5 Learnings I Gained from Kellogg MBA’s Business Strategy Course
The first quarter of my MBA has ended, and it seems like time went by quickly. At Kellogg, the initial fall quarter was filled with mandatory courses, and the one that particularly caught my attention was “Business Strategy” taught by Professor Craig Garthwaite.
The Business Strategy course at Kellogg is taught mainly using the Case-Method approach. Before each class, we read different cases and materials, and during class, the professor guides us in a discussion of the case, using slides to support our understanding of the main points.
Strategy is a complex and abstract concept. The goal of this introductory course is to provide MBA students with some strategy frameworks and thinking tools that can help us better address the question of “How can a company maintain its competitive advantage over the long term?”
Here are some of my thoughts after taking this course, broken down into several points:
- Summarize my ideas from the extensive reading material
2. Experience how strategy is generated and executed in the real world through real case studies
3. Absorb diverse perspectives from students with different backgrounds
4. The answer to every strategic question is “It depends.”
5. How to articulate your argument in writing
1. Summarize my ideas from the extensive reading material
Kellogg’s MBA program offers a 10-week quarter, with two 90-minute classes per week for the Business Strategy course. The classes are taught through case discussions, accompanied by slides presented by the instructor.
Given the limited time of 90 minutes per class, students are expected to have read the materials beforehand to make the most of the class discussion. In addition to the 1–2 core case readings each week (typically 30-page PDFs), the instructor also provides additional reading materials such as articles from New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, podcasts, documentaries, and other content related to specific topics. Before each class, students are also assigned homework, where they are required to answer questions and write a memo based on the case.
This background knowledge and pre-class homework are designed to help students have a deeper understanding of the topic and form their own thoughts before class, making the discussion more efficient and insightful.
Not everything mentioned in a case is of equal importance. The key to successful reading is to identify the critical points from the extensive information, summarize your own thoughts and find examples to support your arguments. Finally, present your ideas in class and engage in discussions with others to further explore the topic!
2. Experience how strategy is generated and executed in the real world through real case studies
Kellogg offers a wealth of diverse case studies that span various industries and different time periods. I am particularly interested in the technology-related cases, which include streaming platforms such as Netflix/Disney+, delivery platforms like Ubereats/DoorDash, and tech giants like Amazon and Google. These cases provide an opportunity to think about the strategic decisions made by these companies in the past or present.
In addition to reviewing past business strategies, many of the cases and teachings are closely tied to today’s business world. For example, after discussing whether Twitter should develop a new business model beyond advertising, we immediately encountered Elon Musk completing Twitter’s acquisition and launching the new revenue model of blue ticks. Another memorable experience was after studying the Disney case, reviewing the strategic shifts of the company’s CEOs during different periods, and then hearing the breaking news that former Disney CEO Robert Iger had returned as CEO. In the next class, the professor immediately led us to extend from the original case and discuss how Iger’s return as Disney CEO combined with the insights we absorbed in class.
Real-life business cases help students have a more comprehensive understanding of the background of business strategies and better understand how to think about strategies and make decisions in the real world with limited information.
3. Absorb diverse perspectives from students with different backgrounds
The effectiveness of case-based teaching methods depends not only on the quality of instruction from the professor but also on the level of student participation.
At Kellogg, the required course on Business Strategy is taught in sections with your classmates. Upon enrolling, each student is randomly assigned to a section, and the school strives to maintain diversity within each section, bringing together students from different countries, industries, and professions to exchange their experiences and make the class discussions more engaging.
For example, when discussing a case in the healthcare industry, students with both a medical and business background (MD-MBA) as well as those who have worked in healthcare consulting for years shared their know-how and various limitations. When analyzing the evolution of electronic payments in Africa, Nigerian and African students share their personal experiences and perspectives on the trends in the region. And when discussing the competitive advantages and corporate culture of Southwest Airlines, a student who previously worked at Southwest Airlines was able to share his insights with the class. The design of the MBA section breaks out of your usual social circles and allows you to hear more diverse and unique experiences!
Everyone’s experiences are unique!
