Nowadays platforms are ubiquitous and range from social media to e-commerce, payment networks, and operating systems. The platforms operate as intermediaries (e.g. Booking.com, Amazon, iOS, Tinder) in business-to-business and business-to-consumer environments as well as among individuals. The drivers of platform markets’ success are complex, and they can be generally summarized into network effects, technology diffusion, and users’ switching costs. In addition, platform markets introduced new business models and novel pricing structures, which reshaped both the competition between firms and their relationship with consumers.

 The course addresses these fundamental and contemporary issues and organizes around five main questions:

• What are the characteristics that define a platform market?
• How do firms design or re-design their strategies to succeed in a platform market?
• How do platforms’ characteristics influence competition across industries and between newly born and established firms?
• How do users behave in this new environment?
• How do the regulators respond to changes introduced by platforms to preserve consumers’ interest and healthy competition?

Seminar Overview

This seminar is targeted at both Master of Science and Master of Business Research students with a broad interest in organization topics, especially with an empirical approach. The seminar will provide insights on scientific methods and the research process, focusing on applications in organization design and strategic organization research. After lecture sessions, students will work on a short proposal for a research project.

Seminar Goals

The seminar has three goals in the broad field of empirical organizations. First, students will learn to critically read academic papers, enabling them to assess causal empirical arguments. Second, they will learn how to develop research questions and how to make a contribution. Finally, they will get familiar with relevant research methods and will be able to develop a sound empirical research design to rigorously answer their research questions. We expect the seminar to be useful as a preparation for a master thesis or a PhD paper in the broad field of organization and its intersections with innovation or strategy research.

The course "Competition & Strategy" focuses on an applied analysis of competition. Important concepts from industrial organization, game theory, product life-cycle analysis, and industry evolution are discussed. Additionally, important characteristics of network industries such as network effects and standard-setting are considered. The concept of competition used in this course is interpreted broadly and also encompasses the analysis of strategic cooperation between firms.

Nowadays platforms are ubiquitous and range from social media to e-commerce, payment networks, and operating systems. The platforms operate as intermediaries (e.g. Booking.com, Amazon, iOS, Tinder) in business-to-business and business-to-consumer environments as well as among individuals. The drivers of platform markets’ success are complex, and they can be generally summarized into network effects, technology diffusion, and users’ switching costs. In addition, platform markets introduced new business models and novel pricing structures, which reshaped both the competition between firms and their relationship with consumers.

 The course addresses these fundamental and contemporary issues and organizes around five main questions:

• What are the characteristics that define a platform market?
• How do firms design or re-design their strategies to succeed in a platform market?
• How do platforms’ characteristics influence competition across industries and between newly born and established firms?
• How do users behave in this new environment?
• How do the regulators respond to changes introduced by platforms to preserve consumers’ interest and healthy competition?

The course "Competition & Strategy" focuses on an applied analysis of competition. Important concepts from industrial organization, game theory, product life-cycle analysis, and industry evolution are discussed. Additionally, important characteristics of network industries such as network effects and standard-setting are considered. The concept of competition used in this course is interpreted broadly and also encompasses the analysis of strategic cooperation between firms.

Seminar Overview

This seminar is targeted at both Master of Science and Master of Business Research students with a broad interest in organization topics, especially with an empirical approach. The seminar will provide insights on scientific methods and the process of research, focusing on applications in organization design and strategic organization research. After lecture sessions, students will work on a short proposal for a research project.

Seminar Goals

The seminar has three goals in the broad field of empirical organizations. First, students will learn to critically read academic papers, enabling them to assess causal empirical arguments. Second, they will learn how to develop research questions and how to make a contribution. Finally, they will get familiar with relevant research methods and will be able to develop a sound empirical research design to rigorously answer their research questions. We expect the seminar to be useful as a preparation for a master thesis or a PhD paper in the broad field of organization and its intersections with innovation or strategy research.

Application procedure

This seminar is limited to Master of Science and Master of Business Research students. The number of participants is limited to 10. To apply, please send a CV and a recent transcript to Tim Meyer, Ph.D. (tim.meyer@lmu.de) by 06.10.21. We will get back with a decision e-mail regarding your participation by 11.10.21.

Nowadays platforms are ubiquitous and range from social media to e-commerce, payment networks, and operating systems. The platforms operate as intermediaries (e.g. Booking.com, Amazon, iOS, Tinder) in business-to-business and business-to-consumer environments as well as among individuals. The drivers of platform markets’ success are complex, and they can be generally summarized into network effects, technology diffusion, and users’ switching costs. In addition, platforms markets introduced new business models and novel pricing structures, which reshaped both the competition between firms and their relationship with consumers.

The course addresses these fundamental and contemporary issues and organizes around five main questions:

• What are the characteristics that define a platform market?
• How do firms design or re-design their strategies to succeed in a platform market?
• How do platforms’ characteristics influence competition across industries and between newly born and established firms?
• How do users behave in this new environment?
• How do the regulators respond to changes introduced by platforms to preserve consumers’ interest and healthy competition?

The course is a compulsory prerequisite for a specialization in Innovation. It provides foundations for students who wish to specialize in the topics addressed by the Institutes* organizing this introductory master-level course. Successful participation in this class contributes 9 ECTS toward the fulfillment of the requirements of the M.Sc. curriculum. The course also serves as an introductory course to the IMPRS-CI curriculum.

Quantitative Data Analysis (Hauptseminar)

Course Overview

The lecture "Strategic Organization Design" deals with how organizations (e.g. companies) should be designed in order to reach their strategic goals. Building upon the fundamentals of strategic and organizational concepts, the focus of this course is especially the interaction between these two fields of research. Based on individual to company-level analysis, the course will answer questions such as how to design for innovation or how organizations could adapt to a changing environment.

The goal of this lecture is to give students an understanding of the theoretical concepts to answer questions of organizational design and the most important methodological instruments available for analyses including econometric and case-based research methods. At the same time, theoretical concepts will be applied to real-world management questions.

Course Structure

The course divides into a lecture and a subsequent tutorial. The contents of both the lecture and the tutorials are relevant for the exam.

Recorded and asynchronous videos uploaded on LMUCast starting on Monday 18.10.2021 (see the link to LMUCast)

Course Overview

The course was formerly called “Competitive Strategy”. This course provides answers to the question of how firms create and sustain a competitive advantage and has a special emphasis on innovation. The lecture introduces students to the most important, strategy related theories and literatures, from the resource-based view over search to network theory. The theoretical concepts will be tied back to real life examples especially from technology-intensive industries. While we focus in the lectures mainly on theoretical concepts, students will work on case studies in the tutorials.

Course Structure

The course divides into a lecture and a subsequent tutorial. Both parts are required to successfully pass the exam. The exam is comprised by 60 minutes questions on the lecture and 60 minutes case study.

This is a testrun for online exams