The focus of this class is on how to win with a capability-driven strategy, based on defining, developing and deploying differentiated capabilities that provide a unique sustained competitive advantage, including:

- Defining a company's strategic capability set -- a coherent group of differentiated capabilities that uniquely support the company's strategy in the products and markets in which it has chosen to compete.

- Developing a capability -- the right combination of processes, knowledge, skills, and organizational fabric that allow the company to deliver consistently on a distinctive capability.

- Deploying a capability across a global enterprise -- being able to both replicate and adapt a specific capability across a related group of businesses and different geographic markets.

- Winning with a Capability-Driven Strategy – having a way to play that is uniquely ingrained in a set of capabilities, is almost impossible to copy and uniquely fits the company´s product/service offering.

The course provides a pragmatic, broad and global perspective. It leverages guest speakers and the instructor´s experience in actual cases to discuss how companies have actually developed strategic capabilities over time, both internally and working with strategy consulting firms. It also explores examples from throughout the world of the types of capabilities that are required to pursue and capture global leadership. We will discuss examples and cases from a variety of leading global companies (i.e. AB Inbev, Pepsico…) and also explore strategic capabilities from the perspective of other types of competitors including sports (Nadal vs. Federer), drug wars (Pablo Escobar), startups, NGOs, the military and the government.

For the final project, the students (in groups) analyze and present to the class the strategic capability set of a leading enterprise of their choice, explaining how it has enabled it to create value consistently and above its competitors.

The skills developed in this course should be broadly applicable to students planning to pursue either a consulting or a general management career.

Alonso Martinez

Senior Lecturer in Discipline

Professor Martinez is a Senior Lecturer at Columbia Business School. He combines teaching and research with extensive global experience doing strategy consulting, with particular expertise in emerging markets. He gives the Catching Growth Waves in Emerging Markets course in both the MBA and EMBA programs and the Defining and Developing wining Strategic Capabilities course to the MBAs.  He has also given the EMBA...

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