[MUSIC] Welcome to the course, Be competitive. My name is Ralf Wilden and I'm an associate professor and strategy and innovation and Macquarie University. But I'm really passionate about is helping organizations deal with change situations and develop appropriate strategies to navigate turbulent business landscape. Where they had talked to industry leaders or academics. The consensus is that the ability to think strategically is essential managerial skill, decisions made today will have significant impact on the organization's future. But what is competitive strategy and what are the component parts of thinking strategically? We say or hear people say, I have a strategy for that all the time. I want to strategy actually mean. I'll use an example. You may think you have a strategy for getting your next promotion at work, but do you really have you considered the long term implications of getting a promotion? Have you assessed how that new job will fit into your lifestyle? And have you considered how much to invest in order to get promoted? These are all questions that point a crucial characteristics of strategy. You need to think about the long-term nature of the decision. You need to commit significant resources to achieving the desired outcome and their significant implications and dependencies around your strategic decisions which may not be easily reversible. Though the definition of strategy will work from is, strategy is the overall plan for deploying resources to establish a favorable position in the marketplace? To keep it simple, resources are input factors into organizational activities. Touches financial resources, that is money, human resources, that is your staff, but also things such as brands and manufacturing facilities or the location of your restaurant outlets. Techniques to achieve a favorable position in the marketplace. Organizations do not operate in isolation. Therefore, you need to consider important actors in the market, of central importance are your customers and your competitors. Thus, you want to use the organizational resources in a way that you position the organization and its offerings positively in the minds of your customers relative to your competition. This favorable position can be achieved, for example, through creating a better value product that is a cheaper acceptable product or higher quality product. Overall, this course will give you the skills you need to critically evaluate your organization strategy to achieve a favorable position. You learn about the importance of customer value for competitive strategy. Then, we look at how competitors affect strategy and positioning. Out of this external analysis, you'll have a set of strategic options that is opportunities that may exist in your market. We then discuss a range of generic strategies that could help you compete in your industry and capture the identified opportunities. Once you've mastered the art of assessing relevant external factors affecting the organization, and you've understood the strategies you can choose from, the important question arises is your organization capable of realizing this chosen strategy? And then, we'll deep into the skills you need to evaluate the organization, understand its resources, capabilities, and whether certain identified market opportunities may actually even pose a threat to the organization. In the last week of this course we then add a layer of complexity, a competitive strategy that works now might not work so well in the future. That's why most organizations would have a portfolio of competitive strategies relating to various businesses or product markets that competing in. And these six weeks are finished, I really want nothing more than for you to be competitive. Let's get started. [MUSIC] [SOUND]