Strategic Thinking and Business Planning

This course builds practical strategic thinking skills, from analyzing a competitive environment to writing a business plan that actually guides execution rather than sitting unused in a drawer. You will learn established frameworks — including PESTEL, Porter's Five Forces, SWOT, and VRIO — for understanding both the external environment and internal capabilities, and use them to formulate a clear competitive position. You will also learn to set measurable strategic goals, think through scenarios and options under uncertainty, and translate strategy into a structured business plan with basic financial grounding. By the end, you will be able to build and communicate a coherent strategy that connects market analysis to a concrete, executable plan.