STRAMGT 290 Strategy and Organization in the Global Economy

This course deals with the overall general management of the corporation. It is concerned with the determination of the strategic direction of the firm, organizational design issues related to the implementation of a strategy, as well as the management of strategy processes within the firm. The primary objective of the course is for the student to develop a perspective of the general manager's role and responsibilities. The course deals with developing the capability to understand a firm's strategic situation in depth, and to develop viable alternatives for dealing with the key issues facing it. The relationship between organization structure and strategy are examined, and tools are developed for examining the firm's industry and competitive environment, with particular attention paid to how globalization of industries affects the competitive dynamics of firms. Strategy at the business unit, divisional, and corporate level are studied.

STRAMGT 334 Strategy in Financial Services

The 1929 stock market crash prompted lasting changes in financial market regulation and investor behavior. These changes destroyed, but also created, opportunities for firms to earn economic rents. At this high level, history seems likely to repeat itself, but the details are still emerging. This course will draw on recent research on behavioral finance, agency conflicts, and regulatory economics to examine how investor behavior creates opportunities for firms to earn rents, how regulation has historically limited or augmented these opportunities, and how the events of the last 5 years are likely to change things. Industries covered include investment management, insurance, brokerage, analysis, market making and new exchanges, banking, pricing services, and the media. Topics include investor behavior and its implications for firms, advice and conflicts of interest, competition among market centers, innovation and barriers to it, convergence and its implications for entry and M&A, and advocacy as strategy.

STRAMGT 341 Achieving Social Impact

Achieving Social Impact, explores how to deliver on mission impact by mobilizing resources not only via social enterprise organizations themselves, but also through building networks. The course, based on seven years of teaching and research on social entrepreneurship and nonprofit networks at HBS will be taught entirely by the case method. The course examines how leaders can achieve social impact through social entrepreneurship. As the intensity and complexity of social and environmental problems has grown in recent years, social entrepreneurship, defined as innovative, social value creating activity that can occur within or across the nonprofit, government or business sectors, has become increasingly prominent. While virtually all enterprises, commercial and social, generate social value, fundamental to this definition is that the primary focus of social entrepreneurship is to achieve social impact above all else. How can organizations achieve greater social impact through social entrepreneurship? Oftentimes, growth seems to be the answer. Without a doubt, many nonprofits have achieved significant impact by going to scale. Yet, the process of organizational growth also poses tremendous challenges. Even when organizations manage to overcome the many obstacles to growth, and achieve appreciable scale, this approach is seldom sufficient to achieve significant social impact on its own. This course explores how to utilize social entrepreneurship to generate social impact as efficiently, effectively, and sustainably as possible through two primary means: 1) through organizational level growth and innovation and 2) through network approaches which require the mobilization of a vast array of actors and resources, but have the potential to generate rapid and sustained social impact. All students who aspire to make a difference in the world through social entrepreneurship should consider enrolling in this course.

Jane Wei-Skillern is a lecturer in Organizational Behavior at the GSB and a visiting assistant professor at UCB Haas. Formerly, she was on the faculty at Harvard Business School in the Social Enterprise Initiative where she taught social entrepreneurship and nonprofit strategy courses in MBA and Executive programs at HBS, and the MPA program at the Kennedy School of Government. Prof. Wei-Skillern is the author and co-author of dozens of HBS case studies, book chapters, and journal articles. She is the lead author of the casebook Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector (Sage Publications, 2007) with colleagues Jim Austin, Herman Leonard, and Howard Stevenson. Her research on the leadership and management of social enterprises examines the topics of nonprofit growth and management of multi-site nonprofits, and most recently has been focused on nonprofit networks. This latter research on nonprofit networks examines how nonprofit leaders that focus less on building their own institutions and instead invest to build strategic networks beyond their organizational boundaries can achieve dramatic gains in mission impact with the same or fewer resources. This research explores networks at the level of funders, governing boards, and nonprofit CEOs.

