DB-FPX8710 covers strategy and innovation theory comprehensively — from theoretical foundations through crafting a strategy to actually executing it — establishing the specialization track's shared foundation.
Theoretical foundations of strategy and innovation
DB-FPX8710 covers major strategic management theories (resource-based view, dynamic capabilities) and innovation theory (disruptive innovation, ambidexterity) at doctoral depth, critically evaluating each theory's evidence base and boundary conditions.
From crafting strategy to genuine execution
The course emphasizes the full arc from strategic analysis through strategy formulation to actual execution, examining why the execution gap — well-formulated strategies that fail in implementation — remains one of the most persistent, well-documented problems in strategic management.
Key topics in DB-FPX8710
- Resource-based view and dynamic capabilities theory
- Disruptive innovation and organizational ambidexterity theory
- Critically evaluating strategic theory evidence and boundary conditions
- The strategy execution gap: why formulated strategies fail in implementation
- Connecting strategy formulation to execution mechanisms
- Identifying a strategy/innovation dissertation research direction
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Worked example: applying dynamic capabilities theory to a disrupted industry
- Resource-based view alone: Explains competitive advantage through valuable, rare, hard-to-imitate resources at a point in time
- Limitation: Doesn't fully explain how firms adapt when their previously advantageous resources become obsolete due to disruption
- Dynamic capabilities extension: Explains competitive advantage through a firm's capacity to sense change, seize new opportunities, and reconfigure resources over time
- Lesson: Dynamic capabilities theory addresses exactly the boundary condition where the resource-based view alone falls short — understanding both, and their relationship, is doctoral-level strategic theory competency
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Frequently asked questions
The resource-based view explains sustained competitive advantage as stemming from possessing resources that are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and non-substitutable, but this framework works best in relatively stable environments where those advantageous resources retain their value over time — it doesn't fully explain how firms should adapt when environmental disruption makes previously valuable resources less relevant or obsolete. DB-FPX8710 teaches dynamic capabilities theory as a necessary extension because it specifically addresses this limitation, focusing on a firm's capacity to sense environmental change, seize emerging opportunities, and reconfigure its resource base accordingly — rather than replacing the resource-based view, dynamic capabilities theory explains how firms successfully update and adapt their resource base over time in changing environments, complementing rather than contradicting the original framework's core insight about resource-based advantage.
Formulating a sound strategy is largely an analytical exercise that a skilled team can accomplish through careful research and frameworks like SWOT and Porter's Five Forces, but implementing that strategy requires changing how an entire organization actually behaves — aligning incentives, resources, culture, and countless daily decisions across the organization with the new strategic direction, which is a far more complex, human-dependent, and harder-to-control process. DB-FPX8710 examines this persistent gap because despite extensive research and consulting attention over decades, organizations continue to struggle translating well-formulated strategies into actual results — understanding why this gap persists (misaligned incentives, inadequate change management, insufficient resource commitment, and organizational culture resistance are all contributing factors research has identified) is itself a rich area for doctoral-level strategic management research, since no single, universally effective solution to the execution gap has yet emerged from the research base.