GC 510 — Competitive Strategy & Game Theory for Capture (14-week syllabus)
The federal market is a game with published rules, a handful of players, and high stakes. This course gives you the strategic toolkit the undergraduate tier uses by instinct: position, commitment, coalitions, and the discipline of anticipating the other players. Game theory is the grammar; competitive strategy is the prose.
Course number: GC 510 · Credits: 3 · Format: 14 weeks, one 75-minute session per week (plus reading and a weekly written deliverable). Audience: Graduate students in the MS in Capture Management & Government Business Development. Prerequisites: GC 501 (microeconomics) or concurrent. Game theory is taught from zero — no prior formal game theory required. Recommended companion: GC 530 (research methods) — the competitive-strategy course builds hypotheses; the research course teaches you to test them. Texts: the doctrine and literacy folders of this repository; the course reader (seminal game-theory and strategy papers, all rendered at concept altitude). No software required — the course is stack-agnostic by design (doctrine/08).
Learning outcomes
By the end of this course, a student can:
- Read a competitive situation as a game: identify the players, the strategies, the payoffs, the sequence, and the information available to each.
- Use the core solution concepts — dominance, Nash equilibrium, and backward induction — to predict competitive behavior in a small field of bidders.
- Explain commitment and credibility: when a stated intent is a real strategic move and when it is cheap talk.
- Analyze incumbency as a strategic asset and choose among the canonical displacement plays — take the recompete, ghost the entrenched incumbent, team around the holder, pivot to white space, or walk.
- Distinguish a discriminator from a baseline feature, and design a capture strategy around claims competitors cannot credibly make.
- Model teaming as coalition formation: when to team, with whom, and on what terms.
- Set a pricing posture as a strategic position — premium, parity, aggressive, or price-disciplined — and explain the signal it sends to the customer and to competitors.
- Decide bid/no-bid as a portfolio game rather than a per-pursuit gamble.
- Respect the ethical and legal boundaries of competitive strategy: public-record facts only, no disparagement, no conflicts of interest.
Weekly schedule
| Week | Theme | In-session (75 min) | Reading / material | Assignment due next week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Strategy is a position, not a wish | The capture mindset. Win strategy as a set of claims about the customer, the competition, and yourself. Discriminators vs. baseline features. | doctrine/03; doctrine/05; the capture doctrine at concept altitude | One-page position statement for a case pursuit: the customer's need, the competitive set, and the one claim you will make that no competitor can credibly make. |
| 2 | Game theory foundations | Normal-form games, players, strategies, payoffs. Dominance and dominated strategies. Nash equilibrium and why we predict it. | the course reader on game theory; doctrine/03 (pipeline as a game) | Worked exercise: model a two-bidder price competition as a normal-form game; find the dominant strategies. |
| 3 | Sequential games: commitment and credibility | Extensive-form games, backward induction, first-mover advantage. When a promise is a commitment and when it is cheap talk. | the course reader on sequential games | Short paper: identify a commitment move in a real capture campaign (e.g., a key-person hire, a teambuilding announcement, an investment) and analyze its credibility. |
| 4 | Competition among the few | Oligopoly reasoning: how a small field of bidders behaves. Reaction functions, competitive response, and the danger of overfitting to a rival. | doctrine/05; the course reader on oligopoly | Memo: for a real market segment, name the likely competitors and predict how each would react to an aggressive price play. |
| 5 | Incumbency as a strategic asset | Why incumbency is the highest-signal feature in capture. The anatomy of incumbency: relationships, knowledge, switching cost, past performance. | doctrine/07; the incumbency canon at concept altitude (bands from low to entrenched) | Incumbent analysis: profile the holder of a real (closed) contract. What is the source of its advantage? Where is it vulnerable? |
| 6 | Displacement plays | The canonical plays against an incumbent: take the recompete, ghost the entrenched, team around the holder, pivot to white space, walk. Choosing the play from the facts. | the displacement canon at concept altitude; doctrine/04 | Decision memo: for a real recompete situation, choose the displacement play, state the facts that drive the choice, and the evidence that would change it. |
