The principal goal of this course is to apply corporate strategy and economic tools that we have previously taught you to interesting, real world corporate settings. All too often MBAs learn tools without having enough time to practice using them; this "training day" seeks to overcome that hurdle. The case studies chosen cover a wide range of circumstances: sports, international investment decisions with a clear political dimension, as well as the challenges faced by diversified firms.

Diversified multi-business firms are often times viewed suspiciously by investors and analysts. Specifically, these business groups are said to lack strategic coherence and overall transparency which in turn are assumed to foster inefficiencies in internal and external resource allocation.

Consequently, capital markets tend to discount the stock-market value of diversified multi-business firms. For group managers of diversified multi-business firms, the development, implementation and communication of a consistent approach towards group-level value creation becomes a key strategic issue in an effort to turn the conglomerate discount into a premium.

In business practice, however, very few multi-business firms have so far successfully developed, implemented, and communicated such a consistent approach. In contrast, a majority of multi-business firms still seems to be geared towards meeting the quarterly earnings race which often times leads to the development of piecemeal measures with a short-term but not necessarily long-term strategic and financial impact. This form of business conduct is not likely to be an appropriate response to the current business challenges nor is it likely to serve as a sustainable foundation for successful longterm corporate development.

This course thus specializes on the particular challenges which need to be met by corporate level managers in today's business environment. While students are expected to be able to readily draw on the general strategic toolkit with which they were equipped in the core module "Corporate Strategy", the aim is to equip them with advanced concepts and practical approaches specific to corporate-level value creation, and to apply these tools to real life problems.