A Curriculum Centered on Leadership Development and Innovation

Managers spend the majority of their time negotiating — from schedules and vacation time to resource allocations to mergers and major policy decisions and their implementation.Skillful negotiation is a critical component of the toolbox of the successful manager. The purpose of this course is to improve students’ abilities to diagnose conflict situations and to analyze, plan and conduct negotiations. The course material addresses negotiation as an effective means for implementing decisions and strategies and resolving conflict in a variety of settings. Course format will involve simulated negotiation and experiential exercises.

This course provides an overview of the basic frameworks and techniques of modern data science and its application in business analytics for managerial decision-making. We deploy a “hands-on” approach to demystify basic data visualization, machine-learning, and artificial intelligence approaches to data exploration, while keeping a mind towards practical business decisions and managerial tradeoffs.

Examines the decisions of consumers and firms, and the ways in which they interact in various market settings. Among the topics considered are consumer behavior and consumer choice, decision making when outcomes are uncertain, and the way in which firms’ decisions are impacted by technology, input cost and the various competitive settings in which they operate. Emphasis is placed on concepts and tools that will be particularly useful in the study of marketing, finance and competitive strategy.

This course will cover the basic terms, concepts, and geography of financial statements including the balance sheet, income statement, statement of cash flows, and the statement of shareholders equity. Critically analyze financial metrics that company leaders are responsible for and that are used by constituents of those organizations (primarily investors). Discuss how and why leaders are accountable for delivering budgeted results and critically evaluate whether companies achieved expectations by conducting financial statement analysis. Map the role that leaders play in the preparation of pro forma statements (forward-looking) and start-up business plans.

This course focuses on key data-driven marketing strategies and tactics that enable a business to attract, satisfy, and retain customers. Using these strategies, and investing in marketing, allows the firm to create real customer value while growing profitability. You will learn how to identify your target market, and how to position your product or service so that it meets your customers’ wants and needs, all in the context of your and your firm’s values. You will understand how to offer the right products or services to customers, at the right prices, using the right marketing communications and promotions, and delivered through the right channels.

Studies the nature, design and decision-facilitating role of cost systems and focuses on the effects of strategy, technology and the environment on cost system designs. The course introduces basic cost concepts and develops techniques such as cost drivers, activity-based accounting, customer profitability, value-add and value chain analysis, and target costing. It analyzes the role of cost information for tactical and strategic decisions. Tools such as budgets, variance analysis, benchmarking, transfer pricing, and balanced scorecard are used to illustrate planning, control and performance measurement systems that facilitate successful implementation of organizations’ strategies.

Deals with the process by which organizations convert inputs (e.g., labor, material, equipment, knowledge) into outputs (goods and services). Focusing on strategic and tactical issues, the course covers the following subjects: product/process management, total quality management, capacity management, customer loyalty and services, inventory management, supply chain management, product development; and facility location and sourcing. Different industries, including services, as well as international operational issues are covered.

According to the World Economic Forum, creative thinking is one of the skills that is only becoming more important in our rapidly changing and highly interdependent world. Creativity entails the generation of new ideas that have the power to better address existing or newly-identified problems or opportunities. Leaders who have mastered skills such as associative thinking, the main driver of new ideas, or experimenting, a key way to generate data to (in)validate one’s ideas, and can foster those skills in others are therefore in a position to add great value to their firms and, ultimately, to society. The purpose of this course is to help you master those skills and deploy them in a manner consistent with your personal values while honoring societal responsibilities.

This course develops skills and best practices for allocating financial and human resources optimally within your organization. Your financial acumen will also increase, enabling you to more constructively contribute to the strategic decision making process surrounding any business idea. We will take a values-based approach to this, and students will learn in this class how the decisions of a company affect stakeholder value, and importantly, how this affects long-term shareholder value. To understand the perspectives of shareholders, we will study basic principles of investing: time value of money, discounted cash flow as a foundation for all valuation, the impact of diversification and leverage on portfolio risk, and the relationship between risk and expected return in securities markets. We will use these principles to analyze capital investment decisions inside of the organization by estimating cash flows and discounting them at the appropriate cost of capital. We will also study how shareholder value is affected by a firm’s financing decisions, such as the choice of using debt or equity capital.

