Strategic Thinking and Management for Competitive Advantage

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Dates Location Tuition
Dec 8, 2008 - Dec 12, 2008 Philadelphia $9,250
Apr 20, 2009 - Apr 24, 2009 Philadelphia $9,250
Jun 8, 2009 - Jun 12, 2009 Philadelphia $9,250

Too many companies try to be everything to everybody. They fail to identify and sustain their competitive advantage. They waste time and money in markets that may never give them a worthwhile return on investment. And while they flounder, competitors pass them by. Executives of these companies need to think strategically.

Strategic Thinking and Management for Competitive Advantage helps you meet, head on, the challenge of building strategy. It distills and applies the latest strategic insights and approaches and helps you accurately assess the competition in your industry. You will learn to create coherent and forceful strategies for your future and get the opportunity to apply these concepts to your own strategic plan.

Designed specifically to broaden your perspective on how to make organizations more competitive, Strategic Thinking and Management for Competitive Advantage examines a variety of options for growth, including alliances, acquisitions, and internal corporate ventures.

Tuition for Philadelphia programs includes lodging and meals. Prices are subject to change. Program Consultants are available to provide more information on course specifics and discuss how this program might meet your needs. Please contact them by telephone at +1.215.898.1776 or by e-mail.


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You will learn how to accurately assess the competition in your industry. Through lectures and case analyses, both in the classroom and within smaller work groups, you will examine how other companies have created competitive advantage.

Session Topics for the Strategic Thinking and Management for Competitive Advantage Program

  • Strategy Formulation and Business Planning
  • Creating and Sustaining a Competitive Advantage
  • Strategy Under Uncertainty
  • Options Reasoning
  • Corporate Growth Via Acquisitions
  • Vision and Focus for Service Strategy
  • Issues in Implementing Strategy
  • Hypercompetition
  • Discovery-Driven Planning

About the Book
Make Strategy Work bookMaking Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change
Formulating strategy is one thing. Executing it throughout the entire organization... well, that's the really hard part. Without effective execution, no business strategy can succeed. Unfortunately, most managers know far more about developing strategy than about executing it — and overcoming the difficult political and organizational obstacles that stand in their way. In this book, Wharton Professor Larry Hrebiniak offers a comprehensive, disciplined process model for making strategy work in the real world. Hrebiniak shows why execution is even more important than many senior executives realize and sheds powerful new light on why businesses fail to deliver on even their most promising strategies.

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Program Logistics

The program officially begins on Monday morning and will conclude with lunch on Friday. Hotel accommodations are provided Sunday through Thursday evenings.

Senior and upper-middle managers with responsibility for strategy planning, formulation, implementation and business development are good candidates for this course. Many prior participants with extensive experience in planning have gained new insights and methods during the course. Likewise, managers just moving into planning areas will get a jump-start on the process — learning how leadership, vision, and strategy interact with one another. Please note: At the request of the program faculty, we are unable to admit strategy consultants into the program at this time.

We encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to leverage the application and value of the program. Additional group benefits are available when four or more participants attend a program.

Leverage your firm’s capabilities to the greatest competitive advantage, obtaining necessary resources through alliances, acquisitions, or internal corporate ventures. Learn to tailor the planning process to the needs of individual business units. You will:

  • Enhance your ability to assess the strategic impact of the moves of your competitors.
  • Gain new insights on the role of acquisitions, alliances, and divestitures in creating greater shareholder value.
  • Design implementable and operational strategic programs that can dramatically change your firm’s competitive position.
  • Realize the importance of innovation to an organization's competitiveness.

Ian Macmillian, DBA IAN C. MACMILLAN, DBA
Academic Director
The Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Professor of Management
Director, Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center
The Wharton School

Ian MacMillan has published many articles and books on organizational politics, new ventures, and strategy formulation and is co-author, with Rita McGrath, of the best-selling The Entrepreneurial Mindset (Harvard University Press, 2000), which focuses on how managers and entrepreneurs can create a continuous stream of growth opportunities for their firms.
undefined NICOLAJ SIGGELKOW, PhD
Academic Director
Associate Professor of Management
The Wharton School

Nicolaj Siggelkow is an associate professor of management in the Management Department at the Wharton School. He earned his PhD in business economics from Harvard University. At Wharton, Professor Siggelkow teaches courses on business policy and competitive strategy. His current research interests include the evolution of activity systems, strategic consequences of contextual activity interactions, and organizational design implications for managing systems of connected activities. His work has been published in the Academy Management Journal, and he has won the Strategic Management Society Best Conference Paper Prize. Over the last several years, Professor Siggelkow has been a multiple recipient of the Wharton School’s MBA Excellence in Teaching Award.
Harbir Singh HARBIR SINGH, PhD
Academic Director
The Mack Professor
Professor of Management
Co-Director, Mack Center for Technological Innovations
The Wharton School

