Given that I didnt pay for the course, I have to say that it was successfull in giving me a decent amount of information and an introduction into thought processes underlying strategic design. Furthermore it has a nice choice of filming locations. Yet there is two reasons for my low rating: 1) lack of a systematic approach and 2) lack of detail going beyond the obvious and sometimes lack of arguments for certain claims.
More specficially things that could be improved on would be:
* red line is sometimes missing (or at least not very obvious), concepts just seem to pop up semi randomly, which may be similiar to my second critique point:
* often the scope of concepts wasnt clear, i.e. one slide deals with capabilities, the next one deals with shared activities such as capital, is the latter now a capability? the heading in the slides suggests its an entirely different subtopic, but there is no other sign of such a transition, neighter in slides nor in the oral presentation; this happens quite alot of times, so please make the relationship between the different parts of the presentation and concepts clearer
* often, a real example would help: how does concept A look in a specific company (titles, organization trees and procedures), how does a centralized vs decentralized company strcuture look like, which capabilities are where; maybe use the companies where you film the lectures at as examples, this would make the choice of location also seem less random
* not much beyond the slides is explained: refinancing is mentioned as a way of improving performance; what debt is refinanced here, how does this pertain to company everyday workings (i.e. does a company buy another random company and makes somehow money? -> please detail more and give a clear example)
* maybe add a little bit of readings (i.e. including examples if there is no space in the presentation for this)
* discussions dont receive any replys nor any moderation (but that seems more like the usual case on coursera; and the separation into different forums for each course period leads to only a sinlge post per thread per period which doesnt encourage peer discussion); yet as this seems to be a coursera wide applicable critique this didnt factor into my rating
As it is, this course can be finished rather very quickly, and i think people would be willing to spend more time on the course to gain actual depth knowledge (as is often said but not achieved in the class unfortunately)
