MBA Master Classes - Fall 09
B9677-06 Advertising, Branding and Creativity (January 11-15 block week 9am-5pm) - Gita Johar
- 36 student limit
- 2ND year MBA students
- Attendance mandatory for all classes
- NOTE: there will be 2 mandatory class meetings on October 30th and November 13th, 10:45 to 2:00, Uris 333
The objective of this block-week course on 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®, practiced by more than 600 companies worldwide. 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. 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.
B9877-004 The Business of Sustainability - Garrett van Ryzin and Klaus Lackner
- 36 student limit (30 MBA / 6 Environmental Engineering students)
- 2nd year MBA students or equivalent if Engineering School student
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
- NOTE: Student are required to have non-binding commitments on each Friday of the semester to ensure that site visits and field work can be conducted with minimal scheduling conflict. Students must also be present through the end of finals week to provide their final briefing to the instructors and client in person. Students who cannot meet these requirements should not take the class.
This new “green/sustainability” Master Class will be in partnership with the Engineering School’s Earth and Environmental Engineering division. This course will be co-taught by business school and engineering school faculty members Garrett van Ryzin (www4.gsb.columbia.edu/cbs-directory/detail/494935/Garrett+van+Ryzin) and Klaus Lackner (Chair, Earth and Environmental Engineering - Director, Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at the Earth Institute–here is a video of him on NOVA in July 2008 www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0302/03.html).
The students will explore the green/sustainability industry as a whole led by faculty and industry professionals lectures and will then have the opportunity to apply that gained knowledge by focusing on a specific real-world semester long "green" project -- the closely mentored student teams, working with corporate project sponsors, will be comprised of both final year MBA and Environmental Engineering students. We are currently collecting projects from organizations such as Mayor Bloomberg’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, the Clinton Foundation Climate Control Initiative and the Tribeca Film Festival and Institute.
B9377-05 Communications, Internet, and Media Eli Noam, Raul Katz and Robert Atkinson (respectively, Prof. of Finance and Economics, former head of Booz Allen’s telecom consulting practice in the Americas and former executive of a 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 includes lectures on how to do consulting and for thinking about the business dynamics, drivers, technologies, and policy framework of the telecom/internet/media industries. There will also 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 written report and presentation to senior management at the company, and to their fellow students.
B9677-009 Creating, Distributing and Marketing Media in the Digital Age - Jeremy Kagan and Sree Sreenivas
- 36 student limit (30 MBA / 6 Journalism students)
- 2ND year MBA students or equivalent if Journalism School student
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
In this Master Class students will work with senior executive teams from client media companies to develop strategic frameworks and marketing plans for traditional media brands to succeed in the today’s digital environment.The course will be offered in the fall to mesh with the 2010 strategic planning cycle of the management of the client companies.
Students will develop a strategic plan for presentation to client decision-makers integrating digital media into corporate and brand strategic marketing plans, including distribution channels, marketing campaigns, pricing strategies, and operational management of content creation and distribution. 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, including recognizing the channel conflict of more traditional media distribution channels.
Plans will include
- Strategic industry/sector overviews of the client’s current state as well as the competitive assessment and innovation landscape;
- Operational strategies regarding creating and disseminating content using digital channels and methods;
- Marketing strategies including distribution recommendations for digital media, mobile and social channels, pricing strategies, and competitive and channel conflict analysis;
- Research and metrics for success recommendations including both primary and secondary research, to ensure success guidelines and a focus on measurable return on investment
The Digital Media Master class will allow students to help senior executive teams from traditional media companies, venture funded challengers, and interactive divisions of established companies examine the strategic environment facing their businesses today, and formulate recommendations and action plans to achieve their goals. In the areas of online content, e-commerce, and enabling web technologies, student teams will find new market entry strategy, product and pricing challenges, and competitive tactics all areas for possible assignments.
Possible clients include a magazine publisher, a music company, a television channel, a financial news provider, and other leading media properties. Students will be expected to clearly define the scope of the problem and a working plan towards a solution, meet regularly and provide updates to senior clients, and finally present their recommendations and supporting analyses to the client sponsors.
B9677-08 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 move from a macro to micro view of all activities which must be carried out to launch a retail enterprise. This enterprise could take the form of a "brick and mortar" store, a catalog, a web based business, or any combination thereof. The business (or businesses) that we explore as an exercise may potentially represent a real world opportunity which members of the class may choose to pursue once the course has been completed.
Initial ideas will be identified, edited and reviewed, and then a specific idea (or select ideas) will be chosen and validated with respect to market capacity, competitive opportunity and economic viability. From this point we will build business plans encompassing financial strategy, and organizational, operational, product, merchandising and marketing plans.
The course will be organized in two parts: business planning and implementation. The course will be presented through a series of lectures, workshops, team assigned work projects and presentations, and select guest appearances by individuals from the retail community who represent specific disciplines such as merchandising, operations, marketing, organizational design, systems, store design and real estate planning.
