Bike business teaches strategy

Mason Carpenter, an associate professor of management and human resources, is teaching an undergraduate course in strategic management that is built around the bike industry.

Carpenter says he chose that bike industry “for no particular reason — other than it is global, dynamic, involves multiple channels and technologies, and has close ties to Madison and Wisconsin.”

The first half of the semester is a traditional, case-based strategy course. During the second half, students break into teams that compete in operating their own bike companies. Three companies compete in each “world” and teams in the other worlds serve on boards of directors for other teams. To bring more realism to the class, Carpenter has a number of notable guest speakers scheduled this semester, including Chris Hornung, CEO of Madison-based Pacific Cycles, the largest bike distributor in the world, and Tonja Green, an executive with Trek Bikes of Waterloo, Wis.

Carpenter says he hopes this approach will demonstrate to students “that strategy is more than simply a catchall term-of-the-day used to mean whatever one wants it to mean. All successful organizations must have a strategy — an integrated, overarching concept of how the business will achieve its objectives.”