Analytics and AI for Strategic Management

Introduction

Increasing accessibility of digital technology, data, machine learning (ML), and Generative AI changes the content and process of business strategy. While classical big picture analysis skills remain relevant, more and more executives now need to understand data availability, analyzability, and advanced data analytics to articulate and evaluate strategies. While data science and analytics professionals typically come from either computer science or statistics, and have years of technical training, strategic decision-makers are typically trained and experienced in business management. As strategy-making grows increasingly dependent on analytics, organizational capacity to bridge the distance between decision-makers and data scientists/technologists becomes a distinct source of value creation.

Analytics and AI for Strategic Management aims to create professionals who can bridge this gap as sophisticated analytics consumers who understand the requirements and process of data analysis. We particularly encourage employers that are expanding data-driven capabilities to use this course as a universally accessible introduction to data-driven strategy for existing employees.

Through lectures, in-class hands-on exercises, workshops, and real-world cases, the course introduces data science, machine learning, AI, and analytics for public, private, and non-profit strategic management applications.

We will introduce the concepts, intuition, and technical execution underlying data science, all of which we contextualize in strategy applications. As we proceed through the technical material, we will introduce examples of strategic problems through which data science and AI offered otherwise elusive insight. During the course, in preparation for the term paper, students will use their expanding skillsets to specify real strategic management projects that could be passed to an internal IT team for execution.

Data science's origins in statistics and computer science mean that the lingua franca can be technically complicated and often another world for many professionals. We recognize this, and intend the program to be a self-contained introduction to the field; there are no math or programming prerequisites. Students will grapple with technical issues, and we know this. Students can expect us to be responsive when they need help.

Course content

Analytics and AI for Strategic Management consists of five 3-4 day modules, with webinars between some modules. For each module, there will be core readings, interactive workshops and cases for discussion, aiming to help the students develop their term paper projects. The modules build on each other, where the final deliverable in each module is the starting point for the subsequent module.

In groups, the students will pick a potential ML/AI project addressing an existing strategic question. Following each module, the students will expand this project, further specifying the data, concepts, and techniques they expect may yield actionable information. For the final project, each group will summarize their project as a specification that a data science team could implement. Each group will present their project to the class.

Module 1: Competitive Advantage through Data
Module Outcome: Awareness of strategic questions potentially answerable with data
To contextualize the strategic possibilities enabled through analytics, this module begins with an overview of contemporary strategy perspectives. Organizations' information systems increasingly allow application of data science to business problems. This module explores - through real examples and exercises - how data collection has changed in the past few years and how this has the potential to affect business strategy and decision-making. We explore cases where data science has upset traditional understandings, introduced new insights, and changed landscapes.

The end of the module includes a "getting started" workshop in which the students pick a term analysis project, present the strategic challenge to their fellow students, and form groups based on the presentations. Between this module and the next, students will develop an initial formulation of their group project.

Module 2: Analytics Concepts and Processes for Strategic Management
Module Outcome: Understand the analytics process, with an emphasis on data collection and preparation
Focusing on data acquisition and management, this module introduces analytics as a scientific process involving problem specification, modeling, data collection, analysis, and summary. This prepares students for the subsequent, modeling-focused modules. We will use the examples in strategic management from module 1 and students' term project proposals to illustrate the stages of this process.

At the end of the module, each group should develop an outline for each of the stages of the analytics project they envision will answer their overarching strategic question. The last half day will consist of a workshop in which each group presents their data collection method and the expected outcome.

Modules 3-4: Implementing Analytics for Strategic Management
Module Outcome: Using algorithms for analytics projects in strategic management
Module 3 is the first of two modules emphasizing technology for algorithm-based modeling. These modules use the Python programming language to illustrate the modeling process. For many students, this may be the first time they have done any programming, and perhaps the first time in years they have looked at equations. Thats OK! The course uses collaborative exercises and teamwork to ensure student success.

These modules also introduce automated machine learning in both Python and the cloud-based DataRobot package.

By the end of Modules 3 and 4, students will know enough about foundational analytics algorithms and implementations to conceptualize their strategic objectives as data science problems and clearly communicate those problems to data science professionals. Each group will specify the analyses they expect to conduct and the data required to inform their strategic question. The last day in each module will include a mini workshop in which each group will present the current status of their project.

Module 5: Workshop on Implementing Analytics for Strategic Management
Module Outcome: Use Modules 2-4 to implement term projects
This module integrates Modules 2, 3, and 4 as a workshop in which students apply analytics process and procedures to their term projects. Students will iteratively present in class and work in teams, together with faculty, to refine their strategic management projects.

Webinars, between modules:
Webinars will occur between modules, mostly to present specific topics or to help students prepare for assignments.