Courses

• GSM PL 835: Real Estate Management
  This is an introductory course that covers the basics of real estate investing and managing. Subject materials include mortgages, lenders, forms of ownership, tax laws effecting real property, financial analysis and valuation techniques.
• GSM PL 837: Strategic Fundraising and Corporate Philanthropy
  This course is designed for future civic, business and nonprofit leaders who will be in the position of raising funds or giving away funds for charitable purposes at some point in their career. Whether for your child?s school, the local little league or symphony, or a cause you care deeply about, you will want to know the fundamentals of raising or giving away money. This course explores the topic of strategic fundraising and philanthropy in three modules. The first explores the history, trends and current topics in philanthropy using case studies and current events. The second module provides students with specific tools and lessons in strategic fundraising and gives students an opportunity to apply these skills within a nonprofit of their choice. Finally the course examines how corporations can use their philanthropic efforts to further the strategy and goals of the business.
• GSM PL 842: Real Estate Development
  The course provides a framework for evaluating the aspects underlying successful real estate development from concept and feasibility, through site control to regulatory review and construction. The course is taught utilizing class discussion, cases and outside speakers to reinforce the functional areas in the development process.
• GSM PL 845: Improving Your Decisions
  The main aim of ?Improving Your Decisions? is to present many of the decision problems managers face and to identify the most effective ways to make sound decisions -- as well as the pitfalls, biases, and mistakes that should be avoided. A key element of the course is to present students with a series of decision challenges: What would you do? In other words, you must come to grips with actual decisions and defend your actions. The assigned readings also convey the most recent research findings in behavioral economics: how individuals and managers actually make decisions. The second half of the course centers on group decision making: how groups with common and not-so-common interests decide. A key topic here is the art and science of negotiation, thereby shifting the focus of attention from individual choices to competitive decisions. Again, students are challenged to test their group decision making skills and strategies in a series of simulations and face-to-face negotiations.
• GSM PL 849: Global Sustainability
  Global Sustainability explores the underpinnings of today?s global sustainability challenges and how entrepreneurial thinking can be applied to government, NGOs, multinational corporations, small startups and the capital markets to address these challenges. Though lecture, case discussion, computer simulation and a unique guest speaker program, students will gain deeper understanding of both root cause, the interconnected and interdependencies across sectors such as energy, the environment and the global food and water supplies along with entrepreneurial thinking, methods, models and practices being employed by innovative individuals and organizations at the forefront in the search for solutions.
• GSM PL 850: Social Entrepreneurship
  The Social Entrepreneurship course is designed to: (1) explore the concepts, practices, opportunities, and challenges of social entrepreneurship; (2) provide frameworks and tools that will help students be more effective in this sector; and (3) provide an opportunity for students to create a business plan for an earned income venture of a nonprofit organization or a new social enterprise. In the business plan project, student teams will partner with external organizations. Students will identify and analyze opportunities, resources, and risks and apply skills from marketing, accounting, organizational behavior, strategy and other disciplines. Special emphasis will be placed on aspects of business planning and organizational strategy that are particularly challenging or distinctive in the social sector, including mission definition, leadership, organizational structure, raising capital, and measuring results.
• GSM PL 853: Improving Business Decisions with Statistical and Optimization Modeling
  This course will improve students' ability to formulate and analyze a wide range of models that can aid in managerial decision-making. Students will use regression models to analyze data and interpret statistical information about the relationships between variables. The course will illustrate how regression analysis can be used for a variety of business applications including asset pricing, predictive analytics, forecasting, and demand estimation. It will then cover unconstrained and constrained optimization, illustrating how these types of models are used for applications including price setting, operations management and portfolio optimization. The class will be highly participatory and hands-on, alternating lecture with collaborative data analysis and problem-solving. Students will build upon knowledge acquired in QM716 and modeling will be performed in Microsoft Excel.
• GSM PL 862: Applied Ethics
  The goal of this course is to help each student develop a methodology for leading an ethical life. Each of the cases focuses on an individual faced with an issue that challenges his/her principles. Students will also explore the kinds of situations that are likely to lead to unethical decisions.
• GSM PL 864: Managing Political, Economic, Social, and Technology and Country Risk
  This case-based course introduces students to conceptual tools and frameworks that allow them to think systematically about environmental changes that restructure companies, industries, and countries, preparing them to deal with those changes. The course explores political, economic, technological, and social change, as well as natural disasters and political risk. Students will map the flow of events and experiences that shape political or business leaders' attitudes and will be introduced to the analyses of countries, systems, trends, stakeholders, scenario developments, cross-impact, and payoff assessments. They will assess probable shifts in stakeholder power within the industry or country and suggest potentially successful leadership and change strategies.
• GSM PL 870: Government, Society and Sustainable Development
  Government, Society and Sustainable Development is a broad and far-reaching course in scope and topics. After an introduction to the concepts of the limits-to-growth and global sustainability challenges resulting from population growth, resource scarcity, environmental degradation and climate change students dive deep into the cultural, societal and economic development issues of globalization, study the implications of globalization on the current social and economic development of nations/regions/industries and explore new development models (for-profit and non-profit entrepreneurship) for sustainable development at the international, national, and sub-national levels. The Course has three major themes: ? The first major theme of the course is a series of country cases that explore the cultural, social, political and economic context in which business enterprise has historically been conducted. ? The second major theme of the course overlays the international institutions that emerged from Bretton Woods; the UN, GATT/WTO, the World Bank and the IMF, (the emerging World Environmental Organization, WEO) onto the country cases and explores emerging topics of international Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and International Environmental Protection (IEP). ? The third major theme of the course explores the emergence of new models of sustainable development; contrasting bottoms-ups collective action and entrepreneurship against classic aid-based models as a force for change and driver of sustainable development.
