Ramon Casadesus-Masanell

• JEMS website: http://editjems.org/
• JEMS on twitter:  @jemsjournal 
• JEMS on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jemsjournal

• This page contains detailed information on Strategic Brew. It includes a number of videos that illustrate the use of the simulation.
• You may download the user manual by clicking here. 
• A detailed technical manual is also available upon request. If you are an instructor considering the use of Strategic Brew, you may request a courtesy copy (casadesus@gmail.com).

1. Should record companies decrease their prices in their competition against peer-to-peer file sharing networks?
2. Does the disruptive nature of open source software imply that it will win its battle against proprietary software? 
3. Should established software firms confronting open source startups increase or decrease their level of openness?
4. Should Apple change its stance and include advertisements in iTunes to respond to ad-sponsored startups such as Grooveshark or Spotify? 

The  words  “business  model”  are  inescapable  in  our  daily  fare of  business  news.  These  two ubiquitous words seemed to effortlessly rise up to prominence during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. When businesspeople, journalists, academics, and other observers could not easily relate to “new economy” businesses given the difficulty of pointing to specific assets and tangible products, they  needed  something  to  latch  on  to.  That  something  became  “the  business  model.”  When companies produced valuations with frenzied multiples, people justified the future profit potential through “the business model.” Later, when that potential was wiped away, savants confidently proclaimed, “The business model was simply not viable.”

The popularity of describing success and failure through business models has stayed with us. Today, when companies fail, journalists write that the business model was flawed. Contrarily, if a company continues to beat quarterly forecasts, analysts jubilantly write about the advantage realized through the company’s business model.

But, strangely, for all of this talk about “business models,” it’s hard to find a common operating definition. To some, business models are ephemeral flights of fancy created by a backroom business engineer, and to others business models are static foundations etched in stone. Many assume that just mentioning the business model of a particular company will engender in everyone a common understanding of how that business model works.

In this course, we aim to give an operational definition of “business model” and provide a set of tools  to  determine  the  business  model  for  any  organization.  We  relate  business  models  to  the “engine” of an organization (i.e., how it works). By studying how it works, we’re able to apply the same technique to both for-profit and not-for-profit firms. The cases take us around the world to industries as diverse as computer software and hardware, cellular telephony, commercial aircraft, airlines, apparel, aluminum, pulp and paper, retail stores, consumer packaged goods, environmental NGOs, cults, and even art auction houses.

This course is for students who want to                                                 

• be able to quickly determine the business model of any organization;

• ascertain how a particular business model helps the organization create and capture value over time;

• understand how business models of different organizations interact; and

• learn how to improve a business model.

The objective of this course is to help students develop the skills for formulating strategy. It provides an understanding of:

• A firm's operative environment and how to sustain competitive advantage.
• How to generate superior value for customers by designing the optimum configuration of the product mix and functional activities.
• How to balance the opportunities and risks associated with dynamic and uncertain changes in industry attractiveness and competitive position.

Students learn to:

• Develop a mastery of a body of analytical tools and the ability to take an integrative point of view.
• Use these tools to perform in-depth analyses of industries and competitors, predict competitive behavior, and analyze how firms develop and sustain competitive advantage over time.
• Particular attention is paid to competitive positioning; understanding comparative costs; and addressing issues such as cannibalization, network externalities, and globalization.