The ability to take on unstructured problems and generate useful insights/solutions is something that cannot easily be taught. But, it can certainly be learnt through practice and guidance. For most quantitative problems in graduate courses, the decision options, goals, and analytical approaches are pre-defined. In practice, however, business problems are usually ill-defined, "messy", where the decisions are initially ambiguous, goals are unclear, and the relationship between decisions and outcomes are indeterminate. While each business problem is distinctive, a disciplined approach to problem solving can be incredibly useful across many career contexts. The concepts and exercises in this course will sharpen our professional ability to structure a messy problem and do some disciplined analysis on it. Examples will be drawn from Strategy, Operations, Technology Management, Marketing, and Finance to expose us to the broad applications of the concepts and tools learned in this class.

Note that this information may change at any time. Please visit the MyBU Student Portal for the most up-to-date course information.