The course is centered on the theme that a company achieves sustained success if and only if its managers effectively formulate and implement an astute strategy. Students learn how and why doing a good job of strategy formulation, and strategy implementation produces good business performance.

Using the tools available to them throughout their MBA program, groups will work with a live company and generate a final presentation and report for them at the end of the semester. A major purpose of this assignment is to provide an opportunity for graduate-level students to use their critical thinking, presentation and writing skills to adequately and accurately analyze macro factors affecting an industry, micro factors impacting the firm, and successfully communicate the issues, goals, strategies, and tactics in writing.

Each group will be assigned a company project to work with throughout the semester. Companies face idiosyncratic issues, and they will need the groups knowledge and support to address those issues and create strategies and recommendations to solve them. The group will begin working with their client starting in the first few weeks of class. Because your team will be communicating directly with the organization throughout the semester, the team leader should serve as the liaison with the company.

Deliverables are:

1. The first deliverable is a completed contract. The students will submit this contract to the professor and client to get approval for their plan of action. They will create a draft of a contract outlining their course of action, why they chose to proceed in such a way, and their plans for completing the assignment. Questions to answer:

• 1. Describe the company you will be working with and with whom you will be communicating.
• 2. Describe your team’s makeup: Who will be the leader? What roles do the other members of the team have?
• 3. Describe the specifics of the project that the company is asking you to complete. This should not be a “cut-and-paste” of the project description. Instead, write what your team understands from talking to the client (this should be as detailed as possible).
• 4. What is the ultimate goal that the company would like to accomplish through this project? (e.g., Increase sales, have a business plan, build a new product or service, etc.)
• 5. Spell out how your team will help them accomplish the goal.
• 6. List the obstacles your team will have to overcome in order to achieve this goal.
• 7. Identify what you need to do in order to reach the goal.
• 8. Develop a plan of action to achieve this goal. In essence, what are the steps that you will take throughout the semester to incrementally work on the project?
• 9. Put a date on it, in terms of when you expect to accomplish each of the steps listed above.

2. The second deliverable is a 4,000-word minimum, in-progress report with at least 15 references. There are two parts to this submission:

• 1. First, the mid-term report must be submitted on Blackboard before class on the due date.
• 2. Second, the mid-term report must be submitted to the company representative for approval.

This in-progress report should incorporate the research gathered up to this point. The grade depends upon the thoroughness of the report, which includes: (1) the accurate incorporation of the concepts discussed in class as the apply to your firm, (2) detail of implementation of these concepts toward discovering issues, creating strategies, and implementing tactics, (3) the number of references, (4) the degree to which you follow the APA style guide, and (5) the client’s satisfaction of the draft.

3. The final deliverable is the final 7,500-word minimum, single-spaced report with accompanying references, figures, and tables. For this deliverable, you will submit two copies of your report.

• 1. A digital copy of the report is due on Blackboard on the date listed in the course schedule.
• 2. A digital copy of the report is due to the company on the date listed in the course schedule.