Course Catalog

Fall 2007

B6701-001: Strategy Formulation

MW A Term, 10:45AM to 12:15PM

Instructor: william duggan

Download Syllabus

This course is about the determinants of firm performance. It develops an explanation for why some firms perform better than others, and presents the analytical tools required to formulate successful strategies. Students will learn to analyze firms' competitive environments and to design a strategy that specifies appropriate long-term goals for a corporation, the businesses in which it will compete, how it will serve customers better than its competitors, and the capabilities that will be required in the service of these objectives. Learning is primarily through discussion of cases and articles with supporting short lectures and written assignments.

William Duggan

William Duggan

Senior Lecturer in Business

Professor Duggan’s primary teaching and research interest is strategic intuition as the key to innovation. He is the author of three recent books on strategic intuition as the key to innovation: Napoleon's Glance: The Secret of Strategy (2002); The Art of What Works: How Success Really Happens (2003); and Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement (2007). In 2007 the journal Strategy+Business named Strategic Intuition “Best Strategy Book of the Year.” Professor Duggan is the author of three previous books as well, and has twenty years of experience as a strategy advisor and consultant. Duggan teaches strategic intuition in three venues at Columbia Business School: MBA and Executive MBA courses, and Executive Education sessions. He sometimes teaches the MBA and Executive MBA core courses in Strategy as well.

Duggan’s secondary interest is foreign aid, based on several years living and working in Africa. He has recently completed a book with Glenn Hubbard, Dean of Columbia Business School, titled The Aid Trap: Hard Truths About Ending Poverty. It will come out in September 2009. The book tells how prosperity around the world has come from a thriving local business sector, and how aid to poor countries has funded government and NGO projects instead. The alternative is a new aid system modeled in part on the Marshall Plan, which was a large-scale loan program for local business that helped bring prosperity to war-torn Europe.

View full profile