Master Classes - Fall 2008
MBA Master Classes - Fall 08
Advertising, Branding and Creativity (January 12-16 block week) – Gita Johar and Yoni Stern (SIT Sr. Strategy Trainer)
- 36 student limit (28 MBA / 8 EMBA)
- 2ND year MBA students and 3rd term and above EMBA students
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
The objective of Advertising, Branding and Creativity is two-fold: (1) to enhance your ability to think creatively, and (2) to expose you to cutting edge marketing tools, methods and cases. In this hands-on course, you will learn tools to help you tackle almost any marketing challenge more creatively. These tools come from Systematic Inventive Thinking® (SIT -- www.sitsite.com), practiced by more than 600 companies worldwide, and will be taught by co-faculty Yoni Stern who is the Manager of SIT’s US Operations and their Senior Facilitator and Trainer for Strategy. You will apply the tools you learn to an advertising challenge faced by a large CPG brand. The client will work closely with the class through the week. Mornings will consist of lectures and case discussions on setting advertising objectives, message strategy, measuring effectiveness and media strategy. Every afternoon we will work intensively on a real advertising challenge from a CPG in a workshop format. At the end of the week, you will know how to develop innovative ideas for communication activities; how to conduct constructive assessment of creative work; how to align brand, product, and communications; and how to write an effective communication brief and will present your project solution(s) to the client.
Communications, Internet, and Media – Eli Noam and Robert Atkinson (Prof. of Finance and Economics, and former executive of telecom startup)
- 36 student limit
- 2nd year MBA students
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
The course consists of supervised team projects of students with companies. It begins with weekly lectures on the business dynamics, drivers, technologies, and policy framework of the telecom/internet/media industries. There will be analyses of notable success and failure stories, with the participation of industry insiders, in order to provide teams with a sufficient basis for their consulting assignments. Teams interested in entrepreneurialism will focus on the internet, new media, and content projects. Teams oriented to finance and strategy will work with established telecom and media companies that are trying to adapt to new challenges. In the aggregate, the projects will provide understanding and skills for dealing with management challenges in a sector characterized by rapid change and boom-bust cycles, and to integrate the MBA curriculum with management practice in a feedback loop. Teams will be asked to account for the MBA tools they have utilized in the process. Each consulting team will deliver a report and presentation to senior management at the company, and to their fellow students.
Creation of a Retail Enterprise – Mark Cohen
- 36 student limit
- 2ND year MBA students
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
This course will trace the path of a retail enterprise from ideation to implementation. The course will migrate from a macro to micro view of all activities which must be engaged in to actually launch a retail enterprise. A retail enterprise could take the form of a “brick and mortar” store, a catalog, a web based business, or any combination thereof. The retail enterprise created on desktop will potentially be an actual opportunity which students may have the opportunity to join, in an actual real world setting, once the course work has been completed.
Initial ideas will be identified, edited, and then a specific idea will be selected and validated with respect to market capacity, competitive opportunity and economic viability. From this starting point a business plan will be created, a financing strategy will be created, and organizational, operational, merchandising, and marketing plans will be formulated. The course will be broadly divided into two halves: Planning and Implementation. The course will be presented through a combination of structured lectures, team assigned work projects and presentations, and select guest appearances of individuals whose specific area of expertise will aid the class in accomplishing its final objective: the launch of a viable retail business. These outside “experts” will represent areas such as investment banking, organizational design, operations, logistics and systems planning, real estate planning, store design, etc.
Education Leadership Consulting – Amy Rosen
- 36 student limit (30 MBA / 6 Teachers College Education Leadership Program, SIPA Master of Public Administration or Law students)
- 2ND year MBA and final year Teachers College ELP, SIPA MPA or Law students
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
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- Pre-term assignment: Advanced readings and brief survey to be distributed via Angel in early August
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Integrated Communication and New Media – Jeremy Kagan
- 36 student limit
- 2ND year MBA students
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
The Integrated Communication and New Media Master Class will allow students to work with senior executive teams from client companies and their advertising agencies to develop strategic marketing recommendations for integrating new media marketing channels into their advertising, sales, and customer communications channels. The course will be offered in the fall to mesh with the strategic planning cycle of client and agency teams for 2009 brand and company marketing strategies. Students will develop a strategic marketing plan for presentation to client decision-makers integrating new media into corporate and brand strategic marketing plans, including advertising campaigns, customer communications, and brand communities and customer service. The student teams will review the competitive landscape and devise operational recommendations using a variety of interactive channels and new media strategies to reach overall strategic goals and support traditional media buys, “brick and mortar” retail efforts, and customer relationship management (CRM) plans. Plans will include:
- Interactive advertising plans including search, OLA, social media, branded entertainment, and microsites, etc;
- Customer communications strategies encompassing email, blogs, branded communities, and life cycle management, where appropriate;
- Research and metrics for success recommendations including both primary and secondary research, to ensure success guidelines and a focus on measurable return on investment;
- Thorough reviews of the competitive environment and best-in-class marketing as it applies to the client.