Exercising organizational leadership requires more than just a worthy goal or a good idea. It also requires an understanding of how things really get done in organizations and how you can influence people both within and outside your chain of command in order to gain support and overcome resistance. In other words, it requires skill at leading through influence. This seminar will help you develop the three key skills of leading through influence: a) navigating politics, b) understanding power, and c) exercising influence.

Exercising organizational leadership requires more than just a worthy goal or a good idea. It also requires an understanding of how things really get done in organizations and how you can influence people both within and outside your chain of command in order to gain support and overcome resistance. In other words, it requires skill at leading through influence. This seminar will help you develop the three key skills of leading through influence: a) navigating politics, b) understanding power, and c) exercising influence.

This course will provide a framework and set of processes to help you build and lead organizations that exist across cultural differences. Throughout our time together, we will identify research-informed and practically-relevant frameworks for understanding cultural differences across peoples and groups, and their implications for organizational design and strategic management. We will also ask you to consider what is required of you as a global leader as you manage across those cultural differences, whether that be specific to a style of one-on-one management, approach to team building, or models for organization design in a culturally diverse environment. To aid your learning, we use a mix of leadership assessments, simulations to unearth behavioral tendencies, cases to develop pattern-finding abilities, and written reflection, which pushes you to apply these themes back to your current teams and organizations.

This course deals with global financial markets, banking and supply chains. These are essential components of both the financial system and the real sector, and an understanding of these is crucial for an appreciation of how resources are allocated in the economy, how the financial system facilitates this resource allocation and the management of the attendant risks, and how organizations us this to enhance global supply chains to move products and services to their customers. Thus, this course connects the financial system to the real economy. It focuses on data-driven decision making for managing global risks and opportunities by using tools like securitization, and also how Enterprise Risk Management can be used to facilitate the management of interconnected organizational risks. Essential components of this are the risk-management culture of the organization and the associated organizational values.

This course provides a framework and set of processes to help you build and lead organizations that exist across cultural differences. Throughout our time together, we will identify research-informed and practically-relevant frameworks for understanding cultural differences across peoples and groups, and their implications for organizational design and strategic management. We will also ask you to consider what is required of you as a global leader as you manage across those cultural differences, whether that be specific to a style of one-on-one management, approach to team building, or models for organization design in a culturally diverse environment. To aid your learning, we use a mix of leadership assessments, simulations to unearth behavioral tendencies, cases to develop pattern-finding abilities, and written reflection, which pushes you to apply these themes back to your current teams and organizations.

Provides strategic and financial tools for evaluating, creating, and capturing market value through organic growth as well as through mergers or acquisitions. Enables you to form the right teams to promote growth. This theme combines: formulation of corporate growth strategy, strategic assessment of growth options, an assessment of corporate culture, and the financial valuation of potential targets. This combination, along with a linking of strategy to the higher purpose of the organization, leads to a holistic framework that blends organizational values and data-based decision making. The discussion of personal and organizational higher purpose will also connect this theme to leadership development in other parts or the program.

This module introduces the fundamental building blocks of data-driven decision making. It first dives into two pillars of modern data science: causal inference and machine learning. It then discusses how to effectively build and run a data science team as well as make an organization data-driven. Last but not least, this module will also cover cutting-edge debates related to data science, such as privacy and fairness.

Most major companies in the world are not single-business firms operating in a single location but portfolios of businesses spanning multiple locations. Single business firms today ultimately become multi-business firms to sustain growth. They also interact more with various institutions and social sectors as they grow. This course provides the theoretical frameworks and analytical tools necessary to evaluate the unique opportunities and challenges faced by multi-product, multi-business, and multi-location firms. With a combination of case analyses, debates and simulation, we will evaluate alternative strategies firms can use to reach the right scope, and discuss the systems and processes firms should put in place to encourage coordination and achieve efficiency.