Creating Competitive Advantage

As an ambitious leader focused on strategy development, how do you develop a competitive advantage for your organisation?

This short course delivers a series of tools and techniques to make sense of your external business environment, industry dynamics and market position. We introduce management processes for delivering significant business growth and strategies for creating high customer value, explaining their relevance to the success or failure of organisations.

We explore the challenges leaders can encounter when developing strategies and highlight the opportunities and threats of a range of industries. We consider both the financial and people management factors involved in formulating strategies for competitive advantage and develop your strategic decision-making skills.

Learning outcomes

• Understand the basics of strategy development and how to develop a framework for your organisation.
• Link high growth strategy to strategic objectives.
• Understand the unique strategic challenges your organisation is facing.
• Learn how to deliver a customer centric value proposition.
• Uncover the characteristics which are the hallmark of successful strategic thinkers.

Our expert staff

Professor Tazeeb Rajwani

Tazeeb Rajwani is a Professor of International Business and Strategy.

He has held senior management positions at KPMG and was previously Executive MBA Director at Cranfield School of Management. Professor Rajwani has held visiting faculty positions across the globe, including the likes of University of Warwick, London Business School and HULT International Business School.

Module Outline

We understand that deciding where and what to study is a very important decision for you. We’ll make all reasonable efforts to provide you with the courses, services and facilities as described on our website. However, if we need to make material changes, for example due to significant disruption, or in response to COVID-19, we’ll let our applicants and students know as soon as possible.

Industry dynamics and mega trends

Leaders who purposefully set out to excel are remarkably few and far between and the ones who do so in a logical and consistent way are even fewer. Strategy provides business leaders with the means to create and take control of the future and to realize their breakout potential. This session sets the scene by discussing strategy as a business process and introduces a system for ways companies can be accelerated into a growth trajectory.

• Define what a “business strategy” is.
• Understand the different forces that drive the level of competition within specific industries.
• See how the wider macro-environment impacts the competitive dynamics within different industries.
• Know techniques which provide further insight into the competitive rivalry within an industry, in particular PESTEL factors.

Developing customer-centric strategies

This session focuses on customer led strategies and the ways companies can change the ‘rules of the game’ using their value proposition. We look at the capacity to deliver value using benchmarking exercises and key data points on price and value for money.

• Understand the notion of competitive strategy and customer’ perceptions.
• Explore some of the practical issues involved in constructing the customer matrix tool and value gap analysis in an international context.

Strategic assets for creating competitive advantage

This session will focus on how firms can outperform their competitors and gain sustainable competitive advantage. We explore how what is inside the firm is argued to be critical to the achievement of superior performance. Finally we consider how leaders and their teams can identify and develop those firm’s resources which provides a basis for competitive advantage.

• Understand how to use internal and external resources to the benefit your business.
• Understand resource audit and success mapping techniques.
• Understand the difficulties in identifying and developing sources of advantage through resource alignment in different structures and functions.

Standard programme fee: £495 Alumni programme fee: £395 Accommodation is not included in the above prices.

Contact us for further dates and information