Course Catalog

Fall 2009

B9601-062: Strategy Consulting Skills

MW - Full Term, 12:30PM to 02:00PM

Instructor: hitendra wadhwa

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This course exposes students to the structured problem-solving, communication and trust-building skills used in management consulting. The course is organized around the four phases of a typical strategy engagement: scope definition, problem structuring, data gathering and analysis and recommendations development.  Students get to learn and practice specific consulting tools and principles associated with each of these phases, such as issue trees, hypothesis-driven problem solving, interview guides, triangulation, the pyramid principle and storylines. The course emphasizes hands-on practice and real-time feedback. Formal discussion of consulting tools and skills is supplemented by consulting cases based on real-life engagements. In addition, students work in teams on live consulting projects with organizations in the New York area.  Through these lives projects, students get the opportunity to apply and hone the tools and skills from the course and to get feedback on their work via in-class presentations and one-on-one discussions with the professor.  The tools and skills taught in this course are broadly applicable to strategy problems across all business functions and industries, and besides their relevance to management consulting, they will be valuable to entrepreneurs and managers in the strategy, business-development or marketing-planning aspects of their work.

Please also note the following:  
* In 2009 there will be two sections taught of this course, both in the Fall.  Enrollment is limited to 48 students in each section.
* In addition to the regular Mon-Wed class time over the semester, this course requires ALL enrolled students to attend one full-day session on Saturday, September 12, 8:30 to 5:30.  In return for this extra time, students will gain the following benefits:  (a) exposure early in the semester to key consulting tools and best practices that they can immediately put to use on their live projects and (b) the opportunity to work on their live consulting projects during class hours, on Wednesdays, and to engage with the professor on gaining feedback on their specific challenges and issues.

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Hitendra Wadhwa

Hitendra Wadhwa

Associate Professor of Professional Practice

Professor Wadhwa has thirteen years of professional experience in strategy consulting, quantitative marketing and technology entrepreneurship.

Professor Wadhwa teaches elective MBA and executive-MBA courses on Strategy Consulting Skills, Personal Leadership, Pricing Strategies, Customer Centricity and Marketing Channels. He also consults to corporations and teaches executive seminars on these topics.

Professor Wadhwa is the recipient of the 2007 Lear Award for distinguished service to students and the 2007 Most Engaging and Dynamic Professor Award by the Marketing Association of Columbia.

Prior to Columbia, Professor Wadhwa was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he counseled senior executives on a range of strategy issues. He also founded and led Paramark, a technology company backed by $10 million in venture capital that developed the first real-time optimization platform for online marketing and was selected as a Top 100 Internet Technology company by Technologic Partners/Venture Wire in 2000 and 2001.

Professor Wadhwa received his MBA and Ph.D. from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and his B.A. (Honors in Mathematics) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.

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