UPF: Seminars of Strategic Management I

With these seminars of this advanced course on Strategy, my intention is to innovate and diversify your learning of strategic management.

The inspiration for this innovative setting comes from my reading of the book “The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation” written by Jacques Rancière, a French philosopher. besides the basic principle that there is no intellectual superiority of the teacher over the students, I take from this reading the goal that education is about your emancipation as human beings and the principle that a most appropriate to learn is to teach.

I have therefore designed this series of seminars bringing my knowledge and experience as a teacher into the process itself. You will be the main deliver of content and be endowed with a large freedom as to the way you want to deliver it to other students. In the class, my responsibility will lie as being the keeper of the learning space and the witness of your learning process. Your responsibility will be to learn what you want to learn and to teach what you have learned.

With the Theory professor, we have chosen a series of 6 topics which we believe are relevant to the current world of strategic management and which are also susceptible to raise your interest. For each topic, we are proposing a few cases that are going to be taught in class by teams of students. Although this may vary with the final number of students in the course, we are planning to discuss 2 cases per class.

The topics and cases are as follows:

1. Unethical Business?

BNP Paribas and the 2014 settlement of US sanctions

GSK and the Chinese Bribery Case

2. Ethical Business

La Fageda

Fairphone

3. Open Source Management

The Debian Project and the Linux Foundation

Open Source Ecology

4. Alliances and Acquisitions

HP buying Autonomy

Le Novo & IBM Computers

5. Cooperation & Competition

Business Europe

OPEC

6. Internationalization of Strategy

Tesla Motor

Gamesa

As a student, you are invited to

TASK 1) form a team and select a case;
TASK 2) prepare a class to teach what you have learned from the case;
TASK 3) hand in a team synthesis of what you have learned out of the teaching experience;
TASK 4) prepare each case that you are not teaching.

TASK 1: Form a team and select 1 case out of the two proposed for each topic (Deadline: January 15th, 2015)

1.1: Form a team of 3 students within the same seminar group

1.2: Go the page of your seminar group to see in the Forum section which case has already been selected by another team of students

1.3. Select one case (only one !) which has not been already selected and write a message to other students in the Forum of the page of your seminar group to inform other students of your choice. The message must contain the case you ahve selected and the names of the students composing the team.

TASK 2: Prepare your teaching (Deadline: see the calendar for when each case is to be taught)

2.1: Start with the material available for the case that you have selected

2.2: Ask yourself: What would we like to learn about this case?

2.3. Engage freely in your learning process the way you think appropriate (collect information, share opinions, ask questions, formulate hypothesis and opinions, etc.)

2.4. Reflect on what you have actually learned

2.5. Prepare a session to share your experience with other students. Each session shall not exceed 30 minutes, that you organize as you wish.

TASK 3: Hand in the synthesis with Auto-evaluation (Deadline: 1 week after teaching)

3.1: At the end of the teaching, collect the assignments from all other students

3.2: Read what they wanted to learn and what they have learned

3.3. Write a synthesis that share and evaluate your experience

3.4. Assess from 1 to 5 the extent to which you have been learning. Comment your self-evaluation.

3.5. Submit the synthesis together with all collected preparation assignments in a report.

TASK 4: Individual Preparation Assignments as a Student (Deadline: to be printed before each class and handed in at the end of the class)

4.1: Read the material available for the two cases of the day (the day you are a Teacher, you of course only prepare one case as a student)

4.2: Individually, write a few sentences about what you would like to learn about the case(s)

4.3. At the end of the class, write a few sentences about what you have learned during the class

4.4. Assess from 1 to 5 the extent to which you have been learning.

Final Evaluation

Besides being in the class, I will evaluate your learning during these seminars taking into considerations:

1. The quality of your questioning before the learning process (as a teacher and as a student)

2. The quality of your learning outcome (as a teacher and as a student)

3. The quality of the session presentation and facilitation (as a teacher)

Seminar Change

If you want to change your seminar group, you must find someone to substitute you by doing the reciprocal change. Once you have found a counterpart, please write to me to confirm the change.

Access to Seminars groups webpages:

Seminar Group 101: Wednesday 9.00 - 10.30

Seminar Group 102: Wednesday 13.00 - 14.30

Seminar Group 103: Wednesday 14.30 - 16.00

Seminar Group 201: Thursday 10.30 - 12.00

Seminar Group 202: Thursday 12.00 - 13.30

Seminar Group 203: Thursday 13.30 - 15.00.