Name: Strategy: Exploiting Constraints for Competitive Advantage
Start: 2026-07-15T18:30:00.000-04:00
End: 2026-07-15T19:30:00.000-04:00
Location: Online Event

Product Management Events at the University of Maryland

University of Maryland - Product Management Events

Strategy: Exploiting Constraints for Competitive Advantage

Strategy is everywhere, but a shared, meaningful language for it stays surprisingly elusive — we reach for words like 

 and find that having the vocabulary is a long way from speaking the language.

strategy is the art of exploiting constraints.

 Every company competes inside limits set by its industry, its customers, and what its technology allows, and strong strategy works those limits deliberately — choosing tradeoffs on purpose to build advantage that's genuine and defensible.

Drawing on decades of research and consulting with some of the world's largest organizations, Raynor will cover the five concepts that make up a complete strategic picture — Industry, Position, Differentiation, Value, and Persistence — and show how the strongest performers consistently bet on 

Throughout, he'll show how these ideas are embodied by Canary Medical, the medical-device startup he co-founded, tracing its path from a drawing on a napkin to the cusp of success.

Whether you own a P&L, shape strategy for a business unit, or just want a sharper way to evaluate where advantage really comes from, you'll leave able to read any strategy with a strategist's eye.

:  anyone who has ever been in a conversation about strategy and had a “Princess Bride” moment:  does that word mean what that person thinks it means?

  anyone who believes that strategy is a rigorous discipline that can be highly effective when understood deeply, and so is open to new interpretations and insights derived from timeless, but not always widely recognized, truths.

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Michael E. Raynor is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Sustainability at Ivey Business School and a former Deloitte Managing Director whose work focuses on strategy, innovation, uncertainty, and decarbonization. He is the co-author of 