MBA and Sloan Elective Courses: Strategic Management
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 addresses the issues faced in starting a new venture. It 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 as well as those who want to understand the entrepreneurial process as a background for other careers. The course deals with case situations from the point of view of the entrepreneur/manager rather than the passive investor. It takes the perspective of a general manager who must understand and lead an entire enterprise. 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. The examples will be drawn from a variety of different settings, principally in high tech (consistent with the interests and backgrounds of the instructors).
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. The course is team taught by two faculty members with substantial venture capital experience and a third faculty member with substantial entrepreneurial experience.
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 management practice.
STRAMGT 356. Evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities
The primary objectives of the course are to sharpen students’ skills in opportunity evaluation; help them understand the tasks, decisions, and knowledge that are required to turn an idea into a sound business opportunity; and provide a setting for integration and extension of knowledge of the functional areas through the development of a comprehensive plan for a new business. The course is organized around a project. The initial phase will be dominated by identifying a business opportunity. This will be followed by the evaluation and development of a detailed business plan for pursuing the opportunity, and a presentation to a panel of faculty, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs.
STRAMGT 359. Aligning Start-ups with Their Market
Entrepreneurs are challenged to gain market acceptance for their products or services. Often, the markets served by entrepreneurs are poorly understood, and their potential customers are not yet well understood. Neither are the technologies, products, and services of an entrepreneur clearly understood, nor have they typically survived a market test. This course looks at the problem of aligning start up organizations with their markets under these difficult and ambiguous conditions. The course concentrates especially on start ups featuring new or changing technologies.
STRAMGT 366. Evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities
This course is the second quarter continuation of STRAMGT 356. Usually only those enrolled in STRAMGT 356 during the Winter Quarter are eligible to enroll. If a new student is going to replace another on a team, permission must be obtained from the instructor assigned to that team. The STRAMGT 356 Course Overview, STRAMGT 356 Administrative Notes, and STRAMGT 356 Administrative Notes, all part of the Winter Quarter syllabus, contain the pertinent information about both quarters of this course. The grade distribution applies to the Spring quarter portion of this course and will be combined with the Winter quarter portion to arrive at the final grade for the course.
STRAMGT 368. Strategic Management of Nonprofits
This course seeks to provide an overview of the strategical, governance, and management issues facing nonprofit organizations in the era of venture philanthropy and social entrepreneurship, including the similarities and differences between the nonprofit and business sectors. After examining the economic, historic, and legal characteristics of the nonprofit sector, the students will examine a series of strategic and governance issues representative of those confronting the individual not-for-profit enterprise and its leadership, from the point of view of both the executive director/CEO and its board. Specifically, the student will examine the relationship and implications of mission and strategy and explore the characteristics and implications of board leadership and its effect on governance. The student will also be introduced to core managerial issues uniquely defined by this sector such as nonprofit finance, development/fundraising, investment management, and the management of volunteers and professionals. Cases involve a range of nonprofits including education, social service, environment, health care, and performing arts. In exploring these issues, this course builds upon the frameworks and concepts of strategic management introduced in the first year core courses.
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 the development of competitive strategies by firms in a highly interrelated industry by examining case studies, all set in the information processing industry of the 1990s and 2000s. At various times, analysis is at the firm level (development of corporate strategies), at the intra-firm level (how were strategies developed and implemented), at the industry-segment level (e.g., semiconductors or personal computing), and at the inter-industry?segment level (e.g., interplay of semiconductors and personal computing). Credit will not be given for both STRAMGT 370 and 373.
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 innovative processes in the firm. The course examines how such processes may change the strategic direction of the firm and 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 process, managing the new business 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, and attracting and keeping corporate entrepreneurs.
STRAMGT 373. Strategic Thinking in Action—In Business and Beyond
This course is a Bass Seminar. This seminar focuses on strategy making in highly dynamic industries. It will examine in depth the strategic evolution and future direction of major market segments and companies in the information technology industry broadly defined. The seminar will be organized in 10 weekly-held sessions of 3 hours each. Sessions will focus on the computing, telecommunications, news and media, and entertainment market segments, among others. The discussions will examine topics such as the effects of technological change (especially digitization), deregulation, social movements (e.g., open source software, stock market gyrations, geopolitical changes, and other forces leading to industry convergence and/or industry "horizontalization" or "verticalization."
STRAMGT 385. International Business
This is a foundation course, which addresses fundamental issues in developing international strategies and managing in the international environment. The course is in three parts, which are closely linked. The first is concerned with the special nature of the international environment and its impact on firm strategy and operations, with attention to the financial, cultural, political and economic complexities of foreign environments. This section includes sessions on foreign direct investment, culture, foreign exchange exposure management and other issues that arise in cross-border operations. In the second part we consider country-specific variables that influence the competitiveness of firms and the attractiveness of countries to foreign investors and traders. We study opportunities in several large emerging countries, and analyze the investment climate and alternative strategies for entering and growing in these markets. We consider the relative merits of exporting, licensing, direct investment and joint ventures, in the search for a balance between opportunity and risk. This section includes a realistic simulated negotiation of a joint venture in China. In the third section, we will look at the forces that stimulate firms to seek global operating economies, on the one hand, and responsiveness to local customers, on the other, and how these pressures interact with the firm's strengths to create a regional or global approach to international strategy. The importance of managing the generation and diffusion of knowledge across the corporate network is a critical concern in dealing with these pressures. The course concludes by examining leadership in the organizational transformation of international companies. The course uses a combination of case studies, problems, lectures and discussion, over a wide variety of companies and countries.
