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What do the Battle of Waterloo and the tragic floods that shook Spain in late 2024 have in common? Both subjects have been used by Maja KORICA, Professor of Strategic Management at IÉSEG, to teach strategy differently to her MBA and Master in International Business students.

IÉSEG has always placed its students at the heart of its pedagogical project, going so far as to propose an engaging student learning experience as the first pillar of its strategic plan. IÉSEG relies on professors renowned for their expertise to take pedagogical innovation and academic impact to the next level, in all disciplines. For instance, Marjorie FOX used virtual reality to teach GRPD, Claire PHILIPPE developed an escape game inspired by the famous Netflix series “Emily in Paris” for her courses of French as a Foreign Language, and Antonio GIANGRECO and Loïc PLÉ sent their students to a Fab Lab to learn Change Management.

So, how can we teach strategy less theoretically and in a more engaging way? How can we explain to students that, beyond simply using Porter’s Five Forces and SWOT analyses, it’s essential to structure one’s thinking and analyze every detail (e.g. economic context, competition, company health, human, social and societal aspects…) in order to make the best strategic decisions?

Maja KORICA aims to make her courses as concrete and experiential as possible, so that her students can understand and put into practice all the usual strategic tools that are customarily taught, but which, she stresses: “are merely tools for structuring thinking; they do not give us answers on their own”. That’s also why, to teach strategy differently, she invited Yoann BAZIN, a professor of Strategy at Paris Nanterre, to teach a session on strategic thinking, centered on a re-creation of the Battle of Waterloo. During this two-hour session, the students were introduced to military thinking as a long-standing perspective on strategy. Standing around actual physical maps, they were taken through the days before the battle, as well as hourly developments of the battle itself, paying attention to availability of key staff (like Napoleon himself, who was sick that day, and the absence of his chief of staff, who he massively relied upon before), the conditions (the rain and nature of soil created sinking mud to be waded through), the location (Wellington and the allies had the higher ground), and the evolving dynamics (the Prussians were about to arrive that evening). Throughout, the students considered what else Napoleon could have done and how.

“It was so great to see how engaged my students were – asking questions, offering suggestions, correcting themselves when new information was made available, recognizing limitations. The physicality of moving pieces across a map and drawing on big projected maps to outline their ideas made such a difference. This was a perfect way to build their strategic thinking, enabling them to see things differently. It also encouraged engagement, even by those who usually talk less in class”, explains Maja KORICA.

With the same objective of focusing on concrete and experimental teaching, Maja ended her “Understanding Business Transformations” MBA class with a real-life case of the recent Valencia floods. The students were assigned four real firms – car factory, airport, train company and a chain of supermarkets – and were told to prepare an action plan for that day and two days after. They had to clarify their priorities, key roles they should play, resources needed, concrete actions they would take, and justify for their (non)actions.

“The plans my students came up with were not only directly informed by solid courses on disaster management and sensemaking amid crisis – confirming the best way to learn was to practice – but they showed great empathy and originality in doing so. The organizational responses they put together were sensitive to multiple views, information-rich, responsive, and adaptive. As importantly, people’s well-being was prioritized at all stages. I would have loved to develop this course in VR, but that would have taken longer and I wanted them to engage with a still recent event. So, I showed them a lot of videos to put them in action, with all its complexity and emotions. They discovered that there was no easy answer, especially when managing a crisis, though there are more complex multiple and concurrent answers, which I think is a key lesson to learn when it comes to leading and managing in today’s business reality”, concludes Maja KORICA.