Instructor: Thomas Lyon, Dow Professor of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce ([email protected])
This course meets during the second half of the semester (10/28/19 - 12/11/19).
Most business courses teach you how to play the game of business within the rules. This course is about the rules themselves, their creation and their enforcement. While a firm's competitive advantage is created in large part through developing exploiting difficult-to-imitate capabilities and resources in the market environment, the non-market environment in which the firm operates also presents important risks and opportunities for business leaders. Many barriers to imitation derive from legal rules or public policies that favor certain capabilities over others. These policies are not exogenously given. They are instead the outcome of competition between businesses and other groups within public institutions. In many industries, corporate activity in the policymaking and judicial process is a key element in creating or maintaining a company's competitive advantage. This course has four main goals: 1) Create awareness of the broad range of ways in which the non-market environment - especially government policy - affects business. 2) Give an understanding of the process through which business and other groups create and change the rules of the game. 3) Gain a mastery of a set of conceptual tools and frameworks for developing and implementing non-market strategies. 4) Provide opportunities to practice formulating integrated strategies that function skillfully in the non-market arena.
This course is combined with BE 555.