| 7 | Ghosting and positioning | Ghost themes as evaluation-relevant discriminators framed against the customer's stated requirements — never disparagement. What a ghost theme must cite to be credible. | doctrine/02; doctrine/05; the ghosting discipline at concept altitude | Draft a ghost-theme set for a case pursuit: three themes, each tied to a customer requirement and a public-record basis. |
| 8 | Coalition games: teaming as strategy | Teaming as coalition formation. When a competitor is also a teammate. The posture decision: prime solo, prime with subs, sub, JV, mentor-protege. | the teaming canon at concept altitude; doctrine/07 | Teaming memo: for a case pursuit, run the gap analysis and recommend a posture with a partner-rubric defense. |
| 9 | Midterm | In-class examination: analyze a real, published competitive situation end-to-end — the game, the players, the position, the play. | (review weeks 1–8) | Midterm submission. |
| 10 | Price as a signal | Pricing posture as a strategic move. Premium, parity, aggressive, price-disciplined: what each signals to the customer and to competitors, and when each is rational. | doctrine/05; the pricing-strategy canon at concept altitude | Pricing-posture memo: recommend a posture for a case pursuit and predict the competitor reaction. |
| 11 | Pre-RFP shaping | The strategy that happens before the RFP drops: sources sought, RFIs, industry days, capability briefings. Shaping the requirement as a legitimate strategic move — and where the line is. | doctrine/02; the capture doctrine at concept altitude | Engagement plan: design a pre-RFP shaping campaign for a forecast opportunity, with the boundary of legitimate shaping stated. |
| 12 | Repeated games: reputation and the long term | The federal market as a repeated game. Reputation, trust, past performance, and the value of a credible delivery record. Why a firm that cheats the process loses more than the contract. | doctrine/07; the course reader on repeated games | Reflection paper: how does the repeated-game structure of the market change the optimal strategy of a small firm? |
| 13 | Portfolio strategy as game theory | Bid/no-bid as a portfolio decision. Capacity as the scarce resource; threshold discipline as an exercise price; the strategic value of saying no. | doctrine/03; doctrine/05; the bid/no-bid canon at concept altitude | Portfolio game: allocate a fixed capture budget across a scored opportunity set, treating each pursuit as a strategic bet with a competitive dimension. |
| 14 | Synthesis: the strategist's desk | The whole course in one frame: the capture strategist reads games, builds positions, forms coalitions, sets prices, and governs the portfolio. Final strategy defense before a skeptical panel. | (course synthesis) | Final strategy paper: "The competitive strategy of [your] pursuit," 2,500 words, defended in class. |
Assessment summary
- Weekly deliverables — 40%. Each a concrete strategic artifact (a position statement, a game model, a displacement decision, a teaming memo).
- Midterm — 25%. In-class, real competitive-situation analysis.
- Final strategy paper + defense — 25%. A complete competitive strategy for a real pursuit or portfolio, defended before a panel that pushes back.
- Participation and peer review — 10%. Prepared, honest, useful contribution — the discipline the strategy room demands.
The graduate rubric
| Criterion | Excellent | Proficient | Developing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategic reasoning | Models the game correctly and chooses a defensible strategy from the facts | Correct model, weaker strategy choice | Strategy asserted, not derived |
| Evidence discipline | Position and plays rest on public-record facts, stated explicitly | Mostly evidence-grounded | Relies on assumption or invention |
| Adversarial thinking | Anticipates competitor and customer response | Considers response at a surface level | Ignores the other players |
| Ethical boundary | Strategy stays clearly on the public-record side of the line | Boundary implied | Boundary unclear or crossed |
Policies
- Real markets, safe exercises. We analyze real published competitions — never live ones, and never using non-public information.
- Integrity. Competitive strategy in this course is the art of the public record. Disparagement, fabrication, or strategy that depends on inside information fails the relevant assessment.
- Late work. An honest early warning beats a silent late submission.
The market is a game with published rules. The graduate strategist learns the rules, reads the other players, and plays a long game worth winning.