STRAMGT 350 Global Value Chain Strategies

This course addresses how the increasingly large number of firms that use or provide outsourcing and "offshoring" can create a sustainable competitive advantage. Students who complete the course will have a framework and a set of concepts that can be used to position a firm for strategic advantage in these supply networks. Positioning in and strategic analysis of product markets is covered in a variety of courses and books. A distinguishing feature of this course is that it addresses positioning and strategic analysis for firms operating as part of a network of providers, sellers and buyers... the factor markets. The course takes a general management perspective and provides examples through cases and discussions with visitors. The major theme of the course is that these firms must carefully consider how they position themselves in both the product and factor markets.

STRAMGT 351 Building and Managing Professional Sales Organizations

The focus of this class is on the challenges and key issues associated with the creation and management of a professional sales organization. Our emphasis is developing and managing the selling effort in the business-to-business capital goods sector. There will be relatively little emphasis on sales technique (i.e., students should not expect a course on "How to be a Better Salesperson"). The course is organized to follow the development of the sales function from the early stages of venture formation through growth to an enterprise-class company. We examine issues related to building and managing the sales effort at start up, hiring and training sales personnel, compensation and incentive plans, sales forecasting, addressing multiple product lines, multiple channels and multiple geographic regions, developing strategic alliances, merging sales forces, and managing large channel structures and sales structures in large enterprises.

STRAMGT 353 Entrepreneurship: Formation of New Ventures

This course is offered for students who at some time may want to undertake an entrepreneurial career by pursuing opportunities leading to partial or full ownership and control of a business. The course deals with case situations from the point of view of the entrepreneur/manager rather than the passive investor. Many cases involve visitors, since the premise is that opportunity and action have large idiosyncratic components. Students must assess opportunity and action in light of the perceived capabilities of the individuals and the nature of the environments they face. The course is integrative and will allow students to apply many facets of their business school education.

STRAMGT 354 Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital

Many of America's most successful entrepreneurial companies have been substantially influenced by professionally managed venture capital. This relationship is examined from both the entrepreneur's and the venture capitalist's perspective. From the point of view of the entrepreneur, the course considers how significant business opportunities are identified, planned, and built into real companies; how resources are matched with opportunity; and how, within this framework, entrepreneurs seek capital and other assistance from venture capitalists or other sources. From the point of view of the venture capitalist, the course considers how potential entrepreneurial investments are evaluated, valued, structured, and enhanced; how different venture capital strategies are deployed; and how venture capitalists raise and manage their own funds. The course includes a term-long project where students work in teams (3-4 students per team) to write a business plan for a venture of the team's choosing.

STRAMGT 355 Managing Growing Enterprises

This course is offered for students who, in the near term, aspire to the management and full or partial ownership of a new or newly-acquired business. The seminar, which is limited to 40 students, has a strong implementation focus, and deals in some depth with certain selected, generic entrepreneurial issues, viewed from the perspective of the owner/manager. Broad utilization is made of case materials, background readings, visiting experts, and role playing. Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on the application of analytical tools to administrative practice.

STRAMGT 356 Creating a Startup I

This course focuses on the creation of a new venture by providing frameworks and applying them to the identification and pursuit of a business opportunity. Concepts include the new venture formation process, opportunity identification, evaluation and analysis, customer development, business models, market research, design thinking, team formation, team dynamics, leadership, venture viability research and managing intellectual property. Part of the course is partitioned by vertical market to reflect vertical-specific topics and issues. Students form teams, conduct field work and iterate on the combination of business model -- product -- market. Teams then present to a panel of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors and faculty.

STRAMGT 359 Aligning Start-ups with Their Market

Most everyone associated with technology start-ups would agree that the most important initial characteristic of a successful endeavor is a compelling vision. The journey from vision to escape velocity is highly dependent on management's ability to translate that vision into a product or service that closely and economically addresses a customer's significant point of pain. Without a tight product market fit, the start-up's offering will not be able to break through the market's gravitational forces which strongly favor existing solutions, resulting in likely failure. With tight product/market fit, it is far more likely the company will achieve repeatable and growing sales success.

