Results for STRAMGT

Get the strategy right, and the chance for success is great. Nowhere is this more evident than in today's world of major challenges. Strategy is at the heart of problem solving and achieving objectives, yet few people can define strategy, much less understand how to conceptualize, design, and execute effective strategies that yield the best outcomes.This course focuses on interesting and engaging case studies, each of which illustrates a key ingredient of strategy. Some are well-known historical events, while others are less obvious, but all have a strategic lesson to share. They are quite diverse, from the planning of a high-risk rescue in the Colorado Rockies, to a product crisis in a Fortune 50 company, to a little-known failed military mission of WWII, to a commercial airline disaster. The ability to think through challenging and varied scenarios is both instructive and mind-stretching. There will be some pre-reading on each case study and there may be a field trip for students to put their lessons into practice. The course is designed to be highly interactive; all to enable students to unravel the mystery and power of strategic thinking. Students will also have the opportunity to select and analyze a case reflecting interests of their own. This course can help students not only prepare for a career in a range of fields, but also as they meet the challenges of their current coursework. Problem-solving skills are central in every walk of life; this seminar can help students build a stronger foundation for sound decision-making.

This seminar showcases the diversity of entrepreneurs and the range of entrepreneurial paths they pursue. Thirty-five entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, primarily from historically underestimated groups (HUGs), will share their personal and professional journeys, and how each embodies the entrepreneurial mindset. Candid class discussions and an experiential project, complemented by case studies, readings, and videos, will immerse you in the entrepreneurial process. This includes finding an idea and forming and building a team, evaluating existing ideas or early businesses, being an inclusive leader, raising money, assembling a board, and overcoming setbacks and challenges. The individual project is to profile a founder or venture capitalist from a HUG and how they embody the entrepreneurial mindset. For the group project, teams will have the option of working on an idea for a company, or assessing a company using the venture investment framework taught during the class.

In this course, students will investigate opportunities and challenges of entrepreneurial ventures trying to increase access to educational opportunity, improve the quality of learning experiences for underserved students and disrupt systemic inequities in preK-12 education. Class discussions will explore frameworks for understanding how to maximize educational impact by ensuring efficacy, increasing financial sustainability, and building scale. Cases are focused on organizations in early childhood, primary and secondary education, and feature a variety of ventures (including schools, technology, educator training, and supplemental services) and organizational models (for-profit, not-for-profit, and benefit corporation) in the U.S. and globally. Note: This is not a "how to" class on starting an education venture; it focuses on the strategic challenges of maximizing impact. This course is designed for students who want to be part of creating a more equitable society and improving opportunities for youth, whether by becoming entrepreneurs, leaders, Board members, donors or investors in education organizations. Attendance at the first class meeting is required.

This course is offered for students who seek to understand the dynamics of new ventures from the point of view of the entrepreneur/manager rather than the passive investor. At some stage this understanding will enhance your decision making about whether to pursue a career in playing a key role in creating or building a new venture. It will also enhance your understanding if you will be negotiating with executives at new ventures. Many cases involve visitors, since the premise is that opportunity and action have large idiosyncratic components. Students must assess opportunity and action in light of the perceived capabilities of the individuals and the nature of the environments they face. The course is integrative and will allow students to apply many facets of their business school education.

This course is offered for students who aspire to lead growing businesses. The seminar, which is limited to 40-45 students, has a strong implementation focus, and deals in some depth with certain selected, entrepreneurial issues, viewed from the perspective of the owner/manager. Broad utilization is made of case materials, background readings, visiting experts, and role playing.

(BIOE 376) Startup Garage is an intensive, hands-on, project-based course where students apply design thinking, lean startup methodology, and the Business Model Canvas to conceive, design, and field-test new business concepts that address real world needs. Teams get out of the building and interact directly with users, stakeholders, and advisors to deeply understand one or more unmet customer needs. They proceed to design, prototype, and test their proposed solutions, validate the value proposition, develop a business model, and identify risks. Teams working on impact-focused ventures apply the same methodology to address the needs of their beneficiaries. Students develop entrepreneurial skills as they learn critical, cutting-edge techniques for testing new venture ideas. Offered by the Graduate School of Business. PREREQUISITE: Team application required. Details and application: http://startupgarage.stanford.edu/details.

Health Information technology was intended to help reduce cost and improve the quality of health care services. To date, this is little evidence that this goal has been achieved. This course is designed to explore economic frameworks that can help us to understand how health IT can achieve it's intended goals. These frameworks build from general business and economic models used successfully in other industries. The course will utilize both business cases and lecture to prepare students to propose potential novel applications of health information technology solutions. Each student will have a team-based final project.

In this class, you will learn techniques for improving your spontaneity, creativity, presence, and collaboration skills, all of which contribute to your becoming a more effective and inspirational leader. This class combines research on social psychology and techniques from improvisational theater to help you develop your leadership skills. The interactive exercises are based on the techniques that improv actors use on stage when they make up scenes, songs, or even entire plays on the spot. Improv teaches you to do many things at once: be completely present, think on your feet, quickly get in sync with others, read the room, and be agile at using what the situation presents you. As a leader in business, you will benefit from this same skill set. Whether you are presenting to your board, brainstorming & designing with colleagues, or mentoring new talent - learning some building blocks of improv will give you valuable new tools for interacting effectively with others. The course will cover topics such as spontaneity, risk taking, authenticity, nonverbal behavior, storytelling, effective brainstorming, understanding and using status, and creative collaboration.