Harbir Singh is a leading researcher on strategic alliances and strategies for corporate renewal, including path-breaking projects on managing acquisitions and alliances and post-acquisition management. He has consulted for companies such as Bell Atlantic, IBM, Merck, and AT&T. His current research includes strategies for corporate alliances and acquisitions, corporate governance, joint ventures, management buyouts, and corporate restructuring. He serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious publications and has extensive experience in working with senior executive audiences in the U.S. and India.
Lawrence G. Hrebiniak, PhD LAWRENCE G. HREBINIAK, PhD
Associate Professor of Management
The Wharton School

Larry Hrebiniak's courses focus on competitive strategy and strategy implementation. His extensive research has encompassed competitive strategy, the fit between strategy and structure, methods of achieving coordination in geographically dispersed firms, controls in the strategy implementation process, and strategic adaptation as organizations change over time to remain competitive. Larry has consulted with leading companies around the world, including AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chase Manhattan, DuPont, General Electric, General Motors, Isuzu, and Johnson & Johnson. He is the author of Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change (Wharton School Publishing, 2005), Implementing Strategy (New York: MacMillan, 1984) and The We-Force in Management: How To Build and Sustain Cooperation (New York: Lexington Books, 1994).
undefined KATHY PEARSON, PhD
Adjunct Associate Professor, Operations and Information Management Department
The Wharton School

Kathy Pearson, PhD serves as an adjunct associate professor in the Operations and Information Management Department at the Wharton School. She has taught operations management courses in the MBA program and Executive Master’s of Technology Management program as well as probability and statistics, simulation modeling, and other courses for the department and the University of Pennsylvania. In 2006, Dr. Pearson was honored with the "Goes Above and Beyond the Call of Duty" award by the 2007 Wharton MBA class. In addition, Dr. Pearson is a senior consultant and director, Executive Education, for Decision Strategies International (DSI), a management consulting firm focused on scenario-based strategic planning and decision making.

Dr. Pearson is heavily involved in Executive Education at the Wharton School and DSI, teaching on a variety of topics such as Critical Thinking, Scenario Planning, Strategic Decision Making, Project Management, and Stakeholder Analysis. As academic director for many programs, she is responsible for the design of the academic curriculum, the integration of the material, and the overall educational quality of the program. Specifically, Dr. Pearson has served as the academic director for the Wharton Executive Management Program for Academic Surgery Leaders, the Patient Safety Leadership Academy Executive Program, the Wharton Nursing Leaders Program, and the GlaxoSmithKline Executive Management Program for Pharmacy Leaders. Many of her participants are clinician executives, but she has also worked with executives from a wide variety of industries and has taught at CEDEP at INSEAD in Fountainebleau, France.

Dr. Pearson's industrial experience includes analytical support for the pharmaceutical industry, various hospital groups, the Department of Defense, and several manufacturing companies. Most recently, she has served on a number of quality management and best practice teams for a major health care company, has been heavily involved in developing computer simulation models for the health care industry, and has worked with several professional organizations in developing long-term strategic business plans. In addition, she has worked with hospital clinicians in the area of patient safety.

Dr. Pearson received her BS degree in Theoretical Mathematics from Auburn University, her MS degree in Decision Sciences from Georgia State University, and her PhD in Industrial Engineering (concentration in Statistics) from Northwestern University.
Mike Useem, PhD MIKE USEEM, PhD
The William and Jacalyn Egan Professor
Professor of Management
The Wharton School

Mike Useem offers courses on management, leadership, and corporate governance to MBA and senior executive audiences in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He has worked extensively on leadership development and governance with many organizations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. He is the author of The Go Point: When It's Time to Decide; Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win; The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All; Investor Capitalism: How Money Managers Are Changing the Face of Corporate America; and Executive Defense: Shareholder Power and Corporate Reorganization. From the slopes of Mount Everest to the battlefields of Gettysburg, Dr. Useem has gone to great lengths to present leadership lessons to executives.

"The week I spent in this program was one of the more productive weeks of my career. The program is a near-perfect blend of diverse faculty, current and relevant theory, and solid fundamental strategic analysis. The tools I acquired will pay dividends for years to come." — Shane Peery, Chief Financial Officer, Cherokee & Walker, Inc.

"A riveting learning experience, where advanced concepts and frameworks are outlined to give you powerful tools for effective strategic management." — Eduardo Scabbia, Director, Ag Business

"The Wharton experience is one of knowledge gathering and fulfillment. The cases used in this program kept the experience real and provoked serious thought into complex issues. Based on the immeasurable return on my investment, I have already enrolled in additional programs later this year." — Tim Hanke, Area Business Manager, Chiron BioPharmaceuticals

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