Helping Undergraduates Think Like A Ceo: The Apple Analysis As A Teaching Tool For Strategic Management

This paper presents a class assignment, entitled the APPLE Analysis, for developing pre-analysis comprehension about company conditions, resources and challenges as a part of the undergraduate strategic management capstone course. Because undergraduate students lack the causal maps of seasoned executives, this assignment helps students to develop an appropriate frame of reference to then tackle more traditional external/internal approaches to strategic analysis as a part of a live consulting case. The article describes the background for the development of the assignment, the components of each application tool and its assessment, and then summarizes with a description of student perceptions and outcomes. The results of its first application indicate strong student support for its ability to deliver on content outcomes, with 74.9% noting its value in understanding course and analytical concepts, and an ANOVA analysis of the differences in final project analysis scores in the semester postadoption to be significantly higher at the.10 level (F=2.944; p =.092) than scores in the semester pre-adoption when controlling for professor. Faculty also noted stronger integration of multiple levels and breadth of analysis for the more traditional live case consulting analysis.