Business Frameworks
Description
Instructor
Russ Rosenzweig
The Institute of Design's Business Frameworks course is a rigorous program of study in business strategy. The course is designed to serve as an "MBA primer" covering various topics in the business school literature such as new venture strategy, competitive strategy, marketing strategy and tactics, decision sciences, entrepreneurship, private equity, business plan writing, innovation, leadership, introductory finance, and "self-discovery."
Methods
This course will build a series of non-mathematical models of success and failure in both entrepreneurial (mostly) and corporate settings (secondarily). This will be accomplished through intensive case analysis of both archival and current situations, as well as through deep, critical readings of articles drawn from the management strategy literature.
By the end of the course, each student should be well-trained to formulate a new business idea, realistically assess risk in various entrepreneurial and corporate schemes, and to make a presentation to prospective customers/backers.
The learning objectives for the course are as follows:
• Gain a broad understanding of the business strategy topics taught in leading MBA programs.
• Evaluate the strategy literature critically, with an eye towards building a set of tools and frameworks that you will use when making business decisions.
• Build out a set of frameworks for writing and assessing business plans.
• Build out a set of frameworks for understanding different types of business strategies, and understand which are weak and which are strong.
• Understand the roles and structure of venture capital firms and their criteria for funding businesses
• Understand how to evaluate data presented in a business case
• Gain a basic understanding of finance, private equity, and valuation
• Understand the product development lifecycle and gain a basic understanding of technology strategy
• Develop a rigorous understanding of "classic" marketing strategy and tactics including the "3C/4P" analysis.
• Understand the risks and pitfalls of image marketing and the challenges involved in creating and sustaining an image
• Explore the myths and realities of the "first mover advantage"
• Understand important themes in the behavioral science literature such as causation, framing, metadecisions, boundaries, reference points, metaphors, judgment overconfidence, seeking disconfirming evidence, etc.
• Review literature on topics related to leadership and creativity
To summarize, participants can expect the following outcomes from the course:
Context: the strategic issues and challenges involved in creating and managing ventures (independently, and within larger organizations)
Concepts: conceptual frameworks and analytical tools for addressing these issues and challenges
Cognition: improved "big picture" understanding of events, trends, and drivers in the global economy and in the management realm
Collaboration: working in teams to analyze cases, think critically, and present ideas
Format & Grading
• Three 2-page written assignments, to be completed in teams: 10% of total grade each (30% in total.)
• Perceptual map presentation, to be completed in teams: 10% of total grade
• Class participation: 20%
• Final business plan presentation, to be completed in teams: 40%
