[MUSIC] Welcome to Corporate Strategy, my name is Bart Vanneste, and I'm an associate professor at the UCL School of Management. Corporate strategy is the strategy that firms use to compete across multiple businesses. Let's take the example of Unilever, which is one of the biggest consumer goods companies in the world. Now you may or may not have heard of Unilever but you've almost certainly tried one of their products. They're active in so many businesses. You could have tried one of their ice creams. Or perhaps even a cleaning product for your bathroom, or just shampoo. And they do that all over the world. They're active from Asia to Latin America. How can they compete across so many businesses while trying to leverage the strength of each one of them? That is the question that we'll look at in this course. And this question is not only relevant for the biggest of firms but also for many small firms. Let's say you're working for a small firm and you want to enter a new business. Which business will you enter? And how will you enter that business? In other words, what is your corporate strategy? In this course, we'll focus on decision making, because I want you to be able to apply the ideas of this course. Specifically, we're going to look at the following key corporate strategy decisions. First, diversification. Which businesses should you enter, and how? Second, divestiture. Which businesses should you exit from, and how? And thirdly, corporate headquarters. How can you organize corporate headquarters to create value across businesses? Now it turns out, these decisions are incredibly complex. What can we do to make progress? I'm going to do two things specifically. First, I'm going to take each complex problem and I'm going to chop it up into smaller pieces that are easier for us to handle. Then secondly, for each piece, I'm going to take you through a set of questions and steps that will help you select and answer. I cannot offer you a single right answer. But I will offer you tools and frameworks that together with your judgement and expertise will help you select the most suitable answer for you. Of the many decisions a firm has to make, the corporate strategy decisions are among the most consequential. And actually that's why I'm passionate about corporate strategy. I have two goals. First, I like to share some of that excitement with you and secondly I want to help you make good corporate strategy decisions. So, I hope you sign up and enjoy the course. [MUSIC]