Conventional wisdom dictates that a start-up launching a new product should focus its energy understanding what the market wants (problem) and then translating that knowledge into an optimal set of product features (solution). This is the ideal strategy if one is attacking a market that already exists. However if the start-up pursues an entirely new market or re-segments an existing market, customers are unlikely to be able to articulate the benefits and features they will need. The approaches required to pursue new or re-segmented markets are radically different from those applied to existing markets. As a result it is not relentless execution and exploitation of a well understood market that will lead to success, but discovery of a new market or segment that is in need of the product as envisioned. If done well, this process of finding the optimal product/market fit has a disproportionate impact on success. Our intention is to create a course that explores the many issues associated with optimizing product/market fit.

Two group papers comprise 50% of a student's grade with class participation representing the remainder. STRAMGT 353 is recommended prior to taking this course.

STRAMGT 363 Competitive Strategy

The idea that firms should take competitive responses into account when designing strategies is obvious, but is often overlooked in practice. This course analyzes the strategies and tactics used by firms in competitive environments, using frameworks developed from recent research in game theory and industrial organization. As part of this analysis, the course addresses how the legal system affects competition both in terms of what strategies are lawful and using the law as a competitive tool. It is targeted toward students that will be either designing or evaluating strategies in both emerging and mature industries. Topics include: creating barriers to entry, softening price competition, entry and exit strategies, strategic commitment, price discrimination, and network effects. Prerequisite for this course is MGTECON 200 and STRAMGT 290.

STRAMGT 365 Strategic Decision Making

This compressed course concerns the analysis of strategic decision-making, with an emphasis on the process of "big stakes" analysis in complex corporate settings. The first week is devoted primarily to the tools of this process and to coping with (strategic) unawareness (especially in competitive situations). The second week is devoted primarily to "learning by doing," as we apply the tools developed in the first week to real-life problems. The overall objective of the course is to develop the student's working knowledge of these techniques, so the student can fruitfully apply these techniques on his/her own.

Students will be expected to do approximately 90 minutes of work outside of class each day both weeks. A group project will be the main work product in the second week.

The course will be taught jointly by Carl Spetzler, Chairman, Strategic Decisions Group and Professor Yossi Feinberg.

STRAMGT 366 Creating a Startup II

Students work in teams to continue to develop the new ventures identified in STRAMGT 356 (Creating a Startup I). Each team works with a Silicon Valley mentor to develop its new venture. In addition, the course covers topics such as partnering, operational staging, human resource development, leadership, financing, equity arrangements, term sheets, and customer acquisition and go-to-market strategies. Students develop a business plan for pursuing the opportunity based on their field work and research and present it to a panel of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors and faculty.

STRAMGT 367 Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation

This course examines individuals and organizations that use entrepreneurial skills and approaches to develop innovative responses to social problems. Entrepreneurship has traditionally been seen as a way of creating wealth for the entrepreneur and for those who back her/his work. Social entrepreneurs employ "entrepreneurial skills," such as finding opportunities, inventing new approaches, securing and focusing resources and managing risk, in the service of creating a social value. As the intensity and complexity of social and environmental problems has grown in recent years social entrepreneurship, defined as innovative, social value creating activity that can occur within or across the nonprofit, government or business sectors, has become increasingly prominent. While virtually all enterprises, commercial and social, generate social value, fundamental to this definition is that the primary focus of social entrepreneurship is to achieve social impact above all else. We will study some of the most promising and the best-proven innovations for improving people's lives. We will also examine mature projects that are now tackling the issue of "scale", moving from local innovations to solutions that create deep systemic changes for larger numbers of economically disadvantaged individuals and communities throughout the world. This year we will focus on what are the constraints and opportunities for creating a social enterprise at scale.

The process of "scale" poses tremendous challenges. Even when organizations manage to overcome the many obstacles to growth, and achieve appreciable scale, this approach is seldom sufficient to achieve significant social impact on its own. This year our course will pay particular attention to network approaches which require the mobilization of a vast array of actors and resources, but have the potential to generate rapid and sustained social impact.

