Courses

• QST FE 854: Entrepreneurial Finance
  The focus of FE854 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.
• QST FE 898: Directed Study: Finance
  Graduate-level directed study in Finance. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Program Office website.
• QST FE 918: Doctoral Seminar in Finance
  This doctoral course, is designed to provide students with an introduction to financial economics. This lecture-based course will cover no arbitrage conditions, preferences and risk aversion, portfolio selection, the capital asset pricing model, asset pricing and dynamic asset pricing. In addition to lectures, this class will include readings and assignments. Open to MBA students with faculty member's permission. Must have strong quantitative background and several courses in finance or economics.
• QST FE 920: Advanced Capital Markets
  This course provides a comprehensive and in-depth treatment of modern asset pricing theories. Extensive use is made of continuous time stochastic processes, stochastic calculus and optimal control. In particular, martingale methods are employed to address the following topics: (i) optimal consumption-portfolio policies and (ii) asset pricing in general equilibrium models. Recent advances involving nonseparable preferences, incomplete information, incomplete markets, constraints and agents diversity will be discussed.
• QST FE 998: Directed Study: Finance
  PhD-level directed study in Finance. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Program Office website.
• QST HM 703: Health Sector Issues and Opportunities
  This course provides a dynamic introduction to the health sector, beginning with the burden and distribution of disease and current patterns of expenditures. While the emphasis will be on the American system, a global context will be developed. The basic elements of insurance and payment, service delivery, and life sciences products will be described, and put in the context of the unique economic structure of the sector. The intense challenges of the sector will be explored, as well as both the ethical issues presented and the opportunities that emerge. Public policy and technological and practice development as drivers of change will be addressed throughout.
• QST HM 710: Health Service Delivery: Strategies, Solutions and Execution
  The overarching theme of this course is health care organizational transformation. The course will provide knowledge and skills needed to develop and implement high performing health care systems capable of delivering accessible, high quality, efficient services. It will draw upon relevant information from disciplinary areas of study including strategy, operations, marketing, finance, law, human resources, quality improvement, and information technology.
• QST HM 717: Drugs, Devices and Diagnostics: New Challenges, Strategies and Execution
  This course will examine issues and opportunities in life sciences including the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical devices sectors and the life sciences service industry supporting these sectors, through the eyes of the CEO. The course will investigate who manages these companies and what are the strategies that are used to build successful enterprises. This course will introduce students to individuals and institutions at every stage of the development cycle from idea generation and start-up fundraising to manufacturing and global expansion. We will specifically look at key elements of strategy and the execution of that strategy by examining companies that have either succeeded or failed, by discussing the pros and cons of different approaches and teasing out the lessons one can derive from leaders in the field and case studies examining their approaches.
• QST HM 801: Bench-to-Bedside: Translating Biomedical Innovation from the Laboratory to the Marketplace
  The subject of the course is the translation of medical technologies into new products and services for the healthcare system. The course begins with a rigorous study of university research commercialization including intellectual property, licensing and 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 commercialization. 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 translational research projects currently being developed at Boston University and their potential for commercialization, providing a unique linkage between the scientific research activities of the university and the professional schools. Each week there will be a case study which will discuss examples of both success and failure in technology commercialization. Some of these case studies examine Boston University life sciences spin-out companies, and the founders and CEO's of these ventures will share their experiences with the class.
• QST HM 817: Health Information Technology
  This course helps prepare students for positions working in the rapidly growing field of information technology for health care delivery and life sciences organizations. With increasing demands for improved quality and efficiency, information technology has become essential to manage health care organizations and systems. The course will investigate frameworks and methods that can be used to develop digital health technology as well as to evaluate information systems, determine system requirements, facilitate effective use of health informatics, and plan system changes to meet future requirements. The perspective of the course is that of the chief information officer, chief medical information officer, other managers, clinicians, and users of both clinical and administrative health care information systems, not that of the technical specialist.
• QST HM 833: Health Sector Marketing
  This course provides an in-depth understanding of health sector marketing in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors for both products and services (hospital, ACOs, payers, life sciences, pharma and biotech, medical devices, medical software, and so on). The course explores how the tools of marketing (e.g., consumer behavior, pricing, promotion, channels, branding, communication, segmentation, etc.) can be employed in the rapidly changing health sector with particular attention to changing organizational structures, financing, technologies, market demands, laws, channels of distribution, on-line and mobile applications, and regulations which require new approaches to marketing. Topics to be addressed include marketing to physicians, DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) Marketing, new product development particularly for pharmaceuticals and medical devices, adoption of medical and service innovations, typical decision making units in the health sector, traditional as well as social media, and social marketing. The course will have you keep in mind always while making marketing decisions that medicine, in the purest sense, is a profession with an intellectual discipline, a tradition of service, and an ethical code of conduct, and that service to the patient, as individuals and in the aggregate, is foremost in marketing decision making.
