Fighting Abstraction in Strategy Courses: Using a Personal Career Lens and LinkedIn for More Relevant Learning

Strategy texts tend to focus on large multinational corporations (MNCs) to teach strategy. This inhibits both student learning and professors’ practical approach to the concept. Students find strategy in part because its concepts are broad, cross-functional, and interdependent and because very few students have prior experience working as top decisions-makers, in multi-national corporations. This session describes semester-long project that avoids these impediments by drawing upon existing student experience in personally relevant contexts. The project further engages students by using LinkedIn as a tool for individual and professional research. This session describes the approach and reports on student responses.