21E16001 - Sustainability in Business, Lecture, 25.4.2023-1.6.2023
This course space end date is set to 01.06.2023 Search Courses: 21E16001
Basics of business strategy
Strategy is a central topic in business. As such, understanding strategy is critical, as sustainability needs to be integrated at this strategic level. However, given this course's focus, we are not going to teach you the basics of strategy, as our focus is on sustainability, and it is generally assumed that you have some grounding in sustainability.
At the same time, we of course recognize that some may have had more exposure to business strategy than others. As such, there are some key foundational readings attached here, all of which are accessible through your Aalto library account.
Michael Porter is perhaps the best known business strategy author, and thus some of his foundational articles are included here. Reading all of them is great, but given that this is additional learning, just use them as you see fit.
There is also a book (Kotler, Berger, Bickhoff 2010 - The Quintessence Of Strategic Management), which provides a good introductory summary. I would pay special attention to sections 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, and perhaps 3.3
Strategic Analysis
There are several commonly used tools to evaluate a company's current position while developing strategies. Here are some really commonly used ones, that you can find many freely available resources on:
- SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats)
- PESTEL (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal factors)
- Porter's Five forces (note, this is generally industry level analysis, not company level)
- BCG Matrix (Boston Consulting Group; this talks about the positioning of different product lines)
- The strategy canvas
Overall, hopefully this helps supplement your learning. This is not a core part of the course, but is meant as something 'extra' to help you.