UCLA AMP 2023-24 I Strategy and Competitive Advantage

This course starts by familiarizing participants with effective business strategies and the concept of industry attractiveness. You will learn to define and articulate strategy and its application in delivering value. The course sets the stage for learning about how business works and covers important aspects of running a business – Organization. The course addresses key aspects of business economics and dives deeply into a comprehensive overview of competitive advantage. The last part of this course provides guidance on gathering and analyzing competitive intelligences as a meaningful input to competitive strategy.

Faculty

Dr. Phillip Leslie

Dr. Phillip Leslie

Professor

Dr. Phillip Leslie is currently the Chief Digital Economist at Amazon. He trained as a business economist with expertise in strategic management, the applied econometrics of data analytics, demand pricing and information disclosure. His work on pricing has examined how firms can implement practical strategies for consumer-specific pricing. Much of this work has been in the context of event ticketing, making Phillip a leading expert on ticket pricing.

Phillip has also written a series of papers on information disclosure as a policy tool. For example, in one study he shows that restaurant hygiene grade cards caused a 20% decrease in the number of people admitted to hospital with food-related illnesses. Another study shows that consumers at Starbucks reduced calorie purchases by 6% due to calorie posting on the menus.

In other research, Phillip has written about managerial incentives in private equity, consumer boycotts, inspection design and the behavior of inspectors, and the returns to education. His research is published in the American Economic Journal, American Economic Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics and the RAND Journal of Economics.

Education

Ph.D. Economics, 1999, Yale University

M.Phil. Economics, 1996, Yale University

M.A. Economics, 1994, Yale University

  1. Comm. Economics, Honors 1993, University of Melbourne
  2. Comm. Economics, First Class Honors 1991, University of Melbourne
Prof. Ian Larkin

Prof. Ian Larkin

Professor

Ian Larkin is an Assistant Professor in the Strategy group at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. He researches the optimal use of formal rewards systems by companies, given the complex and often unanticipated effects these systems have on employee motivation and decision making. His research quantifying the cost incurred by a major enterprise software vendor due to salespeople deliberately gaming their sales commission system, published in The Journal of Labor Economics, is one of the most prominently cited empirical studies of incentive system gaming. It was the basis for a case study widely used in MBA classes on compensation and human resource management.

His recent research focuses on corporate awards and other programs companies use to formally recognize employee performance, and demonstrates that these programs often have unintended costs, such as the demotivation of some employee groups. A final stream of research investigates physician prescribing decisions in light of different sales tactics used by pharmaceutical sales representatives. His research has been discussed in a variety of media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes and National Public Radio.

Ian teaches the core Business Strategy course at Anderson. Before coming to Anderson, he was a member of the faculty at Harvard Business School, where he taught an elective MBA course on human resource management, as well as several executive education courses. He received a Ph.D. from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and a M.Sc. from the University of London, where he was a British Marshall Scholar. Ian worked as an Associate and Engagement Manager for McKinsey and Company, based in Hong Kong and Silicon Valley.

Ian’s hobbies include cooking, traveling and supporting the Green Bay Packers.

Prof. Sebastian Edwards

Prof. Sebastian Edwards

Professor

Sebastian Edwards is the Henry Ford II Professor of International Business Economics at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

From 1993 until April 1996, he was the Chief Economist for the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a member of the advisory board of Transnational Research Corporation and co-chairman of the Inter American Seminar on Economics (IASE).

He is also past-president of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA), an international professional association of economists with academic interests in Latin America and the Caribbean region and a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Kiel Institute of World Economics, Kiel, Germany. In September 2004, Professor Edwards was appointed to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Council of Economic Advisors.

Edwards has been a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and is the author of more than 200 scientific articles on international economics, macroeconomics and economic development. His articles have appeared in The American Economic ReviewThe Journal of Monetary EconomicsThe Economic JournalOxford Economic PapersThe Journal of Development EconomicsThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Perspectives and others. His work and views are frequently quoted in the media, including by the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Economist.

Edwards is an associate editor of The World Economy, the Journal of International Trade and Economic Development, the Journal of International Financial MarketsInstitutions and Money, and Analisis Economico. For almost ten years he was the co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics.

Edwards has been a consultant to a number of multilateral institutions, including the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the IMF, and the OECD. He has also been a consultant to the United States Agency for International Development and to a number of national and international corporations. He has worked in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Tanzania and Venezuela. He has also consulted for a number of international financial institutions and multinational firms.

Sebastian Edwards was born in Santiago, Chile. He was educated at the Catholic University of Chile, and received an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.

