strategic planning certification training

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Professional Certificate in Strategic Management

Offering high-quality products and services at competitive prices is no longer a sufficient business strategy. Increased competition and an evolving digital landscape demand more from organizations and their leaders.

Enhance your leadership capabilities and learn how to develop sustainable, successful business strategies with the Professional Certificate in Strategic Management from Wharton. Offering practical lecture knowledge and hands-on application of concepts, this program teaches you how to decrease costs, increase operational efficiencies, and improve customer experiences.

Created by world-renowned professors at the Wharton School, the Professional Certificate in Strategic Management walks you through how technology has changed the way businesses interact with customers and why this necessitates connected strategies. This program of business strategy courses is designed for managers and leaders of all industries who want to better identify, amplify, and sustain the competitive advantage of their businesses.

Why Study Strategic Management?

• 61% of senior executives admit that their companies have a hard time bridging the gap between strategic planning and implementation. 1
• Only 40% of employees strongly feel their managers comprehend the goals and strategy of their company. 2
• Only 41% of employees feel their companies have the competent personnel necessary to execute strategic initiatives. 3

1 https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/learning/thought-leadership/why-good-strategies-fail-report.pdf 2 http://georgejamesltd.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/What-Employees-Really-Think-about-Todays-Workplace.pdf 3 https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/learning/thought-leadership/why-good-strategies-fail-report.pdf

Program Details

Start Dates: Enroll Immediately

Duration: 6 weeks per course

Commitment: 2-4 hours per week

Program Format: 100% Online

Program Tuition: $537.30 $199 (per individual course)

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Professional certificate in strategic management course descriptions, business strategy from wharton: competitive advantage, course description.

Price: $199 Duration: 6 weeks Hours: 3-4/week

What sets your organization apart from others? How can you maximize and sustain its impact over time? Understanding and maintaining your competitive advantage is no small task.

Business Strategy from Wharton: Competitive Advantage will give you the tools and frameworks necessary to execute a well-designed strategy. You’ll understand the drivers and barriers of competitive advantage so you can sustain your distinct advantage. You’ll also learn how to assess the impact of your competitors’ strategies.

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to enhance your strategy to maximize your competitive advantage and drive revenue growth.

Course Modules

• Analyze Your Firm’s Internal Fit
• Analyze Your Firm’s External Fit
• Maintaining Your Firm’s Dynamic Fit
• Creating New Strategies and Initiatives

Participants Will Learn How To:

• Evaluate your firm’s strategic environment
• Distinguish between organizational effectiveness and strategic positioning
• Identify barriers to organizational change and strategy implementation
• Map central and supporting firm activities, understanding how they interact with each other
• Engage in sustainable strategic management and planning

INTRODUCTION TO CONNECTED STRATEGY

Price: $199 Duration: 6 weeks Hours: 2-4/week

Technology has fundamentally changed the way businesses operate and how leaders engage in the strategic management of their firms. Understanding the customer journey has become essential to creating and executing connected strategies.

Connected Strategy examines how technology has evolved and changed the ways businesses interact with their customers. Professors Christian Terwiesch and Nicolaj Siggelkow will walk you through the connected customer experience and how connected delivery models are used in various industries. You’ll learn about connected strategy examples and analyze existing frameworks that can inform connected relationship design.

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to identify, assess and implement connected strategies for your organization.

• Connected Strategy and Value Proposition
• Connected Customer Experience and Customization
• Connected Producers and Connected Strategy Matrix
• Revenue Model, Technology Infrastructure, and Disruptive Innovation
• Analyze innovation frameworks and value propositions
• Identify connected relationships and their potential for your firm
• Examine customer experiences as they relate to the greater customer journey
• Create customization strategies by leveraging positive customer feedback loops
• Develop connection architecture and connected customer relationship strategies for your business

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT CAPSTONE

You understand connected relationships, but how can you apply this knowledge to excel the strategic management of your firm?

Connected Strategy Capstone Project provides you with the necessary tools to ideate, plan and execute a connected strategy for your business. Tailored worksheets and lecture videos from Professors Siggelkow and Terwiesch will guide you through each step of connected strategy creation. The final capstone project will be a combination of your worksheets and analysis of the strategy you created.

Throughout the capstone project, you’ll be able to reflect on your organization and develop actionable strategies.

• Connected Customer Experience
• Connected Customer Experience Strategy
• Connected Delivery Model Strategy
• Apply the concepts learned in the Connected Strategy course
• Approach connected strategy planning and creation
• Move beyond traditional customer interactions to create a new business model
• Create a connected customer experience and connected delivery model for any organization
• Envision and develop a connected strategy that can be directly applied to your business

Want it all? Take the complete program for $537.30.

