Courses

• 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 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 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.
• GSM SI 839: Design and Innovation Strategy
  This class will examine how managers and leaders can create the conditions for innovation at the individual, team and organizational levels ? and how those conditions differ for startup and mature organizations. Managing innovation includes the generation of ideas; the integration of ideas into new product concepts; and the commercialization of ideas. While core strategy courses address the questions of what innovations to pursue and whether and when those innovations will bring value, this course addresses the question of how managers can create organizations to deliver innovations of value. Thus, the course will focus on the practices and processes that mangers need to put in place to enable organizations to execute on an innovation strategy. In doing so, students will evaluate how to balance the challenges of organizing, managing and leading innovation with the need to produce concrete, routine and expected outcomes within the organization. To be innovative, any new idea must resolve the innovation paradox ? introducing enough novelty to appeal to new markets while retaining enough familiarity to tap into existing behaviors. Because design and innovation are frequently inseparable in managing this paradox, the class will assess how design contributes to innovation in product, process and business models across industry sectors. The course will also consider the role that all sources of innovation play ? including communities, networks, brokers and other forms of open innovation. Students will be asked to reflect upon innovations that have been critical to their lives, and how these innovations were produced and gained market traction. Final group projects will explore how to ?rescue? innovations in trouble with turnaround teams.
• GSM SI 841: Strategies for Environmental Sustainability
  Firms in many industries are facing new environmental challenges: these include meeting new regulatory requirements and demands from customers, heightened uncertainty about domestic and international environmental regulation, and intensifying demands for accountability and transparency regarding their environmental efforts and performance. How can managers capitalize on these challenges and turn them into opportunities to create value for their firm? This course focuses on understanding the impact of regulations, customer preferences, and changing industry dynamics that increase the pressure for environmental sustainability in order to evaluate and craft recommendations for firm strategy. This course also helps prepare managers to better understand how to engage these issues with stakeholders, including investors, regulators, and nongovernmental organizations, as well as customers and suppliers.
• GSM SI 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 SI 848: Strategy in High Technology Environments
  This course examines winner-take-all industries in which firms compete fiercely to have their product chosen as the dominant standard. Success is determined not only by a product's features and price, but also by the firm's well-chosen alliances. This course also asks if traditional strategic marketing can be applied to the fast paced, ever evolving, high technology sector. In addition to the core text, assigned readings will include recent high technology case studies, and popular industry text. Current leaders in high technology and venture capital will also be invited to complement course lectures. The final group project will entail "pitching" a high technology business plan (already written) to a panel of judges.
• GSM SI 852: Starting New Ventures
  This course focuses on the process of identifying and obtaining the necessary resources to launch an entrepreneurial venture through the development of a business plan. A well-written business plan will communicate the business concept in a way that attracts the various resource providers necessary for the venture?s success. Students will individually develop a business concept and prepare and present a professional business plan.
• GSM SI 854: Entrepreneurial Finance
  The focus of SI854 is on the development of financial and business skills to identify, evaluate, start and manage new ventures. A comprehensive understanding of finance is an essential ingredient in the "recipe" for business success. No longer can the assumptions underlying financial projections be treated as "black boxes." In many cases, the answer is less important than the analytical process used to calculate it. Readings for the course will primarily be in the form of case studies, and will be supplemented by guest speakers, presentations, and readings from academia and industry.
• GSM SI 855: Entrepreneurship
  The course is a comprehensive introduction to the entrepreneurial process from idea generation through venture launch and later growth. Initial lectures and case studies focus on idea generation and concept feasibility along with the skills, competencies and perspectives entrepreneurs must develop to manage the organization through each phase of development. Later lectures and cases emphasize the issues faced by entrepreneurs in scaling innovative enterprises; use of strategic alliances, attracting funding and managing investors, managing growth expansion and choosing among exit options.
• GSM SI 856: International Entrepreneurship
  This course focuses on international entrepreneurship, covering the development of skills to identify, evaluate, start and manage ventures that are international in scope. Specific topics will include market entry, forming alliances, managing growth and crossborder financing in different regions of the world. Support from local governments and the cultural, ethical, legal, and human resource issues facing the entrepreneur will also be discussed. Readings will primarily be in the form of case studies and will be supplemented with outside articles and guest speakers. Team projects addressing current events, international negotiations, and business strategies will be used to integrate the course material.
• GSM SI 859: Strategy Implementation
  Gain the skills and know-how to manage up and across your organization, passing the normal organizational tests along the way from technical expert to cross-functional integrator to directing the future course of your organization. This is strategy implementation for the middle manager who needs to 1) size-up the situation and 2) determine how to gain the power needed to achieve their objectives. One of the qualitative factors that will be explored in great detail is personal style choice vis à vis different stakeholders and organizational politics and the resultant perceptions of you and your programs. Students will study both successful and less-successful managers through cases and readings, honing their own, personal managerial style.
• GSM SI 863: Strategic and Financial Analysis and Design
  The purpose of this course is to increase students' awareness of what they already know about business and what they can know through strategic corporate financial analysis. Students will use numeric thinking and documentation to reduce uncertainty and to bring the strategic and limiting factors of managerial decisions into focus. The course is appropriate for students who have financial savvy as well as those who want to develop their analytical capabilities. It is case-based, emphasizing business sense first, and developing through first-hand experience a sense of the strengths and limitations of corporate financial data, financial theory and strategic evaluation models. It stresses fast approximate analysis to achieve managerial insights over precise calculation.
• GSM SI 871: Strategies for Bringing Technology to Market
  Strategies for Bringing Technology to Market is a unique course that guides student teams as they undertake commercial go-to-market strategy for scientific and engineering breakthroughs. By collaborating with faculty and graduate students in the University?s research labs and mentors from the business community, teams will assess the economic and social prospects of recent technology innovations, outline the technical and market risks and the key commercial milestones and make recommendations for the most effective commercialization strategy. 