• QST HM 840: Health Sector Consulting
  This is an applied consulting project course. Students enrolled in this course will be divided into teams of four students during the first class; the assignment of teams is largely dependent upon having a shared interest in one of the number of prospective consulting projects. Each team will select from a pre-designated list of business development-strategy-marketing consulting projects. Projects in the past have ranged from developing an international pricing strategy for the introduction of a new product by Genzyme to providing a marketing plan for a web-based entrepreneurial venture to developing a strategy for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to maintain the loyalty of their referring physicians. Client companies/organizations have requested these projects, are paying the school for the privilege of having an MBA team, and are covering all expenses associated with the projects. In return, they anticipate receiving a consulting report from the student team at the end of the semester. The deliverables for this assignment are the consulting report as well as a 30-minute in-class presentation followed by a ten-minute question-and-answer period. The team will also be expected by the client to make a presentation to the client's management. These projects constitute a way for students to apply what they are learning in the MBA program to a real health sector management situation; an opportunity to gain experience and broaden their familiarity with health sector organizations with which they have had little or no direct experience; a way for local, regional, and national health sector organizations to benefit from their expertise and hard work in solving a management problem; and a continuing linkage of the Boston University MBA and Health Sector Management Programs to the health sector community.
• QST HM 848: Driving Health Sector Innovation
  This course examines an array of compelling opportunities for innovation, incremental and disruptive, across products and services, created within existing organizations or by starting new businesses. It bridges design and implementation, examining the unique and complex array of elements that make successful innovation in the health sector so difficult, and developing the skills and knowledge needed to effectively address those challenges. The course provides a conceptual framework, and then emphasizes hands-on engagement, concrete exercises, written cases, and in-class speakers who are engaged in real-world innovation initiatives. Students will have the opportunity to focus on areas of particular interest and relevance to current or future work. They will leave better equipped to drive or support the viable, value-creating innovation so desperately needed in the health sector.
• QST HM 898: Directed Study: Health Care Management
  Graduate-level directed study in Health Care Management. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Program Office website.
• QST HM 998: Directed Study: Health Care Management
  PhD-level directed study in Health Care Management. 1, 2, or 3 cr. Application available on the Graduate Program Office website.
• QST IM 345: Global Business Environment
  Required for International Management concentrators. Deals with international economic theories and explores the intersection between theory and practice. Determinants of international trade and payments: international trade theory and policy and balance-of-payments accounting. Explores the implications of trade-promoting and trade-inhibiting institutions and practices: WTO, NAFTA, European Union, etc. Introduces cultural, political, and demographic issues for international managers. 4 cr.
• QST IM 445: Multinational Management
  This is heavily case-based course studying the business strategies of multi- national enterprises, particularly in high-growth and developing economies. Having worldwide operations not only gives companies access to new markets and diverse resources, it also opens up new sources of information and knowledge that stimulate innovation and operational strategies. Along with opportunities, we also look at the challenges to a more complex, diverse, and uncertain business than those faced by companies who focus primarily in their mature markets or even their own country. This course helps students to acquire skills and perspectives that will help them as they pursue careers with multi-national companies or other opportunities in the global business environment.
• QST IM 498: Directed Study: International Management
  Directed study in International Management. 2 or 4 cr. Application available on Undergraduate Program website.
• QST IM 845: Asian Field Seminar
  How do we prepare for the emerging opportunities and challenges that China's economic development and Asia's growing presence continue to create? This two-week seminar through six cities in China and Korea provides future global business leaders with an opportunity to contemplate answers to the above question. We visit companies (both multinational and local) competing in this dynamic market, meet governmental officials to hear about policies and implications, learn from local MBA professors about what they see our strengths and weaknesses are, participate in real market activities, and develop global network of knowledge with local MBA students and BU alumni in the region. Through this process, students will deepen their understanding of the unique nature of opportunities and challenges in the region, become more comfortable with the myriads of cultural and communicational details, and explore professional opportunities located in the region.
• QST IM 851: European Field Seminar
  The European Field Seminar gives students an appreciation of "competing in Europe." The European competitive landscape is changing rapidly. Three Boston- based class sessions introduce students to topics such as the history of the European Union, European Community Law, Member States, European Monetary Union, and Competition Policy. During a two week period, the class visits a variety of organizations in Europe to learn about relevant competition issues; students experience first-hand how firms are dealing with them (or should be dealing with them). The wide variety of Sectors covered appeals to a broad segment of the MBA population.

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