Strategy in Uncertain Times (Live Online) is a five-day virtual program focused on the process of finding opportunities, launching new ventures, and leading necessary organizational changes to revitalize and transform an organization in times of uncertainty.

Participants will learn how to thrive in rapidly changing and highly uncertain environments and will be able to immediately apply their learning to make rapid progress on an issue they identify.

If you have ever worried about how to drive new growth or how to make a change initiative successful, you will enjoy the insights developed in this live online program.

For a complete program schedule, please download the agenda.

Please Contact Us

Please contact our Learning Solutions Specialists at +1 212-854-3395 to learn more.

IMPACT

After taking this course, you will be able to:

• Understand and describe the six elements of your new strategy playbook
• Rapidly evaluate and prioritize the activities currently in your portfolio
• Decide which programs or projects to stop and how to disengage from them
• Explore how to lead through change and uncertainty
• Reframe problems to spark novel solutions
• Smartly plan your digital transformation strategy
• Create plans that facilitate learning rather than assuming knowledge
• Understand the political and implementation challenges of growth
• Identify opportunities to create a ‘platform’ business model
• Understand how to create important relationships with ecosystem partners
• Gain deep customer insight

Upon completion of this program, you will earn three credits towards a certificate with select alumni and tuition benefits. Learn more.

PROGRAM STRUCTURE

The program takes place in a virtual live delivery format and is designed to address the levels of unprecedented uncertainty we are all facing.

A select set of additional readings and materials are also included, and each participant receives copies of relevant books.

Day One

• Setting the context: an overview of why innovation is no longer optional in the transient advantage economy and the new strategy playbook
• Introduction to an alternative to growth-strangling metrics: Real options reasoning
• Creating an opportunity portfolio

Day Two

• Think Wrong Workshop, an immersion day on Design Thinking showing you how to unfreeze your thinking to create novel solutions

Day Three

• De-mystifying digital transformation: how increasingly strategy = innovation = digital
• Discovery Driven Planning, a technique for planning to learn quickly, manage risk, and bring down costs when operating under high levels of uncertainty

Day Four

• An entirely new force in our economy consists of complementors – learn why you can’t avoid understanding this to be successful
• Platform strategies: the newest trend in business models
• The economics and often counterintuitive behavior of two-sided markets
• Why Uber’s original business model has flaws as a platform

Day Five

• Disengagement: how to gracefully shut down a project or end a business
• Create a simple formula for leading organizational transformation, accompanied by a diagnostic
• Customers should not be a mystery – 3 techniques for understanding them better

For a complete program schedule, please download the agenda.

PARTICIPANT PROFILE

Strategy in Uncertain Times (Live Online) is designed for upper- to senior-level executives who seek significant growth opportunities for their organizations.

Columbia Business School alumni and up to four of their colleagues are eligible for a 25 percent tuition benefit for this program. More on the Alumni Tuition Benefit.

FACULTY

Rita McGrath, Faculty Director
Faculty, Columbia Business School Executive Education

Rita McGrath is a globally recognized expert on strategy, innovation, and growth. Her work and ideas help CEO's and senior executives succeed in rapidly changing and volatile environments, and she is valued for her rare ability to connect research to business problems. Recognized as one of the top 10 management thinkers by global management award Thinkers50 in 2017 and winning the award for outstanding achievement in the strategy category, McGrath speaks regularly at corporate events, such as the Microsoft CEO Summit and the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. She appears regularly on television and radio and is often cited in the press, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Financial Times, and Businessweek and has published several articles in the Harvard Business Review.

She has also been named one of the top ten business school professors to follow on Twitter, and was named one of the 25 smartest women to follow on Twitter by Fast Company magazine. In 2009, she was inducted as a fellow of the Strategic Management Society, an honor given to those who have had a significant impact on the field.

Prior to life in academia, McGrath was an IT director, worked in the political arena and founded two startups.

Along with McGrath, additional Columbia Business School faculty may contribute to and teach in the program.

FAQ

 
Do you have questions about our live online programs? Please review our commonly asked questions on our live online programs FAQs page.