STRAMGT 368 Strategic Management of Nonprofit Organizations and Social Ventures

This course seeks to provide a survey of the strategic, governance, and management issues facing a wide range of nonprofit organizations and their executive and board leaders, in the era of venture philanthropy and social entrepreneurship. The students will also be introduced to core managerial issues uniquely defined by this sector such as development/fundraising, investment management, performance management and nonprofit finance. The course also provides an overview of the sector, including its history and economics. Cases involve a range of nonprofits, from smaller, social entrepreneurial to larger, more traditional organizations, including education, social service, environment, health care, religion, NGO's and performing arts. In exploring these issues, this course reinforces the frameworks and concepts of strategic management introduced in the core first year courses. In addition to case discussions, the course employs role plays, study group exercises and many outsider speakers.

STRAMGT 369 Social Entrepreneurship

This course is about the efforts of private citizens to create effective responses to social needs and innovative solutions to social problems. History is full of examples of this kind of activity, though its character continues to evolve. Social entrepreneurs are increasingly blurring the lines between the sectors, using for-profit and hybrid forms of organization to achieve social objectives. This creates new opportunities for applying business skills in the social sector. Despite its prominence and complexity, this combination of private initiative and public purpose is not well understood. The objectives of this course are: (1) to introduce students to the concepts, practices, and challenges of social entrepreneurship in the United States and around the world; (2) to equip students with frameworks and tools that will help them be more effective in their socially entrepreneurial pursuits, and (3) to engage students in a joint learning process as a better understanding of this emerging field is developed by all in this class.

STRAMGT 370 Strategy and Action in the Information Processing Industry

This course studies strategic dynamics by examining case studies of firms in the information processing industry. Four levels of analysis are examined through these cases: 1) firm - level strategic action (e.g., Microsoft's competitive strategy, 2) intrafirm - level strategic action (e.g., the competition between semiconductor memory products and microprocessors at Intel), 3) industry segment - level strategic interaction (e.g., competitive interaction among different firms within the enterprise software industry ) and 4) interindustry segment - level strategic interaction (e.g., convergence or collision between computing, telecommunications and consumer electronics firms). Throughout this course we will be examining the impact of technological change (e.g., digitization) and global competitive forces on industry structure and the competitive position of selected firms. There will be a term project in which groups of four students will be asked to locate a local technology-based firm and perform a strategic dynamics audit on this firm or a part of it. Groups are expected to produce progress reports and a final report.

STRAMGT 371 Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation

This course focuses on the strategic management of technology-based innovation in the firm. The purpose is to provide students with concepts, frameworks, and experiences that are useful for taking part in the management of innovation processes in the firm. The course examines how they can be managed effectively. Specific topics include: assessing the innovative capabilities of the firm, managing the Corporate R & D function, managing the interfaces between functional groups in the development function in the firm, understanding and managing technical entrepreneurs, building technology-based distinctive competencies and competitive advantages, technological leadership versus followership in competitive strategy, institutionalizing innovation, attracting and keeping corporate entrepreneurs.

STRAMGT 373 Strategic Thinking in Action—In Business and Beyond

The seminar's aim is to develop participants' ability to create strategically informed action plans that are imaginative, inspiring and workable in highly dynamic environments. The seminar's pedagogy involves informed debate to evaluate and hone well-researched views by the participants and instructors, as well as the writing and presentation of position papers by small groups of seminar participants on the seminar's focal theme. Andy Grove will continue to participate as co-instructor of the seminar, but at a reduced level. In the course of the seminar discussions, we aim to deepen our understanding of strategic dynamics and transformational change at the societal, industry and organizational levels of analysis.

In fall 2010, the focal theme of the seminar will be "The Future Role of Silicon Valley: Prospective Strategic Analyses." Within the overarching theme, we will research four sub-themes. Domain experts for three of the sub-themes have committed to co-leading the related sessions with the instructors (see below).

The four sub-themes are:
1. The role of Silicon Valley in the future of the semiconductor industry. George Cogan, Partner at Bain & Company and expert of the semiconductor industry, will co-lead this sub-theme.
2. The role of Silicon Valley in the future of the computer industry. Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora Inc. and expert of SaaS and cloud computing, will co-lead this sub-theme.
3. The role of Silicon Valley in the future of the automotive industry. Sven Beiker, Executive Director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford - CARS, will co-lead this sub-theme.
4. The role of Silicon Valley in the future of U.S. Employment. Andy Grove will lead this sub-theme.

