Your Course of Study
This Executive Education program takes a broad, cross-functional approach to global strategy while exploring key issues in depth. The comprehensive curriculum blends diverse areas to touch on all aspects of running a global business—from organizational structure, leadership, finance, and talent management issues.
In a dynamic exchange with interdisciplinary faculty and a global group of peers, you will examine a wide range of situations faced by businesses around the world. Developing your strategic decision-making skills through case studies, classroom discussions, and small group exercises, you will return with a comprehensive understanding of global strategy and the ability to meet new challenges with decisive action. Topics include:
Defining Global Strategy and Creating a Global Organization
- Recognizing when a company's competitive advantage can be leveraged more effectively on a global playing field
- Determining the extent to which the company should be globally diversified in its businesses and markets
- Evaluating which strategic activities to own and which to execute through alliances or outsourcing
- Deciding how the organization and its incentive system can best support specific global strategy choices
Mitigating Political and Financial Risk
- Learning how other companies have dealt successfully with host-country political risk and why some strategies continue to fail
- Responding nimbly to changes in the financial environment, optimizing financial strategy in a global recession, and preparing to adjust strategy quickly when the economy rebounds
- Preparing your organization to respond to governmental change
Developing the Qualities of a Global Leader
- Fostering a common language and a shared sense of community across multinational business units
- Employing best practices in global talent management and leadership development
- Understanding the specific challenges facing you as a global business leader
- Assessing your performance and developing your global leadership skills over time
Addressing the Challenges of Institutional Distance
- Taking into account the role of institutional and economic distance factors in selecting markets to enter
- Identifying the role played by institutional distance when evaluating company or business line performance
Managing Country Selection
- Choosing which distance types to consider based on the company's business, geography, and value proposition
- Weighing political risk factors before entering a market
- Applying the right criteria in deciding whether and when to exit
Responding to—or Ignoring—Country Differences
- Calibrating the optimal level of product and market adaptation
- Recognizing when not to adapt products and services, and when to group countries and regions together based on common distance factors
- Knowing when and how to keep a standardized core of product architecture and company management practices
- Understanding when to adapt on the edges to achieve economies of scale and access to different sets of foreign consumers
Leveraging Labor Arbitrage
- Understanding the conditions under which it makes sense to tap into diverse labor pools around the globe
- Knowing when labor arbitrage can be an enduring source of competitive advantage and understanding when the value is likely to go to zero based on imitation or changes in market barriers
Implementing Transfer Pricing and Financial Policy Inside the Multinational Firm
- Examining how best to design and implement an internal market of prices within the global organization
- Understanding how tax differences and variation in countries' financial systems affect the finance function of a global multinational business