Competition & Development

Competitive Advantage and Strategic Management: A 5-Episode Academic Video Series

For businesses, gaining competitive advantage is no longer possible through a single cost advantage alone, but only through the systematic use of the right strategic management tools. This course shows how businesses can strengthen their sustainability and competitive advantage, covering the core concepts — core competence, outsourcing, benchmarking, strategic partnerships, the green economy and digital transformation — in a 5-episode academic video series. The content has been prepared drawing on well-established academic sources in the field.

Why Does Competitive Advantage Matter?

In today's business world, competitive advantage, an indispensable goal for businesses to survive and grow, lies at the heart of strategy. The core approaches in the strategic management literature (see Harvard Business Review – Strategy) show that sustainable competitive advantage, in particular, arises from inimitable knowledge and skills — that is, from core competence. This course makes this theoretical framework easy to understand by supporting it with concrete, everyday examples.

Course Structure From a Strategic Management Perspective

Within the strategic management discipline, the course brings together five complementary core topics under a single curriculum:

• Lesson 1: Introduction to strategic management and competitive advantage as a concept
• Lesson 2: Creating sustainable advantage through core competence
• Lesson 3: Outsourcing and its balances within strategic management decisions
• Lesson 4: The contribution of benchmarking and strategic partnerships to competitive advantage.
• Lesson 5: The impact of the green economy and digital transformation on strategic management practice

The first episode of the series starts from the definition of businesses and lays the foundations of sustainability and strategic management concepts. Core competence, covered in the second episode, shows how inimitable knowledge and skills turn, through organizational learning, into a lasting competitive advantage. The third episode examines how outsourcing strikes a balance between cost, flexibility and reliability. In the fourth episode, benchmarking and strategic partnerships are discussed in the context of continuous learning and global competitiveness. The final episode discusses how the green economy and digital transformation are reshaping strategic management practices, and how competitive advantage, for the businesses of the future, will take new forms.

Each lesson can be watched directly on YouTube; it is open to global audiences with AI-assisted automatic English voice translation. All 5 episodes are currently published and fully accessible to enrolled students. You can access the full series via our playlist or on our YouTube channel whenever you like.

What You Will Learn

By the end of this course:

• Strategic management and competitive advantage — you will grasp the theoretical foundations of these concepts
• You will understand how core competence turns into sustainable advantage
• You will be able to assess outsourcing decisions by balancing cost, flexibility, and reliability
• The contribution of benchmarking and strategic partnerships to competitive advantage — you will understand this contribution
• The impact of the green economy and digital transformation on strategic management practices — you will see how they are being reshaped

Who It's For

This course is designed for undergraduate and graduate students, doctoral candidates, strategic management professionals pursuing an academic career in this field, and managers seeking to build competitive advantage in their businesses. The systematic, video-focused narration reinforces theoretical knowledge with everyday examples; it is presented in a format suited to learning by listening, without taking notes.

For a broader business management curriculum, you can also explore our Business Management: A 30-Episode Academic Series course.

Competitive advantage and strategic management — if you are looking for an academic, systematic and applicable learning experience in these fields, this 5-episode series is exactly for you.

AI-assisted tools were used in the content production of this course.

The Value of Specializing in This Field

Competitive advantage is the goal; yet for businesses seeking it, theoretical knowledge alone is not enough — that knowledge must be put into practice with the right strategic management tools. This course does not leave the concept covered in each episode as an abstract theory; by relating it to concrete, everyday examples, it aims to give students a perspective they can apply in their own work environment.

Concepts such as core competence, outsourcing, benchmarking and strategic partnerships are not independent of one another; they are all mutually reinforcing parts within the strategic management framework. This holistic approach lets the student see not just a single tool, but the entire strategic toolkit needed to build competitive advantage and sustain it.

Thanks to its short, video-focused format, this course also offers an accessible learning experience for professionals with busy work schedules: each episode takes an average of 5–6 minutes and can be followed by listening, even while traveling or during breaks.