Key certificate program takeaways, participants will learn how to:.

• Identify business’ competitive advantages
• Amplify competitive advantages and drive profits
• Leverage connected strategies to create continuous customer relationships
• Transcend traditional forms of customer interaction and adopt new business models
• Achieve sustainable competitive advantage

Professional Certificate in Strategic Management Faculty

Christian Terwiesch

Andrew M. Heller Professor at the Wharton School Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions Professor of Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine Co-Director, Mack Institute of Innovation Management

Faculty Research Interests

He is a Professor in Wharton’s Operations, Information and Decisions department, co-director of Penn’s Mack Institute for Innovation Management, and also holds a faculty appointment In Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. His research on Operations Management and on Innovation Management appears in many of the leading academic journals ranging from Management Science to The New England Journal of Medicine. He is an award-winning teacher with extensive experience in MBA teaching and executive education.

Professor Terwiesch is the co-author of Matching Supply with Demand, a widely used text-book in Operations Management that is now in its third edition. Based on this book, Professor Terwiesch has launched the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in business on Coursera. By now, well over 250,000 students enrolled in the course.

His latest book, Innovation Tournaments, was published by Harvard Business School Press. The novel, process-based approach to innovation outlined in the book was featured by BusinessWeek, the Financial Times, and the Sloan Management Review and has lead to innovation tournaments in organizations around the world.

Professor Terwiesch has researched with and consulted for various organizations. From small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, he has helped companies become more innovative, often by implementing innovation tournament events and by helping to restructure their innovation portfolio.

Most of his current work relates to healthcare and innovation management. In the healthcare space, some of Professor Terwiesch recent projects include the design of patient centered care processes in the VA hospital system, the impact of emergency room crowding on hospital revenues and the patient experience at Penn Medicine, and the usage of patient portals and remote patient monitoring.

In addition to his teaching and his research, Professor Terwiesch is experimenting with a new career as a host of a national radio show on Sirius XM 132. Also, after 20 years of Ironman racing, he is trying to become a competitive rower, a transition that unfortunately turns out to be harder than expected.

Nicolaj Siggelkow

David M. Knott Professor Professor of Management Co-Director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management

He studied Economics at Stanford University and earned an M.A. in Economics from Harvard University. He received a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University and the Harvard Business School. Professor Siggelkow has been the recipient of multiple MBA and Undergraduate Excellence in Teaching Awards, including the Class of 1984 Award presented to the faculty member with the highest teaching rating in the MBA classroom, the Helen Kardon Moss Anvil Teaching Award, the Wharton Award, and the Wharton Graduate Association Student Choice Award. His research has been published in the leading management journals, including Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Industrial Economics, Management Science, Organization Science, and Strategic Organization. In 2008, he received the Administrative Science Quarterly Scholarly Contribution Award for the most significant paper published in ASQ five years earlier. Nicolaj is a member of the Editorial Review Boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Organization, and Academy of Management Perspectives.

His current research focuses on the strategic and organizational implications of interactions among a firm’s choices of activities and resources. In particular, his research has focused on three broad questions: How do firms develop, grow and adjust their set of activities over time? How does organizational design affect a firm’s ability to find high-performing sets of activities? What role do interactions among a firm’s activities play in creating and sustaining competitive advantage? To address these questions, he has employed a range of methodological approaches, including in-depth field studies of individual firms, econometric methods for large-scale data sets, formal modeling, and simulation models.

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Strategic Management

This course is part of Strategic Management and Innovation Specialization

Instructor: Robert Austin

Financial aid available

107,767 already enrolled

(4,156 reviews)

Skills you'll gain

• Category: Strategic Management Strategic Management
• Category: Strategic Thinking Strategic Thinking
• Category: Strategic Planning Strategic Planning
• Category: Business Strategy Business Strategy

Details to know

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2 quizzes, 5 assessments

Available in English

Subtitles: Arabic, German, Vietnamese, Russian, Thai, Portuguese (Brazilian), English, Italian, Indonesian, French, Spanish

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There are 5 modules in this course

The world of business strategy is in transition. What used to work doesn't anymore -- not necessarily.

