HCA  LEADERSHIP PROGRAM 2012

Designing & Executing Strategy
                             - winning in today's tough times

Sunday 29 July to Friday 3 August, 2012 Manly NSWY
Presented by:
Professors Stephen Bradley and Bruce Harreld, Harvard Business School

Program Overview

As companies in Australia look to grow, they are increasingly competing with established global players. At the same time, many global firms are expanding operations in Asia. In each scenario, the core components of strong business strategy are the same: you must understand the environment in which your company competes, develop your competitive advantage, and find ways to sustain this advantage as you expand into new markets and lines of business. Designing and Executing Strategy helps companies succeed by blending time-tested strategy design and crucial techniques for execution—and incorporating the unique characteristics of Asian operations.

Topics include:

Evaluating the external business environment

· Identifying the competitive forces that drive industry structure

· Forecasting industry evolution or inflection points

Knowing your competitors

· Recognizing your current and future competitors

· Analyzing your competitors’ goals, assumptions, capabilities, and strategies

· Predicting the behavior of your competitors

Positioning your company to compete

· Identifying your value proposition for customers

· Configuring your company's internal activities to deliver that value proposition

· Developing a clear competitive advantage to sustain your strategy

· Choosing the right strategic partners

Aligning business strategy and execution

· Ensuring that your organization can execute its strategy

· Recognizing and addressing misalignment

· Realistically measuring progress against your strategy

· Aligning your organization’s culture to accelerate execution

Ensuring a sustainable strategy

· Identifying threats to sustainable advantage

· Recognizing when strategy should, should not, and cannot be changed

What You Can Expect

Designing and Executing Strategy explores effective ways to align strategy and execution in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Through faculty presentations, group exercises, and case studies drawn from around the world, you will gain a deeper understanding of the strategic obstacles companies face when they attempt to expand market share within one country or grow to become international players. Learning from the experience of leaders in a wide range of companies, you will examine why some strategies succeed while others fail—and why strong strategic fundamentals are essential for helping your company succeed.

	Specifically, you will be better able to: · Develop a comprehensive understanding of your competition and the forces that shape your industry · Position your company to make the most of your competitive advantage, clearly defining the unique value you deliver to customers · Employ frameworks for aligning your organization to execute your strategy · Distinguish sustainable strategies from unsustainable approaches to secure long-term corporate advantage · Adapt your leadership and management approach as you shift from leading a local or regional company in a single business to directing a multinational or multi-business firm.
Stephen Bradley	About the Professors	Bruce Harreld

Professor Bradley is the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. He is currently the faculty chair of two executive programs, Designing and Executing Strategy – China and Aligning and Executing Strategy - India.  In the past, he taught Management and Strategy in the Owner President Management Program and Strategy in the Advanced Management Program. He has served as the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development, Chairman of the Program for Management Development, Chairman of the Competition and Strategy Area, Chairman of the Managerial Economics Area, Course Head for Managerial Economics, and Associate Director of Research.

Professor Bradley's research interests center on the impact of technology on industry structure and competitive strategy. He has coauthored seven books and numerous case studies and articles in academic journals. His most recent book, The Broadband Explosion: Leading Thinkers on the Promise of a Truly Interactive World, published by Harvard Business School Press, argues that cheap and abundant bandwidth has the potential for creating new capabilities, markets, and strategies that will forever alter the business landscape. An earlier book, Sense and Respond: Capturing the Value in the Network Era, Harvard Business School Press, dealt with the shift from “make and sell” strategies to “sense and respond” strategies driven by the explosion of information technology and the use of the Internet.  

In his outside activities, Professor Bradley has worked on a variety of strategy initiatives in both the private and public sectors.  He serves as a member of the board of directors of CIENA Corporation, Transatlantic Reinsurance Company, and the Risk Management Foundation, Inc. as well as on advisory boards of nonpublic companies. In the past, he was a member of the board of directors of i2 Technologies, Inc., Roadmaster Industries, Inc., and XcelleNet, Inc.

Professor Bradley received his BE in Electrical Engineering from Yale University where he was elected to TAU BETA PI, and his MS and PhD in Operations Research from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to coming to Harvard, he was with the Center for Exploratory Studies of the IBM Corporation.

Bruce Harreld retired from IBM in 2008 and joined Harvard Business School's faculty in early 2009.  He is a frequent speaker and writer on implementing strategy, corporate transformation, and building new businesses in established organizations.  He currently teaches two quite popular second year MBA courses focused on turnarounds and executing strategy.  He teaches in numerous executive programs and is the faculty chair of Building New Businesses within Established Organizations.

Joining IBM in October 1995, he worked to chart IBM’s transformation and to ensure that IBM’s early-90s "near-death experience" will never happen again.  From 1995 to his retirement in 2008 Mr. Harreld led IBM’s Strategy unit, which was responsible for the formulation and execution of the company’s overall strategy.  As part of this responsibility, Mr. Harreld directed IBM’s Emerging Business Opportunities (EBO) program, a unique management system producing more than 20 new businesses for IBM – including multi-billion-dollar businesses in Life Sciences, Linux, Pervasive Computing, and Digital Media.  The EBO program has become a model for growth inside IBM, and has attracted attention from leading academic institutions as well as companies seeking to build new businesses. From 2006 to 2008, Mr. Harreld also served as senior vice president for IBM Marketing.  In that capacity, he led IBM's marketing efforts which encompassed a wide range of growth activities designed to identify market opportunities, develop and communicate IBM’s value proposition, coordinate go-to-market activities, as well as protect and strengthen the IBM brand, which is one of the most valued brands in the world.

Prior to joining IBM, Mr. Harreld was president of Boston Chicken, Inc., and served on the faculty of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.  He also held CIO and several line management positions at Kraft General Foods, Inc., and began his career at The Boston Consulting Group where he served as an officer and director. Mr. Harreld holds an MBA degree from Harvard University and a BS in industrial engineering and operations research from Purdue University.

Updates 20 December 2011

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