Assignment - Whitepapers & Webinars

Description: Strategy is a core component to business success and one that is constantly changing. So rapidly in fact, that maintaining relevancy will require substantial work on your part. To accomplish this, you are required to develop a greater understanding of strategic management trends through a self-selected webinar or whitepaper. The focus of this assignment is identifying an appropriate whitepaper or webinar that builds your understanding of current practices and relate its applicability.

Requirements: To successfully meet the requirements of this assignment as outlined in the included evaluation rubric, you are required to identify a webinar or whitepaper that you would like to read/watch. Before you can construct a summary presentation that includes 15-20 slides of content, you will need to get approval from the instructor. Once you have received approval, you can take creative license in how you present the information as long as someone who is going through the presentation can understand what you are presenting without being able to hear you describe it. This is a difficult undertaking and requires that you not only understand your selected webinar/whitepaper, but effectively describe the most important components. For this assignment, you are required to address the following:

1. Resource Approval: You are required to get approval concerning the whitepaper or webinar that you would like to use to fulfill the requirements of this assignment. When you are presenting your resource for approval, you will be asked to identify why you made the selection. Hint: to increase chances for success, you will need to provide a 4-5 sentence summary (if using email) or be able to describe the content (in person).

2. Core Ideas/Foundations: Identify the core theories, ideas, thoughts or concepts that were presented. Focus on providing the most important aspects of your selected resource (5 - 7 slides).

3. Related Learning: Relate what you learned from your selected whitepaper or webinar to what you have learned in class. You will need to tie specific points from the webinar to specific points that have been covered in class, your readings, other webinars or assigned readings. (3 - 5 slides).

4. Six Questions: Create (3) questions based upon Costa's Levels of Questioning that you would like to know more about after reviewing your whitepaper or webinar. You will need to have one from each level as identified in the accompanying resources. Remember, this is your opportunity to demonstrate you understand the presented concepts and can think critically about what you have read/watched to gain greater insight (1 slide). These questions will then be used in class as part of the discussion about strategic management.

5. Three Takeaways: An opportunity for you to tell me three things that you believe I should know from your selected Whitepaper or Webinar. These are not necessarily bullet points or highlights but rather the most important thing that you learned from the resource (3 slides).