Three courses are offered each term.
Competition Analysis and Regulation
The objective of this course is to twofold. First, the course aims at understanding how market structure shapes a firm’s competitive behavior and its impact on prices and consumer welfare. A second objective is to identify the relevant policy tools for each type of market structure. The center of attention will be firms’ strategic behavior, and the emphasis will be on how the competition, economic environment, and structure of demand shape firms’ decisions. Ultimately, the goal is to address the question of firm and market regulation, showing that different situations call for different policies. The course will consist of a mix of theoretical and practical applications using case studies. Executives will learn how to use basic game theory to analyze competition and see the similarities or disparities between different types of markets. The course will also offer the opportunity to put microeconomics “in practice” by studying how consumer behavior and firms’ decisions can shape economic outcomes. Emphasis will be placed on how economic theory can help to analyze and lead to a deeper understanding of market competition. The course will also devote a great amount of time to study and discussion of various regulatory policies by considering both theoretical approaches to market regulation and case studies.
Understanding the Consumer Journey
Advertising Age recently declared: “The Customer Journey Officer is the new CMO.” Defined as the complete sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with a company and brand, a clear and actionable understanding of the customer journey is increasingly essential to success in today’s marketplace. This course focuses on a conceptual understanding of the customer journey, not from the perspective of the brand or company, as is typically the case in the business world, but from the perspective of the consumer her or himself. The core premise of the course is that the customer journey can be most meaningfully understood as a problem-solving process, and it works through each step of this process, with the goal of engendering novel and useful ways of thinking about, and ultimately harnessing this journey for business success.
International Corporate Finance and Governance
The primary objective of this course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand and analyze the relationships among corporate financial policy, corporate governance, and international financial markets to create shareholder value. In this context, the course will focus on raising capital overseas via cross-listings, investing capital through cross-border mergers and acquisitions, raising/investing international venture capital and conducting IPOs, payout/repurchase decisions around the world, and understanding how corporate governance mechanisms at the firm- and country-levels might potentially curb management misappropriation and/or dominant investors’ ability to expropriate minority investors (through excessive perquisites and compensation, overinvestment, cronyism, self-dealing, diversion of corporate resources for personal consumption, and outright theft). In short, the course will examine investment, financing, and payout decisions in the international context. Students will gain a strong understanding on how foreign firms raise and invest capital; how and why foreign firms cross-list in the U.S.; how foreign firms grow through international venture financing and cross-border mergers; how firm- and country-level corporate governance can impact corporate performance; and why many countries around the world are moving to mandate best corporate governance practices.
Ideation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship
This course introduces and explores the fundamental building-blocks and concepts of entrepreneurship: Innovation, conceptual thinking as developed through an “ideation” process, validated by such technology supported resources as: analytics, crowd sourcing, crowd funding social analytics. Executives will review and apply current research and the latest studies in this emerging field. Executives will develop a strategic foundation that will facilitate their deployment in related areas of research and development. Instructors will present a mix of cutting-edge empirical findings and knowledge and student will apply this knowledge in active, practical research application based exercises. The course requires both online and class participation in a wide range of related topics and their application. While the course is designed for executives with technical or non-technical backgrounds it requires preparation and continuous active participation.
Management of Innovation
Innovation, the successful introduction of a new device, method, or material, is acknowledged to be the most important driver of competitive success in many industries and has crucial impact for societal and economic development. Interest in management of innovation has traditionally centered on firm-internal aspects, such as the organization of internal innovation processes, activities and collaborators and how to deal with the dynamics stemming from industrial or technological changes. In recent years, however, there has been a surge in interest among scholars and practitioners in methods, tools and approaches that allow firms to tap firm-external sources and (social) networks to fill their innovation pipelines. The emergence of this phenomenon has given rise to novel and promising research agendas for the years to come and has been associated with labels such as open and user innovation, crowd sourcing and open source. In acknowledgement of this development, the aim of this class is to provide executives with an advanced understanding of the management of innovation and covers a broad range of literature from foundational theories to most recent research in the field. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the field, the course will reflect the theoretical underpinnings of management of innovation in related research streams such as organization theory, management science, organizational economics, psychology and sociology to tackle the different levels of analysis of innovation: on the individual, the group, organizational and the industry level. The course will thereby address particularly the challenges, research questions and (practical) implications related to product and service innovation with substantial elements of technological change.
Human Capital and the Triple Bottom Line
The objective of this course is to provide executives with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand and analyze the relationship between organizational productivity and human capital variables. In this context, human capital is conceptualized as the knowledge, skills, ability, and personal characteristics that drive employee behavior. Organizational productivity is conceptualized broadly as the “triple bottom line” – the interconnectedness of economic, social, and environmental performance. The instructor will present a mix of cutting-edge empirical findings and knowledge gleaned from practical applications of organizational behavior and talent management research. Executives will gain a strong understanding of how organizational-level variables relate to (and motivate) employees’ responsible behaviors; how to select, train, and lead for individual productivity and responsibility; and how to use people-based analytics to improve organizational productivity.
Understanding the Employee and the Customers as Users of Technology
In this seminar, executives will review key studies on the impact of technology on individual users as a way to better understand employee and consumer behavior. The course highlights a number of theories and empirical research methods for identifying and understanding key issues for users of technology that are important to most businesses. The instructor will present a mix of cutting-edge empirical findings and knowledge gleaned from established and emerging theories in information systems, psychology, and marketing research. Executives will gain a strong understanding of how the interaction of users with technology impacts the way they work, both individually and in groups, and how they manage processes and other employees in an organization. Executives will also learn about the different ways in which technology continuously defines and changes consumer behavior.
Information-Based Strategies
The field of strategy is constantly evolving as the competitive environment facing firms’ changes. One of the most significant changes has been the dramatically falling costs and increasing speeds and volumes of transmitting and processing of information. This ongoing phenomenon is changing the structure of entire industries and is altering the profitable opportunities available to many firms. The ability to target profitable market segments and to identify individual customers is reducing the value of scale-based operations and the strategic advantage of large firms with existing market share. The ability to monitor the performance of business units abroad, without regard to distance or time zones, is increasing the value of cooperative partnerships. This is leading to greater reliance upon outsourcing, benefiting manufacturing as well as many service industries. At the same time, the impact of information technology on the transparency and efficiency of securities markets is destroying the profits of entire segments of financial services. All aspects of the firm – production, service, sales, marketing, and strategy – are affected. The increase in information available to firms, and the increasing variety of strategies available for the use of information – from dynamic repricing to online distribution, from labor productivity enhancements to labor arbitrage, and automation and outsourcing – requires a revision of strategic decision-making models in an increasingly digital age. Clearly, some firms will win and others will lose; nearly all will have to change. And yet, fundamental laws of economics have not been repealed. How can previous economic theory, and previous experience with rapid technological change, provide insights for the development of sound, information-based strategies? To answer this question, the course integrates recent experience in the impact of information technology upon diverse industries with relevant theory.
Marketing Communications Strategy
The design of effective marketing communications strategies must be based on a careful consideration of (a) how target customers process information and (b) the firm’s objectives and performance expectations. Current research in both of those factors will be studied and analyzed for insights into best practices