Curriculum Business Strategy
Business Strategy
How companies decide where to compete and how to win - five forces, cost versus differentiation, moats, first movers, disruption, blue oceans, lock-in, diversification and real Indian case studies.
- What Is Business Strategy? Why strategy is about making choices, including choosing what not to do, and how it differs from simply running a business well. 📄 Read-aloud
- Porter's Five Forces A classic framework for understanding why some industries are highly profitable and others are not, by looking at five competitive pressures. 📄 Read-aloud
- Cost Leadership versus Differentiation The two basic ways to gain a competitive edge - being the lowest-cost producer or offering something customers will pay more for - and the risk of being stuck in the middle. 📄 Read-aloud
- Economic Moats: Protecting Profits What makes a company's advantage durable, from brands and network effects to switching costs and cost advantages, using Warren Buffett's famous metaphor. 📄 Read-aloud
- SWOT Analysis and Its Limits How the popular SWOT framework organises strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and why it works best as a starting point rather than a strategy. 📄 Read-aloud
- First-Mover Advantage: Myth or Reality? Whether being first into a market helps or hurts, what research shows, and why fast followers often win. 📄 Read-aloud
- Business Strategy: Checkpoint 1 Quick checkpoint - five questions on strategy, five forces, generic strategies, moats and first movers. 5 questions
- Disruptive Innovation Clayton Christensen's theory of how simpler, cheaper products can topple powerful market leaders, and how the idea is often misused. 📄 Read-aloud
- Blue Ocean Strategy The idea of escaping crowded, competitive markets by creating new market space where competition is irrelevant. 📄 Read-aloud
- Switching Costs and Lock-In How businesses make it costly or inconvenient for customers to leave, when this benefits customers, and when regulators step in. 📄 Read-aloud
- Diversification and Conglomerates Why some companies spread into many unrelated businesses, why India's business groups remain so diversified, and the debate over the conglomerate discount. 📄 Read-aloud
- Razors and Blades: Making Money on the Refill How companies sell a base product cheaply and profit from consumables or services, from razors and printers to game consoles and water purifiers. 📄 Read-aloud
- Case Study: How Jio Reshaped Indian Telecom How Reliance Jio used heavy investment, free introductory services and very low prices to transform India's mobile market, bringing together the ideas in this module. 📄 Read-aloud