Strategic Management

Conduct a Competitive Industry Analysis

Required foundation. Choose a real company in a real industry. Apply Porter's Five Forces and VRIO to actual market data. A practitioner with relevant industry experience must review your analysis and confirm it reflects real competitive dynamics — not textbook examples. This is the base all subsequent steps build on.

Evaluate Strategic Options for a Real Organisation

Required — builds directly on the competitive analysis at seq 10. Propose ≥3 genuinely distinct strategic options for the same company. Document the trade-offs. A practitioner reviews your options memo and challenges your reasoning — revision notes showing real pushback absorbed are part of the proof.

Build a Stakeholder Map and Influence Plan

Elective. Map the stakeholders who shape whether your recommended strategy gets implemented. Name ≥5 groups, their interests, and your influence plan. A practitioner who knows the organisation or sector validates that your mapping reflects real power dynamics.

Deliver a Strategy Presentation with Expert Q&A

Elective. Present your strategic recommendation to ≥3 practitioners in a recorded session. Document the Q&A: what objections were raised, how you answered. The recording and Q&A log together are the proof — a scripted rehearsal does not satisfy this standard.

Build a Strategy Implementation Roadmap

Elective. Take your recommended strategy into execution planning: a 12-month roadmap with milestones, owners, budget assumptions, and a risk register tied to real organisational constraints. A practitioner reviews the plan and confirms it is executable rather than aspirational.

The original source on the framework. Read the HBS article rather than a summary — it explains what each force actually measures and when the model breaks down.

VRIO identifies which resources actually give a company a sustained competitive advantage. Use alongside Five Forces for a complete analysis.

Free strategic thinking articles from practitioners. Good source of real-world strategic decisions to study — and calibrate your own analysis quality against.