Two seminar sessions will be devoted to each sub-theme. The first session will be led by the instructors. It will involve discussion of reading material and data and focus on refining the key research questions for the sub-theme. The second session (4 weeks later) will be led by the student team carrying out research on that sub-theme.

Seminar participants will organize into four teams, each one focused on a sub-theme. Each team will research the forces that are shaping the evolving role of Silicon Valley in relation to their sub-theme, try to assess the implications of that evolution for the future of the U.S. economy, and propose executable recommendations for strengthening Silicon Valley's future role. Each team will be expected to produce a monograph (10-15 pages) presenting and discussing its findings and recommendations, to be handed in at the end of the quarter.

STRAMGT 380 Managing Global Businesses

This course is a Bass Seminar. This class focuses on some of the central strategic and organizational problems that arise in managing international businesses, including new market evaluation and entry, cultural conflicts, developing and managing international managers, and organizing to resolve global -local conflicts. The course is run as a seminar. A major part of the course requirement is that each student lead the discussion in one class session. There is a case for each of these sessions, but the responsible student may also assign extra readings and develop other learning materials. Sessions not led by students will feature the instructor and perhaps guest speakers leading the class. The small size of the class means that it is imperative that all students be well prepared for every class and contribute actively and substantively to each class discussion.

STRAMGT 381 Leading Strategic Change in the Health Care Industry

This seminar provides the opportunity for students to study the structure and dynamics of the U.S. health care industry, and some of the ways it intersects with the global health care industry. The U.S. health care industry represents over 15 percent of the nation's GDP and is rapidly changing as a result of government regulatory reform enacted in 2010. The seminar's aim is to develop participants' ability to create strategically informed action plans that are imaginative, inspiring and workable in this highly dynamic environment. The seminar's pedagogy involves informed debate to evaluate and hone well-researched views by the participants and instructors, as well as the writing and presentation of position papers by small groups of seminar participants on the key dynamics of the industry. In the course of the seminar discussions, we aim to deepen our understanding of strategic dynamics and transformational change at the societal, industry and organizational levels of analysis.

After developing a complete picture of the structure of the health care industry and the strategic relationships among the key players - the strategic landscape -, the seminar will focus on how health care reform and other external forces will affect the strategic opportunities and challenges of four types of players in the strategic landscape: (1) Incumbents (e.g., pharmaceutical companies, hospital companies, insurance companies); (2) entrepreneurial startups (e.g., home monitoring, genetic testing companies, information services); (3) cross-boundary disruptors (e.g., health clinics, Wal-Mart, Cisco, Google); and (4) international health care providers (e.g. in Mexico, India, Thailand)

Four student teams will be formed to focus on one of the four types of players. Each team will prepare a research paper focused on determining how their type of player can take advantage of the regulatory, technological, social, cultural and demographic changes, and who will be the likely winners and why. During the first round of discussions (sessions 2-5) all participants will take part in examining the different parts of the competitive landscape. During the second round (sessions 6-9), the different teams will present their research findings and perspectives about the strategic opportunities and threats which exist. As part of the second set of sessions, the instructors will bring in domain experts to further augment the discussion.

STRAMGT 383 Doing Business in China: Challenges and Approaches

Challenges facing international businesses as they take part in China's economic boom. Chinese economic reform, and changes in sino-foreign commercial interaction. Guest lectures by business executives working in China. Student teams participate in negotiation simulation.

STRAMGT 508 Entrepreneurship from the Perspective of Women

There are now over a dozen courses taught on entrepreneurship at the GSB. These courses cover a wide range of topics of interest to the budding entrepreneur and venture capitalists. But what unique challenges do women face when approaching entrepreneurship? This seminar will showcase successful women entrepreneurs and the challenges they encountered in funding, communication styles, lifestyle balance, and paths to success. We will do so with mini-cases, panel discussions, readings, and some social time with experienced entrepreneurs. Men are also welcome to enroll.