This course prepares you to think strategically in an age when companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft have become more valuable (in market cap terms) than companies like Exxon. Today, business value and competitive advantage arise more often from consumer perceptions of what is "cool" than from physical assets or economies of scale. In this course -- the first of a three-course specialization tailored specifically for the age of creativity and innovation -- you will gear up for the challenges of strategy formulation and implementation in a 21st century business. After taking the course, you'll be able to: - Explain why "doing" strategy is considered "the high point of managerial activity" (Mintzberg); - Recognize and avoid the old, tired ideas about strategy that are still out there, so you can adopt fresher, better ideas; - Point out how doing strategy has changed because of advancing technology and globalization; - Prepare for the Capstone Project for the Strategic Management and Innovation Specialization

A 21st Century Approach to Business Strategy

A short intro to the Course.

What's included

2 videos • total 4 minutes.

• A Creative Company CEO Calls for a New Approach • 1 minute • Preview module
• Introduction to the Course • 3 minutes

What is strategy? And why do we care about it?

Strategy can mean a lot of things. In this module, you'll encounter examples of strategy in action that demonstrate what people mean when they talk about strategy. After completion of the module, you'll be able to: Describe examples of strategy in action; Recognize "strategic situations"; Explain the difference between strategy as "position" and strategy as "capability" (and why that matters).

10 videos 9 readings 5 quizzes

10 videos • Total 39 minutes

• What Strategy Is... • 5 minutes • Preview module
• What Strategy Is...continued • 3 minutes
• What Strategy Is...more examples • 1 minute
• What Strategy Is...Still More • 1 minute
• What Strategy Is...Conclusions • 0 minutes
• What's a Strategic Situation (and what isn't)? • 9 minutes
• Strategy's Most Famous Thought Leader: Michael Porter • 1 minute
• The Main Ideas in Porter's "What is Strategy?" • 3 minutes
• Criticisms of Porter's Strategy as Position Approach • 5 minutes
• The Alternative View: Strategy as Capability • 6 minutes

9 readings • Total 90 minutes

• More on Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish • 10 minutes
• Apple iPod + iTunes and Yael Naim • 10 minutes
• Oldest McDonalds Video • 10 minutes
• A Strategic Ploy? • 10 minutes
• Summary of Mintzberg's Five Ps of Strategy • 10 minutes
• Prisoner's Dilemma Matrices • 10 minutes
• More on the Prisoner's Dilemma • 10 minutes
• Michael Porter's "What is Strategy?" • 10 minutes
• Mintzberg vs Porter • 10 minutes

5 quizzes • Total 150 minutes

• The Meanings of "Strategy" • 30 minutes
• Recognizing Strategic Situations • 30 minutes
• Strategy as Position vs Capability • 30 minutes
• What do YOU think? • 30 minutes
• Which way do YOU lean? • 30 minutes

The Evolution of Strategy...Past Progress, Past Mistakes

Historically, strategy consulting and strategic planning have been big business. Companies have spent a lot over the years on sophisticated, high-brow "strategic" consulting. For a long time, consultants were the strategy "high-priests" of business. Until it all fell apart. Many past approaches have now fallen into disfavor, having risen spectacularly and failed even more spectacularly. Indeed, the history of business strategy making could be called a "March of Folly" (historian Barbara Tuchman uses this expression to describe a tendency in human history to repeat the same mistakes, again and again). This module explores what the past can teach us, how we might avoid repeating past mistakes.

5 videos 5 readings 1 quiz

5 videos • Total 41 minutes

• Early Approaches to Business Strategy • 8 minutes • Preview module
• Strategy, Scripted and Programmed • 9 minutes
• The BCG Matrix and Growth Curve • 11 minutes
• Strategy as Multi-faceted Analysis • 7 minutes
• What We Can Learn... • 4 minutes

5 readings • Total 50 minutes

• The military antecedents of business strategy • 10 minutes
• Critiques of Strategic Planning • 10 minutes
• BCG's Big Ideas • 10 minutes
• Post Mortems for Porter's Approach? • 10 minutes
• Where the History of Business Strategy Leaves Us • 10 minutes

1 quiz • Total 30 minutes

• Learning from the History of Business Strategy • 30 minutes

Changing World, Changing Strategies

In the past several decades, a lot has changed in the world. Many more people and nations (China, India, Russia, etc) have joined the global market economy. The number of Internet users has skyrocketed and continues dramatically upward. Shipping traffic between countries has multiplied and also continues to grow. All this world change has changed the strategy situation of most companies in a big way. It means, for example, that companies in advanced economies have to compete against rivals that have structural cost advantages, because they operate in lower cost parts of the world. This module describes the shifted and shifting strategy landscape, due to the advance of technology and the relentless march of globalization.

