• Address the role of the participant in strategy, innovation and change;
• Develop a personal action plan that draws on foundational skills and cross-functional knowledge to create a strategy statement;
• Gain an understanding of organisation culture and sub-cultures;
• Develop self-awareness and critical assessment of key strengths and development needs as strategic leaders.

• Review ways in which global economic shifts and rapid technological changes are transforming the business landscape;
• Understand the traditional concepts of competitive advantage, value creation and strategy;
• Develop an appreciation of the “megatrends” influencing the context for strategy over the next 5-10 years;
• Develop an ability to construct and employ scenario thinking in the development of strategy;
• Gain an informed perspective on the importance and costs of building strategic flexibility in the organisation.

• Equip participants with a sound understanding of the principles of positioning and competitive advantage;
• Design and evaluate an organisation’s market position;
• Review and critique an organisation’s competitive strategy and evaluate the ability to provide a sustainable advantage;
• Develop competitive strategy into a well-articulated and presented business plan.

• Examine the nature of strategic decisions and how these differentiate from other forms of decisions;
• Design and evaluate a business model;
• Utilise real options reasoning in evaluating investment alternatives which is key component in decisions involving the adoption of new technologies, amongst other applications.

• Develop insight and personal competence in leading an organisation through a transition to a more innovative organisation;
• Explore why innovation is so critical in an organisation’s future and how to make it happen;
• Understand change management processes and approaches to enable innovation in an evolving marketplace;
• Strengthen leadership effectiveness and identify the barriers to and enablers of innovation in an organisation.

• Explore the skills required to evaluate the top management team’s ability and competence in making and implementing strategic decisions;
• Acquire individual contributions to top management team decisions;
• Gain insight into biases that adversely affect strategic decisions and apply techniques to overcome these biases.

Patrick is Jefferson Smurfit Professor of Strategic Management at UCD School of Business and Academic Director, Smurfit Executive Development. Before entering academia, Patrick worked in a number of financial analysis, corporate strategy and senior HR roles with KPMG, Jefferson Smurfit Group, The Investment Bank of Ireland and An Post. His research, teaching and consulting interests include strategy development and execution, managing change, organisation development, organisational change and leadership development, with clients in the US, Asia and Europe including DuPont, BOC Gases, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd and Keppel Group (Singapore). Prof. Gibbons has presented papers at numerous research conferences and is widely published in leading journals. He also held the position of UCD Vice-President of Staff and Administrative Systems.

Karan is Associate Academic Director at Smurfit Executive Development and earned his PhD at University of Alberta, Canada in 2008. Before entering academia, he served as a Captain in the Indian Military. Karan has previously worked in India, Canada, and Spain and served on the faculty of the Instituto de Empresa Business School, Spain. His research, teaching and consulting interests are in the areas of leadership, stakeholder theory, behavioural strategy, institutional theory, and emerging markets. Karan has worked with a number of the Ireland’s leading organisations including CIE, Enterprise Ireland, Bord Bia and An Garda Siochana.

Dr Andrew Keating is an Associate Professor in marketing at the UCD Smurfit School of Business. Andrew earned his PhD in 2008 from UCD and also holds an MBS in Marketing, a DBS in Business, and a BA. His research interests at present are in the areas of the intersection between entrepreneurship (venture creation and development) and marketing, the internationalisation of new ventures, as well as exploring consumers and austerity. His research has appeared in leading academic journals such as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (FT 50 Journal), Industrial Marketing Management, Consumption Markets and Culture, and the Journal of Consumer Behaviour. He is the academic director for the UCD CEMS MSc in International Management and lectures in the area of consumer marketing and marketing and innovation. Andrew has also been involved in delivering executive education across many of the school’s executive education programmes including for the likes of Alltech, Enterprise Ireland, Google, InterTrade Ireland, and Bord Bia.

Dr. Marius Claudy is an Associate Professor of Marketing at UCD College of Business. His research is concerned with the adoption, diffusion and marketing of innovation, which he investigates in consumer as well as organizational contexts. His work has disseminated in international journals like the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Journal of Product Innovation Management, or the Journal of Business Ethics. His research has received several awards and prizes and attracted significant amounts of public funding. He is also passionate about teaching, for which he received the UCD College of Business Teaching and Learning Award for Teaching Excellence. As an educator, Marius strives to enable students and executives to understand and critically evaluate the underlying assumptions and motivations behind business decisions and strategies, and to assess the economic, social and ecological impacts of these decisions. Drawn towards the Socratic method, Marius encourages cooperative argumentative dialogue in the classroom to stimulate critical thinking and creative imagination. Before Marius pursued an academic career he worked as an Economist for the Department for Work and Pensions in London, during which he conducted strategic analyses in areas of social-welfare and labour market politics as well as climate change.

Dr. Dorota Piaskowska is associate professor in strategy and international business at University College Dublin, Ireland. She has earned her PhD from Tilburg University in the Netherlands and has also been a visiting scholar at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University. Dorota's research focuses on the antecedents and outcomes of strategic decisions concerning firm growth, in particular decisions regarding mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and alliances, internationalisation and scaling. She has a particular interest in the role of learning and experience at the organisational, top management team, and individual levels. Her work has been published in leading academic outlets and has been profiled in professional media. Dorota's teaching portfolio includes a range of undergraduate, graduate, and executive level modules in the areas of strategy and international business. She has taught in multiple locations, including Hong Kong, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Singapore. Dorota has also served as the Director of UCD Programmes in Singapore and the Academic Director of the MSc in International Management programme at UCD Smurfit School, which she led to achieve a top ranking among Masters in Management programmes in the Financial Times (number 7 in the world in 2018 based on the achievements of the cohorts of students under her directorship). Recipient of several grants and teaching and research awards, Dorota has also been recognised for her leadership contribution to the Academy of Management and has served two terms on the Board of the European International Business Academy. She is currently a member of editorial review boards of the Journal of World Business and Management International Review.

Dr. Ciaran Heavey joined the UCD School of Business in 2009 as a Lecturer in the Department of Management. He completed his PhD at the University of Connecticut School of Business. His research interests are on top management teams, strategic entrepreneurship, and organizational ambidexterity.

Professor Raomal Perera is a veteran of multiple entrepreneurial ventures and an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at INSEAD where he currently teaches and studies entrepreneurship, innovation and the management of rapidly growing companies.
Raomal has over 30 years of experience in the IT, Communications and related technology industries. He is a serial entrepreneur having co-founded two technology companies and is one of a handful of Irish entrepreneurs to have taken a company public on NASDAQ (ICOR).
Raomal co-founded ISOCOR and was the Senior Vice President of Engineering and listed as one of the two ‘key employees’ in the listing documents when it was floated on the NASDAQ in 1996. The company was subsequently acquired by Critical Path in 1999. He then founded Network365, a provider of merchandising, payments, settlement solutions and managed services. The company acquired US company iPIN in 2003 and rebranded to Valista. Valista which was a leader in developing mobile payment technology was acquired by Aepona in 2009 and Aepona was acquired by Intel in 2013.
Raomal's most recent venture is ThousandSeeds (www.thousandseeds.com), a meeting place to stimulate entrepreneurship, business growth and learning through programmes, workshops and online communities.

David is Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Richard Ivey School of Business, Western University, Ontario, Canada. David has served on the faculty of Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Dallas. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Bradley University, and MBA from University of Dallas, and a Ph.D. in Organisations, Strategy, and International Management from University of Texas at Dallas. David’s research is focused on firm structure and its effect on survival in turbulent industries and the internationalisation process of firms expanding into global markets.