STRAMGT 513 New Venture Workshop

This workshop provides students with a forum through which they can receive feedback on a new venture idea. Students who sign up MUST have an idea for a new venture. This idea should be at a relatively EARLY stage - we are not looking for completed business plans (although new venture ideas that are a little further along are not precluded.

Participation in this seminar requires advance preparation. You will receive readings and guidance for what to do prior to September. BY SEPTEMBER 10, 2011 you must have prepared a ten to twenty minute presentation on your idea. As the workshop is limited to 15 students, and there are 15 hours allocated to it, the group will focus on each idea/presentation for about an hour. Students will get experience evaluating new venture opportunities both by commenting on the presentations of other students and by receiving feedback from the professor, outside entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists.

It is fine for students who are already contemplating an idea in a team to sign up - but each student is responsible for a one hour session on a unique idea. To get some idea of what a presentation might look like, you can visit the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies website.

STRAMGT 524 Strategy Implementation

The seminar is built around five company visits to some of the most innovative firms in Silicon Valley. We visit their location, meet with mid-level managers who are encouraged to engage us in candid conversation about the challenges facing the company, and the challenges they personally face on a daily basis to implement their firm's strategy.

Key questions include: What is the role, if any, of middle-managers in helping to formulate strategy? How is the strategy communicated to employees? In what circumstances do middle-managers explicitly invoke the strategy, if at all? What role do middle-managers play in strategic change? Do you distinguish financial and strategic health in your business? If so, do you quantify strategic health? How important is culture to the company's success and how do you reinforce this? What challenges have you faced in managing growth and organizational change at your company? What are the challenges to managing innovation in your company?

The seminar will be particularly useful to students interested in strategy consulting or line management positions where you will participate in the strategy process, or any kind of implementation role. Each day we will spend time in class before each company visit to discuss a reading, the company background, and share reactions to the day's visit (this is an especially important aspect of the experience).

In the past we have visited: Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Ideo, Tesla and Yahoo!, among others. We plan to organize the same or similar visits this year.

STRAMGT 534 Regulation and Strategy in Financial Services

The 1929 stock market crash prompted lasting changes in financial market regulation and investor behavior. These changes destroyed, but also created, opportunities for firms to earn economic rents. At this high level, history seems likely to repeat itself, but the details are still emerging. This course will draw on recent research on behavioral finance, agency conflicts, and regulatory economics to examine how investor behavior creates opportunities for firms to earn rents, how regulation has historically limited or augmented these opportunities, and how the events of the last 5 years are likely to change things.

STRAMGT 543 Entrepreneurial Acquisition

For aspiring entrepreneurs who don't have a burning idea or desire to start a company from scratch, acquiring a small business can provide a direct route to running and growing a business. This class will explore entrepreneurial acquisition (EA), including the Search Fund model. Key topics to be addressed:

• Raising the money to acquire a company and building an investor group
• Conducting a search for a company to buy: analyzing industries, finding resources, creating deal flow and managing relationships
• Evaluating acquisition opportunities, including financial analysis
• Performing due diligence
• Legal considerations
• Structuring and closing the deal
• Assuming leadership from the seller
• Early stages of operating and building the business
• Economics to the entrepreneur and investors
• Partnering or doing it alone

The course will be taught by two GSB alumni who have extensive experience buying small companies and successfully growing them.

STRAMGT 546 Small Business Strategy

We will visit and analyze five local small businesses. (I hope we will visit all five companies but, when it makes more sense logistically, we may meet the manager at the GSB). The companies will vary from very small companies with limited growth plans (for example, one tentatively scheduled company has a small fleet of portable coffee stands) to start-up technology companies with dreams of rapid growth. We will talk with the owners about a wide range of strategic issues, including:

• How are they organized?
• What plans do they have for new lines of business? Why? How do these fit with the current business?
• How do they set prices?
• What incentive systems do they use to manage various types of employees? How do they find new employees? What do they look for when they hire?
• What do they see as their potential sources of competitive advantage?
• Where do they see their companies in 5 years? What will it take to get there?

