Business Model Innovation Strategies

Aim

Upon completing the course, students should be able to carry out systematic strategic analyses of industrial companies and apply different approaches to strategic change aiming at developing companies’ businesses. The course builds on, and deepens knowledge from the courses in business strategies and financial management within the Master Profile Strategic Management and Control. More specifically, students should be able to:

• Apply different methods and tools for strategic analyses and change as well as understand the possibilities and challenges to be found in strategy development and strategic change management in industrial companies
• Understand strategic congruence and the interplay between strategic management and management control and how this contributes to the development of long-term sustainable competitive advantage in modern industrial organizations.
• Carry out systematic analyses, through the application of strategic methods and tools, of industrial companies and identify areas for improvement, both from a technical and a strategic point of view, as well as discuss societal effects.
• Communicate analyses and solutions to industrially oriented strategic challenges and argue for their applicability from both a theoretical and practical perspective.
• Follow and contribute in academic discussions regarding research in strategic management realted to business model innovation, strategic change and contemporary relevant phenomena likded to, for example digitalisation, data-driven decision making and sustainability.

Content

Strategic analysis and methods for strategic change, which is part of the subject industrial management, is about solving problems from an industrial perspective, where the student integrated uses both technical, economic and societal knowledge. The course takes a starting point in industrial companies' strategy work to capture current and relevant strategic challenges facing the company. The content of the course focuses on strategic development and strategic change in these types of companies, where corporate strategy is integrated with deep technical knowledge in order to find improvement potentials and propose solutions to identified problems. Changes in focus can be about creating more efficient industrial activity systems, developing technical abilities or driving innovation and growth, implementing data-driven or digitized business models, developing a business model with a more sustainable and circular approach in the company's value creation network.

The course content also includes how the company relates to changes in the outside world (technical, economical as well as societal), how to analyze and develop an industrial company's business model (for example, through increased use of big-data, or through an increased focus on reduced environmental impact in the value chain) and its value-creating processes (e.g. together with other actors). Some concepts discussed are strategic analysis, strategic development, strategic change and adaptation, business model innovation, dynamic capabilities, value creation and strategic congruence.

For more details, see course web page.