Strategic Thinking and Decision Making: Nokia Case

I feel highly encouraged by feedback from students that the course has instilled critical analysis is their thinking. Some of the comments were:

"I have jotted 2 pages already. It is quite interesting. I did strategy in my MBA, so, it is sort of a refresher course for me."

"Well, this course was about one of those engaging topics of the modern era in the world of technology. The contents were amazingly presented and the instructor provided the detailed view on the strategy part regarding Nokia mainly and others too. Being a professional not in technology field though, this course certainly provided insights into strategy and I would really like to apply those techniques into my job and expect to come up with desired results. Hence, I highly recommend this course to my friends, colleagues and those personnels be it the job seekers or entrepreneurs".

I feel honoured to state that I have crossed 12,000 students combined in all courses I offered in UDEMY and have been able to keep the rating beyond 4.0. Based on my understanding of Nokia as an insider, outsider, and academician I shed light on the basic tenets of strategic management with an illustration from Nokia and telecommunication plus software industry. This not only enables students to have a holistic perspective of strategic management, but also an understanding of the ground reality that how difficult it is to forecast future and be right all the time. Managing under uncertainty becomes easier with the approach taken in the course. While doing a quick survey of courses in #Udemy, I found that either they are too academic or too practitioner oriented. To fill this gap, I have kept theoretical angle while using Nokia as a case to illustrate the strategic thinking and decision making.

You will be able to do strategic analysis in a systematic manner based on internal and external analysis. In internal analysis you will understand Porter's value chain analysis and in external analysis you will be able to apply Porter's five forces analysis. Also, we touch upon Blue Ocean Strategy.

Once the assessment is done, we move on generating options and alternatives and utilise Boston Consulting Group's matrix, GE matrix and Grand Strategy Matrices in making right decisions.

Once strategy is selected, building a culture and institutionalising the strategy becomes a key issue. We touch upon structure-conduct-performance approach.

Evaluation of strategy implemented based on a benchmark and building a feedback loop through control becomes a necessary part of the process.

You will develop critical thinking problem solving skills with internal and external environmental assessment, SWOT analysis, and other tools.

You will understand framework on how to decide under uncertainty. You will develop a comprehensive understanding of how to do strategic planning, implementation, evaluation, and control.

You will understand how strategy consultants work and if you aspire to be the same at some point in your career, you may be able to plan that career as well.

After listening to early student customers from Indian subcontinent, I have added a fresh new case of Reliance Jio. This case summarises and gives a glimpse of the whole course as applied by Reliance Jio.