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MBA · Capella FlexPath

MBA-FPX5006: Business Strategy

A core MBA FlexPath course built around the AFI strategic planning framework — students analyze real companies through internal and external lenses, then formulate and implement strategic recommendations across four assessments.

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MBA-FPX5006 teaches strategic management through the AFI framework — Analysis, Formulation, Implementation — applied to a real or assigned company across all four assessments. Each assessment builds toward a complete strategic plan: you start by analyzing a company's internal and external environment, then formulate strategic choices, and finish by addressing how those choices actually get implemented. Because the assessments are cumulative, a weak analysis in Assessment 1 makes the later strategic recommendations harder to defend. This guide breaks down what each assessment requires and how academic support for MBA-FPX5006 fits into a course that moves at your own pace but still has real competency standards to meet.

Course Overview

This course centers on the AFI (Analysis, Formulation, Implementation) strategic process — the basic strategic management workflow that begins with a company's vision and objectives, runs through internal and external analysis, and ends with implementable strategic choices. Rather than treating strategy as an abstract topic, MBA-FPX5006 has you apply tools like VRIO, Five Forces, PESTLE, and SWOT to a real company (often Walmart, Amazon, Netflix, or Starbucks in student examples) to produce a strategy a leadership team could actually act on.

Key Assessments

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Common Challenges in This Course

The most common point loss is in Assessment 1, where students apply frameworks like Five Forces or PESTLE as a checklist of bullet points rather than an analysis that draws conclusions — rubrics usually require you to interpret what the analysis means for the company's strategic position, not just list factors. In Assessment 3, a frequent mistake is proposing a strategic choice that isn't clearly traceable back to the Assessment 1-2 analysis, which makes the recommendation look unsupported. On Assessment 4, students often restate the strategy instead of addressing the operational and organizational mechanics of implementing it — the rubric typically wants concrete execution steps, not a strategy recap.

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MBA-FPX5006 FAQ

Can I choose any company for the assessments?

Most sections let you choose a real, publicly known company or use an assigned scenario — check your course shell, since this affects how much public data you'll have access to.

Do the four assessments need to use the same company?

Yes — they're cumulative, with each assessment building on the previous one's analysis, so switching companies mid-course creates extra work.

What is the AFI framework?

Analysis, Formulation, Implementation — the strategic management process this course is structured around, moving from environmental analysis to a defensible strategy to execution.

Which frameworks are required in Assessment 1?

Most rubrics require a VRIO or Value Chain analysis, a PESTLE analysis, and a Five Forces model, though the exact combination can vary slightly by section.

How does this course fit into the MBA core?

It's one of the foundational strategy courses in the MBA-FPX sequence, feeding into more specialized courses before the program concludes with MBA-FPX5910, the capstone.