The Teaching of Strategy

Courses in strategy are an outgrowth of the business policy course first taught at Harvard Business School in 1912. This article examines how the teaching of a course concerned with the development and implementation of the goals and policies of a firm changed during three periods in the postwar period: first, with the introduction of the concept of corporate strategy; second, with the evolution of faculty interest in a concept of competitive strategy more closely grounded in industrial organization economics; and third, with the development of a new course in entrepreneurial management more closely linked to business policy's concerns with the general management challenges facing the leaders of modern firms. This history of the course is linked to changes in information technology, financial markets, and the managements of firms as well as related changes in the markets for students and faculty.