Understand the Principles of Innovation. Build the strategic thinking skills needed to understand competition, create customer value, and sustain an advantage in changing markets. This course introduces a practical, integrated approach to strategy: analyzing industry forces, choosing a competitive position, understanding the jobs customers are trying to accomplish, and aligning organizational activities to deliver and capture value.

You will use frameworks such as the Five Forces model, competitive positioning, and jobs to be done to assess the pressures shaping an organization’s performance. Explore how rivalry, new entrants, substitutes, supplier power, and customer power affect profitability along with how firms can make deliberate choices about where and how to compete. Through examples from industries including airlines, retail, technology, consumer products, and higher education, you will examine the trade-offs behind high-end, mid-market, and price-sensitive positions. You will also learn how businesses differentiate through functionality, reliability, convenience, price, and a coherent system of activities rather than isolated features. Finally, the course examines the relationship between strategy and innovation. Learn to recognize when an organization should protect and refine its core strategic position, when changing industry conditions require adaptation, and when innovation can break the trade-offs that define existing competition. By the end, you will be prepared to evaluate strategic choices more clearly and apply customer-centered, value-focused thinking to real organizational challenges.