Before each meeting, we will spend a little time going over basic background information about the company and its industry. After each meeting, we will spend time analyzing the company and its challenges, focusing on what is and is not scalable, if and how the company can insure a profitable strategy going forward, and what strategic changes the company should consider now and as it grows.

Students will be responsible for helping gather background information before the visits. They will be expected to participate in the visits and the discussions before and after the visits. Finally, if time allows, students will make a short presentation on the final day of the class about the strategy of a small business (either one they have worked for, one that they are familiar with, or even just one that they have read about.)

This class is the result of a book project that the instructor is currently working on about small business strategy. He (along with two co-authors) has been visiting small businesses all over the United States (specializing in remote locations and, as luck would have it, extreme weather conditions.) This class brings his small business road trip to Silicon Valley.

STRAMGT 554 Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital

This new course, S554, is a two unit version of the popular course, S354: Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital. Many of America's most successful entrepreneurial companies have been substantially influenced and supported by professionally managed venture capital funds. This relationship is examined from both the entrepreneur's and the venture capitalist's perspective. From the point of view of the entrepreneur, the course considers how significant and global business opportunities are identified, planned, and built into real companies; how resources are matched with opportunity; and how, within this framework, entrepreneurs seek capital and other assistance from venture capitalists, angel investors or other sources. From the point of view of the venture capitalist, the course considers how potential entrepreneurial investments are evaluated, valued, structured, and enhanced; how different venture capital strategies are deployed; and how venture capitalists raise and manage their own funds and add value to their companies.

STRAMGT 559 Aligning Start-ups with Their Market

Most everyone associated with technology start-ups would agree that the most important initial characteristic of a successful endeavor is a compelling vision. The journey from vision to escape velocity is highly dependent on management's ability to translate that vision into a product or service that closely and economically addresses a customer's significant point of pain. Without a tight product market fit, the start-up's offering will not be able to break through the market's gravitational forces which strongly favor existing solutions, resulting in likely failure. With tight product/market fit, it is far more likely the company will achieve repeatable and growing sales success.

Conventional wisdom dictates that a start-up launching a new product should focus its energy understanding what the market wants (problem) and then translating that knowledge into an optimal set of product features (solution). This is the ideal strategy if one is attacking a market that already exists. However if the start-up pursues an entirely new market or re-segments an existing market, customers are unlikely to be able to articulate the benefits and features they will need. The approaches required to pursue new or re-segmented markets are radically different from those applied to existing markets. As a result it is not relentless execution and exploitation of a well understood market that will lead to success, but discovery of a new market or segment that is in need of the product as envisioned. If done well, this process of finding the optimal product/market fit has a disproportionate impact on success. Our intention is to create a course that explores the many issues associated with optimizing product/market fit.

This course requires students to conduct a group research project on a start-up company of their choice. Class participation is important in this course.

STRAMGT 562 Intellectual Property: Financial and Strategic Management

n today's competitive marketplace, smart companies--from Fortune 500 firms to early stage start-ups--rely on innovation to keep them one step ahead of the game. This class will help students understand the value of firms' intellectual property (IP), by thinking strategically about how to effectively leverage the knowledge, trade secrets, patents, technologies, trademarks, structures and processes that are critical to many businesses. The class will focus on the state-of-the-art, best practices related to IP management, and how they are shaped by the legal, economic, strategic, regulatory and market factors.

Through a combination of case studies, class discussion and guest speakers, we will cover a variety of issues shaping a successful IP strategy in today's global business environment. Some of the topics to be covered include:

• Building and managing an IP portfolio that's aligned with business objectives
• Extracting value from the IP portfolio through transactions, such as: licensing, sale, joint ventures and spin offs
• IP valuation in financial reporting, such as: purchase price allocation in M&A
• Tax planning related to IP, including: cross border transfer pricing and IP holding companies
• Review of corporate IP litigation, the principals of IP damages, and key court decisions
• Patent reform and its implication on U.S. corporations and the role of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office
• IP rights challenges while doing business in developing countries

STRAMGT 565 Strategic Decision Making

This compressed course concerns the analysis of strategic decision-making, with an emphasis on the process of "big stakes" analysis in complex corporate settings. The first week is devoted primarily to the tools of this process and to coping with (strategic) unawareness (especially in competitive situations). The second week is devoted primarily to "learning by doing," as we apply the tools developed in the first week to real-life problems. The overall objective of the course is to develop the student's working knowledge of these techniques, so the student can fruitfully apply these techniques on his/her own.

