Electives
Students may choose from more than 130 elective courses at Columbia Business School and supplement them with more than 4,000 graduate-level classes from the University’s other graduate and professional schools.
Among the most popular electives at Columbia Business School are the following:
Master Classes
Among students’ many elective options are the newly developed Master Classes. Each Master Class focuses on a specific industry context (e.g., media, real estate, consulting) and draws significant input from the professional community via group projects, guest speakers, adjunct faculty and alumni participation. With substantial project work and practitioner involvement, Master Classes provide students with a unique exposure to real-time business challenges.
Economics of Strategic Behavior
Offering an excellent background for all consultants, managers and corporate finance generalists, this course examines the economics of successful business strategy — from the dynamics of entering an industry and the strategic imperatives of competitive markets to the sources of competitive advantage.
Financial Statement Analysis and Earnings Quality
Recent events underscore the importance of this course, in which students learn how to glean information about a firm’s current and past performance from financial statements. Students will also gain a deeper understanding of specific financial statements from a user’s perspective, particularly focusing on issues of earnings quality, as well as more advanced topics related to mergers and acquisitions and consolidated financial reporting.
Introduction to Venturing
This course challenges students to consider how appropriate an entrepreneurial career may be for them. An overview of the entrepreneurial process, the course covers such topics as characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, techniques for finding and screening ideas, entrepreneurial finance, the politics of new ventures, valuation and deal making, writing a business plan, buying a business, family business dynamics and managing crisis and failure.
Launching New Ventures
Students work individually or in teams to develop a comprehensive and effective presentation of a real business concept. Faculty, industry mentors and others help students distill business opportunities into a written and oral presentation ready to seek funding and commence operations.
Managerial Negotiations
Recognizing the critical role that negotiations play in management, this course — one of the most celebrated electives at the School — uses actual negotiations, as well as concepts from the behavioral sciences, economics and game theory, to hone students’ negotiating skills.
Modern Political Economy
Beginning with Adam Smith, this course examines leading political economists’ theoretical contributions to the development of capitalism. It focuses on the effects of international business on the development of American capitalism and the nation-state.
Operations Consulting
This Master Class is a hands-on laboratory in which student teams work on real-world consulting projects representing diverse industries and 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. Throughout the term the teams will interact intensely with the client organization and receive feedback and critiques on their work.
Retailing: Design and Marketing of Luxury Goods
Bringing together Columbia MBA students and the Parsons School of Design undergraduates, this course provides students with the tools to address the idiosyncrasies of the luxury industry by studying issues various aspects of the business, from design, production and management to distribution and promotion. Students work in teams on company-sponsored projects focusing on product design, communication design and interior design.
Security Pricing: Models and Computations
This course examines the development of models for security pricing, portfolio analysis and risk management. Particular attention is given to computer-based models for option pricing and hedging; mean variance analysis; multi-period portfolio optimization; analysis of the term structure; and interest rate-sensitive securities, including swaps, “swaptions” and mortgage-backed securities. Techniques include binomial methods, Monte Carlo simulation, linear and quadratic programming and regression.
Seminar in Value Investing
Designed to develop the approach to investments and security analysis pioneered by Columbia professors Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, this course details the comprehensive statistical evidence in favor of such an approach and the types of investments that are likely to be fruitful targets of a value approach. Lecturers and visiting speakers — successful practicing value investors — have included Warren Buffett, MS ’51; Robert Bruce, MBA ’70; Mario Gabelli, MBA ’67; and Charles “Chuck” Royce, MBA ’63.
Top Management Process
How do general managers get things done? Typically, they work through processes, or sequences of tasks and activities that unfold over time. This course explores six top management processes: strategy, resource allocation, decision making, learning, managerial decision making and change.
Turnaround Management
Turnarounds require an integrated view of accounting, corporate finance, cash flow and balance-sheet projections, debt restructuring and liquidation analysis, and credit relationships. Students examine these concepts from the general manager’s perspective through group-oriented projects.