New Product Development – Olivier Toubia
- 36 student limit
- 2ND year MBA students
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
This course deals with the challenge of bringing to market elegant and efficient solutions to strong customer needs. Students will learn and apply (in the context of their projects) state of the art frameworks, concepts and tools that have been recently validated by innovative companies. The projects will consist of developing a new product for a client company involved in the course (a large CPG manufacturer). Students may identify and work for an alternative client company if they wish (e.g., their own or someone else’s startup - pending approval from the instructor). The projects as well the whole course will be structured around the following basic steps of the innovation process: 1) Opportunity identification 2) Idea generation 3) Design 4) Testing 5) Launch. Students should expect at least 3 hours of team work each week outside of the classroom.
Private Equity and Entrepreneurship in Africa - Murray Low and Paul E. Tierney, Jr.
- 36 student limit (30 MBAs / 6 SIPA/Law students)
- 2ND year MBA students or equivalent if SIPA or Law School student
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
Private Equity and Entrepreneurship in Africa (PEEA) examines how private equity investors and entrepreneurial managers design, negotiate and execute financial agreements that make use of resources and opportunities in the challenging environments of continental Africa (sub-Saharan and North Africa). Through case studies and guest lecturers students will learn about successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs and financiers. Up to 36 students will conduct semester long consulting or case study projects with Private Equity firms focused on Africa and African companies identified by our African business school partners or other sources. Student representatives of each team will be required to travel to Africa for a two week field study during the winter break (travel to commence after December 20th); these representatives may be able to cover most of the cost through student loans by working with Financial Aid
Students travel to Africa for a two week field study during the winter break. Each team will produce a consulting report, a case study or an analysis of a particular financial transaction. The materials will become available to other business schools in Africa and the West. Approximately half of the student teams will work with financial (PE) firms and half with operating entrepreneurs as sponsors/clients.
Quantitative Investments - Andrew Ang
- 36 student limit
- 2ND year MBA students
- Prerequisites: H in B6301 (Corporate Finance) and H in B6302 (Capital Markets + Investments)
- Attendance of first class and 2 classes on Friday, September 5 and 12 is mandatory
The course will deliver the theory and quantitative tools necessary for active quantitative portfolio management, concentrating on quantitative stock selection models. The course will cover the fundamental concepts of asset valuation using quantitative models incorporating time-varying risk and risk premiums, implementing forecasts from those models, controlling for risk, and benchmarking portfolio performance. The class will explain the economics behind different strategies and how these theories can, or in some cases cannot, explain the returns and risk associated with these strategies.
Teams will propose and implement their own quantitative investment strategy using Factset software, which is the tool used by many investment banks and buy-side firms. Alphatester, within Factset, will be used to backtest quantitative strategies and Northfield/BARRA/Axioma will be used to optimize the strategies. Team work will be intensive and teams will receive feedback from industry quant experts.
Retailing Strategy and Operations - Nelson Fraiman and Burt Steinberg
- 36 student limit
- 2ND year MBA students
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
This course is designed to be a hands-on introduction to all aspects of retailing not just merchandising. The course will be devoted to models and case studies in locational strategy (including Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, etc), operations (Zara, etc) and merchandising (many examples). Students will then apply what they have learned in real consulting projects for actual retail firms. The combination of focus on one particular industry and performance of a real world analysis should reinforce the broad general lessons that students have accumulated through the MBA program.
EMBA Master Classes - Fall 08
Market Innovation - Bernd Schmitt
- 36 student limit
- 3rd term and above EMBA students
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
In this hands-on, project-based master class, students will learn how to create a bold strategy that has the potential to change a market. They will learn concepts and tools to come up with the idea, evaluate it, turn it into a strategy and implement it. The class will be lecture based, consulting and project based. The final deliverable will be a strategic plan fleshing out the big idea.
New Product Development (December 8-12 block week / Paris) – Olivier Toubia
- 36 student limit
- 3rd term and above EMBA students
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
This course deals with the challenge of bringing to market elegant and efficient solutions to strong customer needs. Students will learn and apply (in the context of their projects) state of the art frameworks, concepts and tools that have been recently validated by innovative companies. The projects will consist of developing a new product for a client company involved in the course. Students may identify and work for an alternative client company if they wish (e.g., their own or someone else’s startup - pending approval from the instructor). The projects as well the whole course will be structured around the following basic steps of the innovation process: 1) Opportunity identification 2) Idea generation 3) Design 4) Testing 5) Launch