Many things that I take for granted in Asia are new perspectives for classmates from other countries. During a discussion on the Amazon e-commerce case, I shared my experience in analyzing Chinese e-commerce and the differences in e-commerce between China, Southeast Asia, and the US. When discussing the challenges of US tech giants entering the Asian market, I shared my observations of how technology companies in the emerging Southeast Asian market are adapting and changing while I was in Singapore. These topics that I’m familiar with are fresh content for American or other regional classmates, and during coffee chats after class, I have the opportunity to exchange ideas on various issues with more classmates.
The same case in different classes and with different student compositions can spark different discussions and perspectives, and that is one of the reasons why I find this course so interesting!
4. The answer to every strategic question is “It depends.”
The answer to every strategic question is “It depends.”
The trick is knowing what it depends on — HBR
“It depends” is a phrase frequently used by business school professors and students. Business strategy is not always a black and white issue of YES and NO. Judgments made under different assumptions, economic environments, and time-space backgrounds are often different.
In the first class, the Professor Craig Garthwaite said that this course is not about analyzing the strategies of past companies from the perspective of a present-day God to see if they were correct, but about being able to think about various deductions and make different choices based on the time-space context at the time. Therefore, strategy does not have only one correct answer. However, this does not mean that any deduction is good. The biggest difference between a good strategy and a bad strategy is the assumption you make and the basis of your deductions. Finding the most important factors that impact an industry or company and considering your company’s core abilities is often the way to make a good business strategy.
5. How to articulate your argument in writing
In the business strategy class, there are a lot of essay questions in assignments and exams, which was the part I was weakest in initially. In my observation, students who grew up in the Asian education system (like myself) are generally good at multiple-choice questions, calculation questions, etc. We can pick the appropriate business strategy in multiple-choice questions and accurately calculate the net present value of different business opportunities. However, when the question becomes an open-ended essay question, we sometimes feel lost and don’t know where to begin.
Aside from answering this weakness with a second language, I believe the biggest difference is that we haven’t received enough training in this area during our education. American students may have started writing essays in middle and high school and have to write separate application essays for each university they apply to.
Looking back in the past one year, I can only remember writing a cover letter for a job, a Medium article, and various essays when applying for an MBA as my English writing experiences. Even in a work environment with English-only communication, most text communication still takes the form of shorter formats such as presentations, letters, and messaging apps, and there is no need for long-form writing.
When it comes to writing a short essay, storytelling ability becomes the most important skill. After listing all the points and supporting points, how to connect them together and let the reader clearly follow your logic to draw the final conclusion is crucial. This really requires a lot of practice. Besides practicing through assignments, I also observe how my classmates organize their thoughts and translate them into words when writing assignments and I try to familiarize myself with them by imitating them.
The quarter has ended…and what next…
During my time in university, I took two courses in the department of management science, taught by Professor Wen-Yi Chu, in the undergraduate program: “Strategic Management” and “Industry Competition” in the graduate program. I already felt like I gained a lot from those courses at National Taiwan University. However, taking the course “Business Strategy” at Kellogg was a different experience. Besides having a higher intensity of lectures (this course condenses and integrates the two courses at National Taiwan University into a ten-week intensive course), there was a more diverse mix of classmates and broader range of case discussions. The biggest difference was having more firsthand experience in the formulation and implementation of strategies in the business environment with several years of work experience.
During case discussions, I often had a personal connection to the strategies being discussed, drawing from good and bad strategies I have observed in the workplace (e.g. “Oh…I’ve seen this tragedy of a strategy being formulated!”). Unlike in university when I had no practical experience with the business world, discussions about strategies felt like floating in the air.
Taking the course in business strategy will not turn you into a strategy master overnight, but after being exposed to dozens of business cases, a basic framework for thinking about strategies will naturally be internalized to help you analyze the external environment, company’s core activities and competitive advantages more comprehensively.
Having a sustainable basic thinking tool and learning to think more deeply and broadly, incorporating new information back into the framework, refining and improving one’s judgment of business strategy was the biggest reward for completing this course to me!