Education

Ph.D. Economics, 1981, University of Chicago
M.A. Economics, 1978, University of Chicago
Licenciado Economics, 1975, Universidad Catolica, Chile

Interests

Mercosur, monetary policy, capital markets, Consumer Price Index, currency crises, devaluation, currency, emerging markets, employment, exchange rates, the Federal Reserve, inequality, inflation, Latin America, Mexico, NAFTA, and poverty

Course Learning Objectives:

  • Compose a draft strategy statement for a company, stating how it will create, capture, and deliver value.
  • Based on research, create a value map comparing the relative strengths of two competitors that shows six to eight characteristics.
  • Adjust Total Cost, Price, and Firm Profit for a specific customer, focusing on capturing maximum value.
  • Use Five Forces Analysis to determine the attractiveness of a given industry.
  • Build on an existing draft to refine a strategy statement so that it expresses in detail how the company is unique in its approach to creating, capturing, and delivering value.
  • Propose at least one way to improve the situation so as to deliver more value, given circumstances describing how a company is failing to deliver maximum value to its customers.
  • Explain the value of an organization in terms of how it manages resources and transforms inputs into more valuable outputs.
  • Evaluate a potential diversification opportunity that involves a key resource’s appropriability, control, durability, and inimitability.
  • Based on data concerning price elasticity, select the optimum loss leader from a group of potential products.
  • Based on data concerning fixed and variable costs, as well as product pricing, determine the contribution margin of a particular product.
  • Explain the relationship between “competitive advantage” and “business strategy.”
  • Given a particular business situation, propose at least two sources of competitive advantage based on barriers to imitation.
  • Given a particular business situation, propose at least two sources of competitive advantage based on positioning.
  • Learn the goals concept and applications of competitive intelligence.
  • Familiarize with the process and frameworks to gather and analyze competitive intelligence.

Syllabus

Learning Objectives:
  • Compose a draft strategy statement for a start-up company, stating how it will create, capture, and deliver value.
  • Based on research, create a value map comparing the relative strengths of two competitors that shows six to eight characteristics.
  • Adjust Total Cost, Price, and Firm Profit for a specific customer, focusing on capturing maximum value.
Module Components:

Video Lectures:

  • Understanding Strategy – Art and Science
  • Creating Value
  • Capturing Value

Readings:

  • Porter’s Strategy Framework
  • Capture More Value

Quiz:

  • Understanding Strategy
Learning Objectives:
  • Use Five Forces Analysis to determine the attractiveness of a given industry.
  • Build on an existing draft to refine a strategy statement so that it expresses in detail how the company is unique in its approach to creating, capturing, and delivering value.
  • Propose at least one way to improve the situation so as to deliver more value, given circumstances describing how a company is failing to deliver maximum value to its customers.
Module Components:

Video Lectures:

  • Industry Attractiveness
  • Strategy Articulation
  • Delivering Value

Readings:

  • Porter’s Five Forces – Strategy Framework
  • Rethinking Strategy for an Age of Digital Disruption

Quiz:

  • Developing Strategy
Learning Objectives:
  • Explain the value of an organization in terms of how it manages resources and transforms inputs into more valuable outputs.
  • Evaluate a potential diversification opportunity that involves a key resource’s appropriability, control, durability, and inimitability.
Module Components:

Video Lectures:

  • Understanding an Organization
  • Organizational Scope and Horizontal Diversification
  • Vertical and Horizontal Integration and Geographic Diversification

Readings:

  • Customer Value Creation Towards Revenue Generation
  • Horizontal Integration
  • Vertical Integration

Quiz:

  • Introduction to Organisations – Structures – Quiz
Learning Objectives:
  • Based on data concerning price elasticity, select the optimum loss leader from a group of potential products.
  • Based on data concerning fixed and variable costs, as well as product pricing, determine the contribution margin of a particular product.
Module Components:

Video Lectures:

  • Optimal Pricing and Market Segmentation
  • Understanding the Concept of Loss Leaders
  • Strategic Behavior, Price Leadership and Contribution Margins

Readings:

  • Applications of Demand and Supply
  • Impact of Supply and Demand on Business

Quiz:

  • Business Economics – Quiz
Learning Objectives:
  • Explain the relationship between “competitive advantage” and “business strategy.”
  • Given a particular business situation, propose at least two sources of competitive advantage based on barriers to imitation.
  • Given a particular business situation, propose at least two sources of competitive advantage based on positioning.
Module Components:

Video Lectures:

  • Defining Competitive Advantage
  • Strategic Capabilities
  • Strategic Positioning

Readings:

  • Porter’s Strategy Frameworks
  • Sustainable Competitive Advantage
  • Strategies for Building Competitive Advantage

Quiz:

  • Strategy: Competitive Advantage – Quiz
Learning Objectives:
  • Learn the goals concept and applications of competitive intelligence.
  • Familiarize with the process and frameworks to gather and analyze competitive intelligence.
Module Components:

Video Lectures:

  • What is Competitive Intelligence?
  • The Goals and Process of Competitive Intelligence
  • Application of Competitive Intelligence

Readings:

  • A Primer on Competitive Intelligence
  • Elements of Competitive Intelligence
  • Gathering and Analyzing Competitive Intelligence

Quiz:

  • Competitive Intelligence – Quiz

Support

Please email [email protected] for any support required with respect to the program, course or platform.