Project work is supported by lectures that focus on critical skills required. Guidance will be provided in assessing critical commercialization milestones by a combination of faculty and mentors from the business community.
• GSM SI 874: Entrepreneurial Sales Strategy
  Focusing on sales strategy and execution as one of the most critical success factors in building entrepreneurial ventures, the course will enable students to develop the practical knowledge and specific skills necessary to maximize top-line revenue growth for emerging companies. Topics to be covered include direct, indirect and channel sales strategies; implementing pipeline management principles and forecasting techniques; the use of technology in selling; building a sales organization; and the development of strategic partners and alliances. Also covered are the use of sales tools and skills (presentation, negotiation, territory management, and pipeline development), building successful channel partners, and the keys to successful selling including solution selling vs. product selling.
• GSM SI 915: Models & Methods for Causal Inference in Strategy Research
  What should you do when a referee says your paper has an "endogeneity problem" or a seminar participant asks how your empirical model is "identified"? This course will present a set of tools and concepts that should help you produce an intelligent response. There are two main goals. The first is to develop a clear understanding of the conceptual difficulties associated with establishing causality in empirical work. In particular to de-mystify several concepts that are frequently invoked as "problems" or "issues" in applied empirical research, but seldom clearly explained. A good grasp of these concepts will lead to improved research design and a sharper understanding of the relative strengths and weaknesses of various statistical methods. The second goal is to describe some of the practical problems that arise in the application of these methods. The course has special emphasis on testing the key underlying assumptions. This course is designed to complement a traditional two-semester graduate sequence in econometrics.
• GSM SI 917: Research Seminar in Technology Strategy and Innovation
  This doctoral seminar serves as a survey course to the broad area of technology and innovation management. We will review and critique a large and diverse body of literature that can be considered "core" to the field. We will place emphasis on both classic theories and seminal contributions as well as on recent research that builds upon or extends the established theories. One key differentiator of this research seminar is that five professors actively doing research in the field will teach it. While having multiple instructors brings some coordination challenges (these are less critical in doctoral seminars than they are in masters level classes), it has one major advantage: it allows each faculty to lead those sessions that deal with topics of her or his direct research expertise. Students can expect to cover each topic with researchers that have been important contributors to the intellectual debate in the topic they teach. The seminar will cover key issues in the management of technology and innovation including innovation definitions and patterns (e.g. industry life cycle), entry timing strategies, platforms and standards, networks, dynamic capabilities, organizing for innovation, open and community-based innovation, licensing & patenting, technology diffusion, geography of innovation, and science and innovation policy. SI917 provides a solid base to critically explore many key topics of research in technology and innovation management. It is therefore aimed at doctoral students who plan to do research in technology and innovation management, or those who need a solid exposure to these topics to inform their research in related areas.
• SMG AC 221: Financial Accounting
  Sophomore requirement. Basic concepts underlying financial statements and accounting procedures used in preparing statements of financial position, income statements, and statements of cash flow. Stresses the interpretation, analysis, and evaluation of published financial statements.

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