Overview
Strategy can be useful for protecting business innovation when no other form of protection exist (e.g. copyright, patent & trademark). Strategy can also compliment and strengthen other forms of innovation protection. Understanding how to use strategy to protect innovation and limitation of strategy as a form of protection will be useful for business managers. This course will cover strategies from tangible resources to intangible strategies business employ to be successful.
(1) Resource-based strategy (2) Move fast or get passed (3) e-commerce (4) Changing the rules
This course is one part of a four course series focusing on protection of business innovations using copyright, patent, trademark and strategy, and these four courses may be taken in any order that is most beneficial to students interested in learning about protecting innovation.
Other courses in the Protecting Business Innovations series:
1. Copyright: https://www.coursera.org/learn/protect-business-innovations-copyright
2. Trademark: https://www.coursera.org/learn/protect-business-innovations-trademark
3. Patent: https://www.coursera.org/learn/protect-business-innovations-patent 4. Strategy: https://www.coursera.org/learn/protect-business-innovations-strategy
Syllabus
- Resource based Strategy
- How could we use a variety of resources within a business to create a virtual fortress to prevent other firms from copying our innovations. Using a combination of case examples and lectures, we will examine the role of economies of scale, network externalities, access to customers, access to raw materials or other resources and unique knowledge to create competitive barriers.
- Move Fast or Get Passed
- Small firms that lack resources of giants can create barriers by being faster and more flexible. Some large firms (i.e. Google & Amazon) also seek to use rapid innovation and change to create sustainable barriers to being copied.
- E-Commerce Strategy
- Strategy for online global business is different from that of traditional businesses. The combination of overlapping and conflicting regulations and laws and inability to enforce laws against small companies (e.g. mice) makes the world of e-commerce especially challenging for large global enterprises (e.g. elephants). Assumptions about contracts and commitments may also be invalid in some global e-commerce contexts.
- Changing the rules
- An important opportunity for companies to maximize shareholder value and gain competitive advantage is creative pricing. By thinking differently about price vs cost/value, some firms have been able to dramatically increase revenues and profitability for products with strong market acceptance. Changing the rules can also apply to strategic acquisitions or industry restructuring through innovation to create competitive advantage and barriers to copying innovations.