1.5

credits

Average Course Rating

The purpose of this course is to bring together several themes and thereby give students a background in the following areas: 1. American business history; 2. Corporate strategy; 3. Theories of corporate failure and success; and 4. Tools and techniques of strategy consulting. The course will present the political, economic, social, and technological (PEST) contexts of what were perceived, at the time, to be either fabulously successful businesses or to be great business opportunities, but which ended (at least ultimately) in complete failure. These famous historical case studies will give students the opportunity to identify inflection points (where failure was not certain), to “fix” history, to present alternatives using the tools and techniques of contemporary strategy consulting. The course assumes the fundamental contingency of history, that things might have been different had the main actors chosen different paths.