B9677-012 Managing Strategic Customers – Noel Capon and Christoph Senn
- 36 student limit (26 MBA / 10 EMBA)
- 2ND year MBA students and 3rd term and above EMBA students
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
The Master Class in strategic account management embraces the process of identifying the firm’s current and future critical customer assets and putting in place management systems designed to increase revenues and profits through enhanced customer loyalty. The purpose of this course is to prepare students for roles in strategic/key and global account management. Students will develop a powerful framework and in depth experience for addressing strategic account issues through a combination of lecture/discussion, case studies, guest speakers, and a term-long project designed to address a current problem with which management is struggling. Participating firms are Marriott, Hitachi, and Schneider Electric.
B9877-01 Operations Consulting - Peter Kolesar and Robert Phillips
- 36 student limit
- 2ND year MBA students
- Prerequisites: All core courses
- This course will be challenging and will require substantial effort in and outside of class
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
This course is a hands-on laboratory in which firm-sponsored, real-world consulting projects are attacked by student teams under the guidance of experienced professors. Students will bid on a pre-selected portfolio of projects in diverse industries and across varied problem types. The course has been designed and is delivered with substantial participation by major consulting firms. Students learn consulting skills and leading edge practices through guest lectures by senior consultants at these firms. At mid course the teams will also present to and be critiqued by the participating consultants. At term end each team presents their action oriented recommendations to senior management at their client organizations. Throughout the term the teams will interact intensely with the client organization and receive frequent support from the professors. The course has had a high project implementation success rate. This course should be of interest to those with career objectives in entrepreneurialism and general management, as well as in general consulting, and of course in operations.
B9777-04 Private Equity and Entrepreneurship in Africa - Murray Low and Paul E. Tierney, Jr.
- 36 student limit (30 MBA / 3 SIPA / 3 Law students)
- 2ND year MBA students or equivalent if SIPA or Law School student
- Attendance of first class is mandatory
- Student representatives of each team will be required to travel to Africa for a two week field study during the winter break; these representatives may be able to cover most of the cost through student loans by working with Financial Aid.
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 consulting or case study assignments with Private Equity firms focused on Africa and African companies identified by our African business school partners or other sources. 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.
B9377-06 Quantitative Investments - Andrew Ang and Jim Scott (Promark Global Advisors)
- 36 student limit
- 2ND year MBA students
- Prerequisites: H in B6301 (Corporate Finance) and H in B6302 (Capital Markets + Investments)
- Attendance of first class 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 MarketQA (or Thomson QA), which is a data and analytics package with its own programming script, and BARRA/Axioma, which are portfolio optimizers. These software packages are used by many quantitative asset managers. Teams will receive feedback from industry quant experts. Students should expect heavy workloads possibly involving data collection and/or manipulation, model development and testing, and especially programming.
B9677-10 Retailing: Design & Marketing of Luxury Products - Ketty Maisonrouge, Heico Wesselius and Carlos Teixeira (Parsons)
- 30 CBS student limit (30 MBA / 20 Parsons students)
- 2ND year MBA students
- All classes and meetings are mandatory. Students who do not attend the first class and do not contact me prior to that class will be automatically dropped from the course.
- Prerequisites: Marketing Strategy core course, and need to have read “Marketing Research” by Donald R. Lehmann, Sunil Gupta and Joel Steckel: chapters 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9
- This course will be challenging and will require substantial time and effort in and outside of class: Each student will have to attend FOUR team meetings on Fridays with Professor Maisonrouge and their team’s senior executives at their company’s headquarters in Manhattan
- TENTATIVE MEETING DATES: 9/18/09 ; 10/9/09 ; 10/30/09; and 11/20/09 (All Dates TBC)
This class addresses the unique properties, opportunities, and challenges of the luxury industry by studying issues relevant to the field in the various aspects of the business, from design, production and management to distribution and promotion. The course structure includes presentations (by faculty and by industry presidents, CEOs, and senior executives), discussions, and the team projects.
In this semester-long course, MBA students from Columbia Business School work in teams of 9 with undergraduate students from Parsons School of Design (6 MBA and 3 or 4 Parsons students) to solve actual case studies formulated exclusively for this class by the participating companies. The following companies will participate in the spring 2009 semester: ASSOULINE, BULGARI, CHANEL, LOUIS VUITTON, LVMH PERFUMES & COSMESTICS.
Each team will work closely with faculty from both Columbia Business School and Parsons the New School for Design, and their company’s senior executive(s). Teams will present progress report(s) throughout the semester to the class, the faculty and the client, and a final presentation in front of the class and all participating companies.
EMBA Master Classes - Fall 09
B9677-012 Managing Strategic Customers – Noel Capon and Christoph Senn (see description above)
New Product Development (December 7-11 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
