vehicles (EVs) globally. Tesla has been successful so far, but it is facing a much more competitive landscape with giant automotive rivals planning to launch new EV models and scale up their battery recharging networks.

6. Sessions 7 & 8: Post-merger Integration in Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions Cases: Crompton Greaves (A) and (B) Many important and sizeable M&A deals cross national boundaries. Merging them into a cohesive whole is fraught with difficulties and challenges. This is the topic of our last two sessions where we will discuss the growing trend of emerging market firms who seek to merge with competitors in developed countries in order to acquire strong brand names and gain access to their customers.

The course will be taught face-to-face. The teacher will use using a variety of methods including case-study discussions, Socratic questioning, role-plays, and in-class exercises. Off-line you will work individually and in teams doing your studying, team papers, and watching short videos posted on Moodle related to the class topics.

As you all know by now, the case method requires careful preparation and active participation of each member of the class.

Regular participation is very important as each session builds upon the prior session. MBA students are expected to come to class on time. Punctuality is important.

I expect each of you to have read the case, and to have not only prepared individually the study questions but also to have discussed them in your study teams BEFORE class begins. Afterwards, I encourage you to reflect upon what you have learned during the session. In so doing, you will gain the maximum learning from each day's class.

ASSESSMENT BREAKDOWN

REQUIRED TEXTBOOK
Luetolf-Carroll, Constance. (2009) From Innovation to Cash Flows: Structuring High Technology Alliances. Hoboken, NY. John Wiley & Sons.

Several chapters of the book will be assigned during the course. (NB: An electronic copy of the book is available in ESADE's digital library.)

ARTICLES
Gawer, Annabelle. "Bridging differing perspectives on technological platforms: Toward an integrative framework?. Elsevier. Research Policy 43 (2014) 1239-1249

Khanna, Tarun; Palepu, Krishna G.; and Sinha, Jayant. "Strategies That Fit Emerging Markets.? Harvard Business Review. Reprint Number: R0506C

Kim, W.C. and Mauborgne, R.A. (1993) Making Global Strategies Work. Sloan Management Review, vol. 34. (Spring), pp. 11-27

Kimura, R., Reeves, M. Whitaker, K. (Feb. 2020). "Winning in the 20's: The New Logic of Competition.? BCG Henderson Institute. Boston Consulting Group.

Kumar, Nirmalya and Puranam, Phanish. (Oct. 2011) "Have You Restructured for Global Success?? Harvard Business Review.

Kumar, Nirmalya. (2009) "How Emerging Giants are Rewriting the Rules of M&A?. Harvard Business Review, May 2009.

March, James G. (1999) Wild Ideas: The Catechism of Heresy, pp. 225-228, from The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence: Decisions and Learning in Organizations. Wiley (Blackwell) Business.

Tiesberg, Elizabeth Olmsted. Why do good managers choose poor strategies? HBS Note 9-391-172

BOOK CHAPTERS
Bartlett, Christopher A. and Beamish, Paul. (2018) "Chapter 1: Cross-Border Management: Motivations and Mentalities". Transnational Management: Text, Cases and Readings in Cross-Border Management. 8th edition. NY, NY: McGraw Hill, pgs 12-29, and 62 and 63.

Bartlett & Beamish, ibid. "Chapter 4: Developing a Transnational Organization: Managing Integration, Responsiveness, and Flexibility? pp. 215-235.

Bruner, Robert F., (2004). Framework for Postmerger Integration, ch. 36 of Applied Mergers & Acquisitions. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. pgs 891-913.

Bruner, Robert F. (2004). Communicating the Deal: Gaining Mandates, Approvals and Support, ch. 35 of Applied Mergers and Acquisitions. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. pgs 878-890.

Grant, Robert M. (2018). Excerpts from Chapter 4 "Further Topics in Industry and Competitive Analysis,? pp. 76-82. Contemporary Strategy Analysis. 11th ed Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Grant, Robert M. (2018). Chapter 5, "Analyzing Resource and Capabilities,? pp. 107-130. Refer especially to the "Strategy Capsule 5.8: Icelandic Air Group?, pp. 126-127. (ibid).

Group	Teacher	Department
Year 1	Constance Lutolf-Carroll	Dirección General y Estrategia