5 videos • Total 42 minutes

• Comparing 1975 and Today • 7 minutes • Preview module
• How Products, Services, and Work Now Move Easily Around the Globe • 10 minutes
• How the Competitive Game Shifts in a Globalized World • 6 minutes
• The World's Most Sophisticated Differentiation Strategies? • 11 minutes
• Aesthetics...the Last Frontier of Sustainable Advantage? • 7 minutes
• Internet Growth, Shipping Traffic Growth • 10 minutes
• The Realities of the Globalised World • 10 minutes
• Examples of Shifts to Differentiation Strategies - Wal-Mart, McDonalds • 10 minutes
• The Future of Competitive Strategy? The Example of Vipp • 10 minutes
• Hyper Competition and Hyper Differentiation Described • 10 minutes
• Strategic Implications of Changes in the World • 30 minutes

Capstone Project Intro -- Strategy in a 21st Century Creative Company

An up-and-coming (and very ambitious) design firm is unexpectedly invited to bid for a work against more prominent competitors. The job: Design the logo and other elements of the public identity of the national sports team. Winning will vault e-Types to much greater prominence. Their work will be displayed on TV and on t-shirts. And they believe they have what it takes to win. But there's a problem. The e-Types designers, who have always thought of themselves as design revolutionaries, don't like the guidance they're receiving from this somewhat conservative client. In short, the designers think what the client is asking for is BORING. It's not the kind of work they want to do or be known for...now or ever! Meanwhile, more business oriented e-Types managers and staff can hardly believe what they're hearing from the designers -- don't they see the opportunity? This is business and there's money to be made. The designers should GET OVER THEMSELVES and satisfy the customer. Right? Controversy grips e-Types. At stake: what kind of company will they be going forward? Can they continue to be revolutionary and still satisfy their growth ambitions? Or is it time for them to "grow up" in order to appeal to a wider range of customers. The battle is on for the soul of this company -- what will YOU recommend?

5 videos 4 readings

5 videos • Total 11 minutes

• Meet e-Types - A 21st Century Creative Company • 1 minute • Preview module
• e-Types execs explaining how they think about their business • 2 minutes
• A Major Controversy - At Stake: The Future and Soul of the Company • 4 minutes
• e-Types partners debating which design to present to TD • 1 minute
• Questions We Ask You To Consider... • 1 minute

4 readings • Total 40 minutes

• Some Samples of e-Types Work • 10 minutes
• IMPORTANT Additional Details on Your Final Assignment • 10 minutes
• References and Additional Resources • 10 minutes
• One last thing... • 10 minutes

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Centrally located in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, Copenhagen Business School (CBS) is one of the largest business schools in Europe with close to 23,000 students. CBS offers world-class research-based degree programs at undergraduate, graduate, and PhD levels as well as executive and other post experience programs.

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Showing 3 of 4156

4,156 reviews

Reviewed on May 24, 2021

Great intro to strategic management principles and tools. The capstone project at the end gives you the opportunity to show that you are able to synthesize the information that was taught.

Reviewed on Nov 3, 2015

It is a great course that simplifies how we should think about a business (the start and the long term visions) it also reorders our way of thinking about how firms work and overcome their obstacles.

Reviewed on Jul 26, 2020

Nice and essential course , especially important who administrate business or want future. By extension this course will broaden your point of view that what happen in global markets.

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Frequently asked questions

When will i have access to the lectures and assignments.

Access to lectures and assignments depends on your type of enrollment. If you take a course in audit mode, you will be able to see most course materials for free. To access graded assignments and to earn a Certificate, you will need to purchase the Certificate experience, during or after your audit. If you don't see the audit option:

The course may not offer an audit option. You can try a Free Trial instead, or apply for Financial Aid.

The course may offer 'Full Course, No Certificate' instead. This option lets you see all course materials, submit required assessments, and get a final grade. This also means that you will not be able to purchase a Certificate experience.

What will I get if I subscribe to this Specialization?

When you enroll in the course, you get access to all of the courses in the Specialization, and you earn a certificate when you complete the work. Your electronic Certificate will be added to your Accomplishments page - from there, you can print your Certificate or add it to your LinkedIn profile. If you only want to read and view the course content, you can audit the course for free.

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Is financial aid available?

Yes. In select learning programs, you can apply for financial aid or a scholarship if you can’t afford the enrollment fee. If fin aid or scholarship is available for your learning program selection, you’ll find a link to apply on the description page.

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