Applied Market & Business Strategy (the “Strategy & Management Game”) - NIT Northern Institute of Technology / TUHH, Hamburg · part of my Technology Management MBA · study notes for revision.
This was an intensive, hands-on strategy seminar run as a management game: instead of just learning frameworks, my team of six played the role of a strategy consulting team hired by a struggling company, worked the whole case end to end, and pitched our recommendations to the “CEO”. It brings together two halves of the manager’s job that are usually taught apart:
These are study notes for revision: every framework explained plainly, the jargon defined the first time it appears, and worked mini-examples so the tools are actually usable, not just nameable.
1 · Strategy & Strategic Analysis
What “strategy” really means (the one-sentence strategy statement), the schools of strategic thought, and the core analysis toolkit: 5 Cs, Porter’s Five Forces, SWOT, the resource-based view (VRIO), and the Business Model Canvas.
2 · Segmentation, Targeting & Positioning
How to slice a market into segments, understand what customers are really “hiring” a product to do (Jobs-to-be-Done + the Value Proposition Canvas), choose which segments to serve, and write a sharp positioning statement.
3 · Market Selection & Going International
The Ansoff growth matrix, a repeatable market-screening-and-scoring method for choosing which countries to enter, and how national culture (Hofstede, Erin Meyer’s culture map) shapes the decision.
4 · Routes to Market
Getting the product to the customer: distribution channels and foreign-market entry modes, a step-by-step method for designing and evaluating a channel, and how to spot and manage channel conflict.
5 · Strategic Pricing & Performance
Setting price between the cost floor and the value ceiling: the demand curve and elasticity, the price-quality strategy matrix, value-in-use and freemium, channel margins, and the profit and ratio maths to check it all works.
6 · Pitching & Structured Communication
How to pitch an idea in 15 minutes: building a storyline (Situation-Complication-Resolution, Pain-Idea-Next-steps), Minto’s Pyramid Principle for structured thinking, and the presentation do’s and don’ts.
7 · Project Management - Foundations & Initiation
What a project is, whether an idea is even “project-worthy”, the project life cycle and constraints, the delivery approaches (waterfall to agile), and how to write a project charter with a full scope analysis.
8 · Project Planning, Organization & Control
Turning the charter into a plan: work breakdown structure, scheduling (milestones, Gantt, critical path, PERT), resource and budget plans, project organisation and roles (RACI), stakeholder management, and risk management.
9 · Agile Project Management
Why classic planning struggles with change, the Agile Manifesto, Scrum end to end (roles, artefacts, events), user stories and epics, story points and planning poker, the burndown chart, and hybrid agile-plus-classic setups.
These are the deliverables my team (Group 4) actually produced and handed in for the seminar - shared here as-is, as a worked example of the frameworks in these notes applied end-to-end to the CERMEDES case.
Final strategy report - 'Project RE:CHARGE'
Our graded management report: the full strategic recommendation for CERMEDES, framed around a modernised portfolio, value-based pricing, new distribution channels, and a repositioned brand, with a phased roadmap.
Foreign-markets analysis (our group topic)
Our deep-dive deck on routes to foreign markets and market selection for CERMEDES - the group topic I worked on.
Compiled in-class case exercises
Our collected answers to the in-class CERMEDES exercises across the seminar - strategic analysis, STP, routes to market, and pricing.