The course starts with a critical reflection on the strategy and the marketing management literature. We elaborate on questions such as: Do any of the well-known approaches and practices for conceptualising and communicating a firm’s overall marketing strategy, brand strategy, product strategy etc. require a modification? The inspiration and theoretical foundation for this course originates from recent publications in the field of strategy and strategic management. In this literature, constructs and issues such as the learning organization, knowledge creation, chaos theory, story telling, organisational identity etc. have long been discussed in relation to the strategy and leadership construct. The same constructs have lately begun to appear in some marketing publications due to the need of marketing researchers to ‘delve into the organization’s black box’ and to take on a strategic leadership perpective. The latter for the sake of developing an understanding the role of marketing for firm’s innovation, and implicitly marketing’s impact on business performance. The inspiration and basis for the course comes from references such as these, but above all from writers who would not call themselves marketing researchers (see: indicative literature), but who have recognized that:

- We find ourselves in ‘an innovation-driven knowledge-networked’ era that requires new (extended) strategic management approaches.
- We require a shift beyond mechanistic analytical approaches to strategy-making and implementation.

The objective of the semester project is to produce the basis for answering the following question: what is the meaning of strategic market management when the vision is ‘market creation’ through innovation? The starting point in answering this question is a framework for strategic market management that has been worked out from literature studies. The task is to explore the relevance and premises of implementing this framework in practice. A prerequisite for the task is a case, a company, in that it is demanded that the group undertake interviews with managers involved with strategic marketing issues and processes, and that the group acquire enough insight into the decision context of the interviewed managers. That is, an insight about the strategic context of the case (industry and market analysis, among other things) is asked for.
 

• Strategic Management in the Innovation Economy, 2006, Thomas H Davenport, Marius Leibold and Sven Voelpel, Wiley
• Strategic Management: Logic and Action(2009), Huff, Floyd, Sherman & Terjesen Wiley
• Brand Management: research, theory and practice, 2009, Tilde Heding, Charlotte Knudtzen and Mogens Bjerre, Routledge
• Rethinking Marketing: The Entrepreneurial Imperative,(2009), Minet Schindehutte, Michael H Morris, and Leyland F. Pitt., Prentice Hall.

• Bonn, Ingrid and Josie Fisher, (2011) Sustainability: the missing ingredient in strategy, Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 32 (1).
• Burt, Steve and Keri Davies (2010), From the retail brand to the retail-er as a brand: themes and issues in retail branding research, International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 38 (11/12).
• Kim Chan W and Renée Mauborgne (2009), How Strategy Shapes Structure, Harvard Business Review, September.
• Leavy, Brian (2010) Design thinking – a new mental model of value innovation, Strategy and Leadership, Vol. 38 (3).
• Norman, Sheehan, Tand Nicolai J. Foss (2009), Exploring the roots of Porter's activity-based view, Journal of Strategy and Management, Vol. 2 (3).
• Ohnemus, Lars (2009), Is branding creating shareholder wealth for banks? International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 27 (3).
• Prange, Christiane, and Schlegelmilch Bodo B (2009), The Role of Ambidexterity in Marketing Strategy Implementation: Resolving the Exploration-Exploitation Dilemma, Business Research, vol 2(2), pp. 215-240.
• Vargo, Stephen L and Robert F Lusch (2007), Service Dominant Logic: continuing the evolution, Academy of Marketing Science, August.