Classroom Audience and Use

Classroom Audience

“Build, Borrow, or Buy” targets learners across undergraduate, MBA, Masters, and Executive Education programs. The book is particularly valuable for students interested in modes of company growth, resource sourcing and redeployment, knowledge sourcing, innovation, and organic and inorganic growth.

Course Use

“Build, Borrow, or Buy” or its individual chapters can be taught in the following courses:

• Strategy Core Course. The book helps identify when to build and when to go outside, while avoiding the trap of over-relying on a firm’s core competences (ch. 1 and ch. 2). In this context, the book provides a nuanced way to teach about core competence and firm capabilities and how to redeploy them.
• Corporate Strategy Course. The book helps you to know when to use the different modes of growth including organic growth and corporate entrepreneurship (ch. 2), licensing (ch. 3), alliances (ch. 4) and M&A (ch. 5) or divesting (ch. 6), while avoiding the trap of jumping straight to the implementation of each mode. In this context, the book provides a structured way of teaching the relative strengths and weaknesses of the major modes of growth.
• Corporate Development or Business Reconfiguration course. The book considers the full portfolio of growth modes, i.e., to select and balance the different modes of growth, while avoiding the trap of over-relying on one mode of growth. In this context, the book provides a systematic way to review each mode of growth and how they can be combined together to form a balanced resource portfolio.