Course from Coursera "Competitive Strategy"

About the Course

This course is about the behavior of companies in competitive markets. Facing competition forces firms to look ahead and anticipate developments: If my rivals are likely to react to a price cut, I will have to take the expected reaction into account. We focus on such instances of “strategic interdependencies” in real business situations.

We will first study the basic concepts of game theory as a toolbox with which we will then analyze strategic “games” in real-life settings. Rather than a set of checklists of “how-to-behave” in a number of prespecified situations, this course will teach you to think about business strategy in a systematic and exciting - and ultimately more successful - way!

We will use our toolbox to address and analyze different decisions firms take: How do price wars happen and when do they end? When should I enter a market in which firms currently make high profits? What makes strategic partnerships work? These are just some examples of the questions we will discuss during the course. By the end of the course, you should be able to apply the concepts to pretty much any business