Students will be expected to do approximately 90 minutes of work outside of class each day both weeks. A group project will be the main work product in the second week.

The course will be taught jointly by Carl Spetzler, Chairman, Strategic Decisions Group and Professor Yossi Feinberg.

STRAMGT 567 Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation

This course examines individuals and organizations that use entrepreneurial skills and approaches to develop innovative responses to social problems. Entrepreneurship has traditionally been seen as a way of creating wealth for the entrepreneur and for those who back her/his work. Social entrepreneurs employ "entrepreneurial skills," such as finding opportunities, inventing new approaches, securing and focusing resources and managing risk, in the service of creating a social value. As the intensity and complexity of social and environmental problems has grown in recent years social entrepreneurship, defined as innovative, social value creating activity that can occur within or across the nonprofit, government or business sectors, has become increasingly prominent. While virtually all enterprises, commercial and social, generate social value, fundamental to this definition is that the primary focus of social entrepreneurship is to achieve social impact above all else. We will study some of the most promising and the best-proven innovations for improving people's lives. We will also examine mature projects that are now tackling the issue of "scale", moving from local innovations to solutions that create deep systemic changes for larger numbers of economically disadvantaged individuals and communities throughout the world. This year we will focus on what are the constraints and opportunities for creating a social enterprise at scale. The process of "scale" poses tremendous challenges. Even when organizations manage to overcome the many obstacles to growth, and achieve appreciable scale, this approach is seldom sufficient to achieve significant social impact on its own. This year our course will pay particular attention to network approaches which require the mobilization of a vast array of actors and resources, but have the potential to generate rapid and sustained social impact.

STRAMGT 573 Strategic Thinking in Action - In Business and Beyond (I)

This five-session 2-point Bass seminar will involve students (maximum 12) in analyzing three topics: (1) U.S. vs. PRC job creation strategies, (2) U.S. vs. Canadian immigration strategies, and (3) translational medicine strategies. The purpose of the seminar is to help students sharpen their skills in leading strategic change in and of large, complex, multi-layered systems. While the instructors will provide relevant prereadings related to these topics, students will be expected to complement these materials with their own research of theoretical and empirical sources. Class discussions will focus on the three analytical topics and students will be expected to help structure the discussion and move it forward toward conclusions. Students will organize into three teams each focused on one of the topics and prepare a five-to-ten page group report of their most important findings and conclusions that extend current knowledge.

STRAMGT 574 Strategic Thinking in Action - In Business and Beyond (II)

This five-session 2-point Bass seminar will involve students (maximum 18) in analyzing the emerging global electric automotive industry by focusing on: (1) The electric automotive industry in the U.S. and Europe, (2) the electric automotive industry in Japan and Korea, and (3) the electric automotive industry in China. We will each time examine the strategies of the key automotive companies as well as that of the government and other key players such as infrastructure providers. The purpose of the seminar is to help students sharpen their skills in identifying facilitating and impeding forces of strategic change, and in assessing and estimating the direction and rate of strategic change. While the instructors will provide relevant prereadings related to these topics, students will be expected to complement these materials with their own research of theoretical and empirical sources. They will also be expected to help structure the discussion and move it forward toward conclusions. Students will organize into three teams each focused on one of the regions and prepare a five-to-ten page group report of their most important findings and conclusions that extend current knowledge.

STRAMGT 577 Strategic Interactions

This course will cover advanced game theoretical tools and their application to competitive and cooperative interactions. Game theory provides an analytical method for modeling decision makers, their actions, preferences, information, dynamics and decision making process. Complex strategic environments usually do not yield themselves to a simple game structure. We will confront this problem by studying advanced technical material such as incomplete information games, refinements, modeling bounded rationality, dynamic interactions, reasoning and games with unawareness. Armed with these tools we'll provide both normative and predictive solutions to sample cases.