Competition and Cooperation in Business Ecosystems — MBA Elective
“Business is cooperation when it comes to creating a pie and competition when it comes to dividing it up” – (Brandenburger and Nalebuff, Co-opetition, 1996)
“Business ecosystems are dynamic and evolving communities of diverse industries and organizations who create and capture values through both cooperation and competition” – (Business Ecosystems Come of Age, Deloitte Business Trend Series, 2015)
In business decision-making, competition tends to receive excessive emphasis while cooperation is often disregarded. This can be partly attributed to the longstanding dominance of the ideas of self-interest and competition in economic thinking. However, the recent surge in collaborative and sharing economy and the dynamic evolution of modern business ecosystems have begun to challenge this perspective. Many of fastest fastest-growing companies, including Google, Apple, Amazon, Alibaba, and others, actively position themselves as business ecosystems that recognize the equal importance of both cooperation and competition for their overall well-being and continued success. Analyzing cooperation is challenging because we need to figure out who to work with, how to share the benefits fairly, and negotiate a fair division of joint gains. Measuring the power or influence of a player in collective decision-making further adds complexity to the analysis. Cooperation among competitors is also commonly observed. However, it is important to understand how this type of cooperation differs from collusion, which is generally prohibited by law in most countries. For instance, why does Amazon provide cloud infrastructure services to Netflix while also competing with it in the content streaming market? How are pricing and revenue decisions made in such a supply chain, where players cooperate upstream but compete downstream? Furthermore, on the other hand, the phenomenon of small startups toppling large corporate giants in fiercely competitive markets prompts exploration into the dynamics of competition. For instance, why did Tesla emerge as the market leader in electric vehicles, while major established automakers failed to achieve a similar feat? Addressing these issues requires a deeper understanding of cooperation and competition in business ecosystems. This course aims to provide the knowledge and skills needed to achieve the same.
Game theory, the study of interaction, provides a scientific way to analyze how we cooperate and compete in a strategic environment. This course uses game-theoretic techniques in analyzing competition and cooperation.
Responsible Business Operations — MBA Elective
“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success” – Henry Ford
According to a study launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2016, implementing key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) could unlock a minimum of $12 trillion in market opportunities for businesses and potentially generate up to 380 million jobs by 2030. The study also indicates that the pressure on businesses to act as “responsible social actors” is expected to intensify. We live in a world where conscious consumerism is on the rise. Failing to align with or actively support SDGs may harm a company’s reputation, impacting customer loyalty. Additionally, it can pose regulatory and compliance risks as governments and investors align their policies with the SDGs.Recent history has shown us that neglecting human rights and labor issues in global supply chains can result in escalating costs and hindered growth for businesses. This pattern extends to environmental and climate change issues as well. Despite the evident challenges, not everyone is ready to confront these issues head-on. A 2016 Bain & Company study, conducted among over 300 large companies engaged in sustainability initiatives, revealed that a staggering 98% of such initiatives fail. One major factor contributing to the failure of sustainability initiatives, as highlighted in numerous other subsequent studies, is a lack of understanding of how to translate sustainability goals into practical, measurable actions that seamlessly integrate into business operations.
Integrating responsible practices into business operations through well-defined processes and metrics has become a crucial necessity in the modern business environment. This course is specifically designed to address this pressing need. “Responsible Operations” emphasizes a commitment to conducting business operations in a manner that balances economic success with ethical, social, and environmental considerations. In this course, we explore responsible operations primarily through an approach grounded in cooperative game theory and quantitative methods. Cooperative game theory, a specialized branch of game theory, deals with strategic situations where multiple parties, driven by individual self-interests, collaborate to achieve a common goal that benefits everyone involved. This theory aligns perfectly with the ethos of responsible operations, which emphasizes the consideration of diverse stakeholder interests, including those of the environment and society, and strives for outcomes that yield benefits for all.
Introduction to Game Theory — PhD Core
Game theory is the study of interactions. A game is played whenever people interact with each other. Technically, game theory is a term given to the normative study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational players. The objective is to expose students to some popular game-theoretic techniques that can be used to model and analyze various managerial scenarios. The techniques that we will learn in this course are categorized into (i) cooperative game theory and (ii) non-cooperative game theory. Cooperative games are pertinent to any strategic situation where scarce resources are to be allocated among a group of players who can credibly communicate with each other and take joint actions. In non-cooperative games, no credible communication is allowed, and hence the focus is on the strategy and action profiles of individual players. While the course is primarily designed as a methodology course for doctoral students in the operations management area, it can also be useful for students in other areas interested in game-theoretic modeling.
Optimization Models in Operations Management — PhD Core*
This is an optimization course for doctoral students in the production and operations management area. In the course, we first study Nonlinear Programming, wherein a nonlinear objective function is optimized subject to nonlinear constraints. We next study Convexity and the properties of convex functions. For convex functions, all we have to do is identify a local optimum, and we are assured that it is a global optimum. We next study Dynamic Programming, a collection of mathematical tools used to analyze sequential decision processes. We see how Dynamic Programming is used to solve the shortest route problem, resource allocation problems, production control, and network flow problems, etc.
*Not a regular offering; Taught in 2025, 2018, 2017
Rajeev R. Tripathi 