Business Strategy & Innovation: Frameworks for Growth

How do organisations identify opportunities, develop competitive advantages and turn ideas into viable business initiatives?

Business strategy provides a structured way to understand markets, evaluate opportunities and decide where to focus resources. Innovation helps organisations question existing approaches, respond to changing needs and explore new ways to create value.

This course introduces the core concepts and frameworks used in business strategy and innovation, connecting strategic thinking with practical business applications.

What will you learn?

Strategic thinking and business fundamentals

Understand the principles of strategic management and explore frameworks that help analyse business situations, assess opportunities and structure strategic choices.

Value propositions and customer needs

Explore how organisations define the value they offer and use customer needs to inform business decisions and innovation.

Disruptive innovation and market creation

Examine disruptive innovation, Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) and Blue Ocean Strategy to understand how organisations identify unmet needs, challenge established assumptions and explore new market opportunities.

Lean Startup and strategic adaptation

Learn about the Lean Canvas, strategic pivoting and action research as approaches to structuring ideas, learning from evidence and adapting when assumptions change.

Value chains and business growth

Explore Porter's Value Chain, diversification strategies and the pursuit of excellence to understand how organisations create value and identify opportunities for growth.

Why study business strategy and innovation?

A promising idea is not automatically a viable business opportunity. Organisations need to understand the problem they are addressing, the value they can offer, the environment in which they operate and the trade-offs involved in pursuing different options.

Strategic frameworks provide ways to structure that analysis. They do not replace judgement or guarantee success, but they can help make assumptions clearer, opportunities easier to evaluate and strategic choices more deliberate.

Who should take this course?

This course is suitable for business professionals, managers, entrepreneurs, product managers, consultants, analysts and students who want a structured introduction to business strategy and innovation.

No previous specialisation in strategy is required.

By the end of the course, you should have a clearer understanding of key strategic frameworks and how they can be used to analyse business situations, explore innovation opportunities and evaluate approaches to growth.

Course Author

Alex Amoroso, PhD

Senior UX Researcher | Research, Product & Learning Design

Alex Amoroso is a researcher, educator, and course designer with more than 10 years of professional experience in UX and product research, behavioural research, and complex problem-solving, alongside extensive experience in professional and academic education.

Her work focuses on a simple question: what is actually going on, what evidence do we have, and what should we do with it?

Across research, product, and organisational environments, she has worked on complex problems involving user behaviour, digital products, analytics, customer experience, decision-making, and innovation. Her research has included studies with thousands of users across B2B and B2C environments, combining qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate problems, challenge assumptions, interpret evidence, and support better decisions.

Alongside her professional research work, Alex teaches doctoral-level research design and methodologies, supervises and assesses research projects, and has developed approximately 30 online courses across research, UX, product, data, analytics, customer experience, business, and decision-making. Selected courses are also available through Udemy Business.

Her approach to teaching is practical and structured: clarify the subject, organise the thinking, distinguish evidence from assumption, and turn complex information into knowledge that can be applied.

She holds a PhD in Health Anthropology, with research focused on human behaviour, environmental stress, and quantitative data analysis, and has published research in peer-reviewed journals.

Across her courses, she combines:

• Research-based thinking

• Practical frameworks and methods

• Real-world examples and applications

• Clear explanations of complex subjects

• Exercises, tools, and techniques that support practical learning

Her goal is simple: to help learners understand complex subjects, think more clearly, and apply what they learn in real professional situations.

Welcome to MTF:

The MTF Institute of Management, Technology & Finance is an international institute of practical education headquartered in Lisbon, Portugal. Guided by the motto 'SCIENTIA ET PRACTICA' ('Knowledge and Practice'), the institute focuses on applied skills at the intersection of business, IT, finance, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation. Today, MTF brings together over 1.04 million learners across 220 countries and territories, serves as an official partner of IBM, Intel, and Microsoft, and is a member of the Portuguese Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Union of Trade and Services Associations of Lisbon.

The MTF Institute School of Professional & Continuing Education profile represents a specialized course track and has distinct differences from the primary account and official learning platform of the institute. Education within this track is offered in the format of specific learning editions, where completed programs are recognized exclusively through the Udemy platform certificate. This format does not provide original certificates or official documents from MTF Institute itself, nor does it include student ID cards, academic credit, or enrollment in official MTF credential programs. However, despite the academic limitations of this format, all offered courses maintain a strong practical focus and high relevance, equipping learners with up-to-date knowledge and practical tools to address real-world professional challenges.