• GSM PL 882: Public Policy Analysis
  This course explores the economics of the public sector and the impact government policy and programs have on society and business. The course provides students with tools to systematically examine the financing and measure the impact of government policies and regulations. It explores the rationale for government intervention, appropriate levels of intervention and how to measure the effectiveness of policies and regulations. This course is helpful to those who desire a deeper understanding of the central role government plays in the economy and how government impacts the business and nonprofit sectors.
• GSM QM 716: Data Analysis for Managerial Decision-Making
  Managers deal with a large amount of information in quantitative form. Effective managers must understand the conditions under which quantitative techniques may be appropriately applied for decision-making. In this course, students develop skills in using the computer to examine and report data. The focus is on deriving meaning from particular data sets, and the use of statistical estimation, hypothesis testing, and regression/correlation analysis in decision-making.
• GSM QM 717: Data Analysis for Managerial Decision-Making
  Managers deal with a large amount of information in quantitative form. Effective managers must understand the conditions under which quantitative techniques may be appropriately applied for decision-making. In this course, students develop skills in using the computer to examine and report data. The focus is on deriving meaning from particular data sets, and the use of statistical estimation, hypothesis testing, and regression/correlation analysis in decision-making.
• GSM QM 880: Business Analytics: Spreadsheet Optimization and Simulation
  The modeling process illustrated throughout the course will significantly improve students? abilities to structure complex problems and derive insights about the value of alternatives. You will develop the skills to formulate and analyze a wide range of models that can aid in managerial decision-making in the functional areas of business. These areas include finance (capital budgeting, cash planning, portfolio optimization, valuing options, hedging investments), marketing (pricing, sales force allocation, planning advertising budgets) and operations (production planning, workforce scheduling, facility location, project management). The course will be taught almost entirely by example, using problems from the main functional areas of business. This course is not for people who want a general introduction to or review of Excel. This course is for students who are already comfortable using Excel and would like to use it to create optimization and simulation models.
• GSM SI 750: Competition, Innovation, and Strategy
  "Competition, Innovation, and Strategy" is an integrative course designed to capitalize on your understanding of Finance, Operations Management, Marketing, and other functional issues. The course draws on a number of academic disciplines, especially economics, organization theory, and sociology, to build a fundamental understanding of how and why some firms achieve and sustain superior performance. We also study why some firms persistently generate returns that are lower than average. The course is analytically focused and requires that you evaluate both the external environment and the internal capabilities of organizations. Corporate diversification and global management are important topics that are also featured.
• GSM SI 751: Competition, Innovation, and Strategy
  "Competition, Innovation, and Strategy" is an integrative course designed to capitalize on your understanding of Finance, Operations Management, Marketing, and other functional issues. The course draws on a number of academic disciplines, especially economics, organization theory, and sociology, to build a fundamental understanding of how and why some firms achieve and sustain superior performance. We also study why some firms persistently generate returns that are lower than average. The course is analytically focused and requires that you evaluate both the external environment and the internal capabilities of organizations. Corporate diversification and global management are important topics that are also featured.
• GSM SI 814: Intellectual Property Strategies in Life Sciences and Technology
  This course covers the ways in which companies use intellectual property to protect their investments in knowledge assets. Traditionally a concern for technology-intensive businesses, patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets have become important business tools throughout the knowledge-based economy. A good understanding of what IP assets are and how they work has become essential for managers in all types of organizations. This is not a law course, nor a how-to manual rather it is intended to develop your analytical understanding of fundamental economic and legal aspects of intellectual property systems, and how they drive competition and strategy.
• GSM SI 830: Corporate Strategies for Growth
  This course will examine strategies for firm growth that involve expanding the range of the firm?s business activities. We will study strategic logics underlying vertical integration, franchising, related and unrelated diversification, alliances, corporate venturing and spinouts, and other such strategies. We will also study the management challenges associated with these strategies, including designing organizational structures and managerial incentives, managing acquisitions, structuring supplier relationships, and fostering organizational cultures.
• GSM SI 831: Employer Consulting Project I
  For PEMBA students who want to leverage their dual roles as student and employee, this course will allow them to utilize and apply their MBA learning to work on a strategic issue for their current company. The scope, objectives, milestones and deliverables of the project are to be agreed upon by the student, his/her employer and faculty advisor for the course. Periodically over the course of the project the student will have one on one session?s with the professor to report on their progress and receive counseling and feedback in addition to group sessions with other PEMBA students taking SP831 for peer coaching, support and to exchange ideas.
• GSM SI 838: Technology Commercialization and Entrepreneurship: Essential Tools for the New Entrepreneur
  This course addresses the innovative transformation of knowledge into new commercial products and services. The course begins with a rigorous study of intellectual property, licensing and the core aspects of planning, creating, funding and building new entrepreneurial ventures. Concepts and tools are presented for assessing new technologies and their potential to be the basis for a new entrepreneurial venture. Comparisons will be made of how technologies can be sourced and commercialized out of three very different environments: universities, national laboratories and corporate laboratories. Cross-disciplinary teams of students will be formed which will evaluate real technologies and their potential for transformation into a start-up company. Students may bring their own technology ideas to the class for assessment. Each class there will be a case study which will discuss examples of both success and failure in technology commercialization. Many of these case studies examine Boston University spin-out companies, and the founders and CEO?s of these ventures will share their experiences with the class. The course is listed in a number of schools of the University and attracts a diverse mix of students including MBA students, law school students, scientists, engineers and clinicians. This diversity of interest adds significantly to the learning experience.

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