Teaching Strategy through Projects: A Bridge from Academia to Strategy Practice

In line with Schmidt-Wilk’s (2007) call for promoting the scholarship of teaching and learning, this paper outlines the design, implementation and evaluation of an innovative teaching approach emphasizing the practice of strategy through strategy projects. Learning-by-doing is accomplished in this course by employing directed learning by and across teams. Learning outcomes for this applied course are presented from the perspectives of the students, instructor, and an outside observer who is expert in the subject matter. Problems faced during the implementation of this teaching method are also discussed. We find that work in strategy projects provides the students a richer learning experience in applying strategy concepts than learning strategy theories. Our MECEy taxonomy Mutually Exclusive and Comprehensively Exhaustive provides holistic view of strategy projects. To facilitate wider acceptance of this course in the MBA curriculum, it is suggested that AACSB should consider making “Applied Strategy” a requirement, just as it did in the past for the capstone “Strategy” course.