This case-based course is offered for students who want to refine their ability to manage challenging professional conversations. The class will focus on the preparation for and execution of role-played dialogue as well as on postmortem analysis. Most of the respondent roles will be external to one's company, and some will be front line or mid-level people with limited educational credentials. Broad utilization will be made of background readings and an occasional visiting expert.

This seminar provides students with practical solutions to some of the challenges faced in family business transitions. Family businesses are by far the dominant form of commerce world-wide, albeit the majority are small "mom and pop shops." Some research shows that large businesses, whatever the form of ownership, have an average lifespan of around forty years, while small businesses (at least in Japan and Europe) average around twelve years. So, if businesses in general do not survive, then it is a wonder that any family business can survive from one generation to another, let alone two, three, four or more. There are three essential requirements to succeed in a family business transition. First, it may seem obvious that the business must succeed, but it is less obvious what advantages a family business has over its non-family-owned counterparts. Second, the ownership structure must effectively maintain family cohesion and support the business. Finally, family members need to organize in thoughtful ways to work effectively with one another. The beauty of a family business is that it can be more profitable than companies with non-family ownership. Two fundamentals, at least, provide this advantage - a strong value system and a long-term economic perspective. The operative word above, however, is "can"; it is by no means a foregone conclusion that a family business will be more successful. Families must thoughtfully develop their advantages, while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls that are inherent in any family business .Accordingly, this course is offered for students whose families own a family business or who are interested in the special challenges faced by family businesses. International students are encouraged to register as different cultural perspectives to family business will enrich the experience for everyone. Particular focus will be given to the transitions from one generation to another and the lessons learned that can be applied during the entire life of the business.

The primary objective of this course is to introduce students to the fundamentals of how to sell. The course is appropriate for anyone who wants to understand and show proficiency with the skills required in different selling situations, both traditional (i.e., direct sales of products and services) and non-traditional (e.g., selling oneself in an interview, raising money for a new venture, convincing a job candidate to join your company, etc.). The course looks at the entire selling process of prospecting, qualification, discovery, understanding value, customizing presentations, objection handling, and closing. This is not a typical GSB case-study-based course. Students who have taken previous versions of this class describe it as a practical, hands-on, skills-based class. Students will work by themselves outside of class to prepare for group exercises and role-plays that will take place in class. These exercises are designed to give students practice with selling fundamentals in each stage of the selling process, and to give them the opportunity to observe and provide feedback to others. Our goal is to provide students the time in class to focus on doing stuff (e.g., practice using curiosity) rather than just thinking about and talking about stuff. After taking this course, you should understand what is involved in all of the following steps of the selling process: - Preparing a value-based prospecting script. - Using an advanced questioning methodology and note-taking strategy for discovering a customer's most important business priorities and motivations.- Developing a curiosity-based approach to handling objections in all stages of the selling process. - Creating and delivering effective customized presentations. - Understanding the most effective ways to create engagement and interaction when selling. - Developing a strategy and building the confidence to ask the hard questions when closing a deal. - Using a value-based mutual plan to control the sales cycle and move a deal forward.¿ Identifying the most valuable categories for qualifying an opportunity.- Accelerating the process of relationship building. - Understanding a customer¿s entire decision making process (DMP). - Discovering limiting beliefs and seeing how they impact your ability to accomplish your objectives. - Applying these fundamentals of effective selling to your personal selling situations with confidence.

For aspiring entrepreneurs who don't have a burning idea or desire to start a company from scratch, acquiring a small business can provide a direct route to running and growing a business. This class will explore entrepreneurial acquisition (EA). As the course covers topics such as what makes a good industry, raising capital, how to source deals, dealing with investors, due diligence, and negotiation, the course is also applicable to those interested in private equity, venture capital, start-ups, and general management. The class relies heavily on the case method, and each class includes guests (often the case protagonists) who bring practical and current experience to the classroom. The two group projects are intended to be highly practical, simulating real-world situations.

Today, innovative ventures in developing economies are providing compelling new products and services to a growing middle-class as well as to the lower part of the economic pyramid. These offerings provide consumers ways to better their lives and companies to grow their businesses. As older industries around the world are being disrupted, and entrepreneurial ecosystems in developing economies are evolving, entrepreneurs and investors now have reference points and 'basecamps' to explore unique opportunities. These newly formed networks that include universities, incubators, accelerator programs, angel investor organizations and small venture capital firms are still lacking in breadth and depth, despite their attempts to follow the lead of Silicon Valley. Consequently, investors and founders face distinct and more numerous challenges that they would not encounter in Silicon Valley, such as small local markets, lack of scale-up funding, uncertain exit opportunities, inadequate talent pools and complex legal and political environments.Yet these developing economies are growing and becoming more connected. We are witnessing new technology-based products in these locations allowing problems to be solved at a scale never seen before. AI and machine learning, blockchain, smart sensors, IoT devices, natural language interfaces and AR and VR are just a few of the technologies not only being developed in Silicon Valley, but all over the world. Of course, smartphones, with their multi-faceted sensors, are now becoming ubiquitous. These trends present opportunities such as: replicating business models proven elsewhere; leapfrogging legacy technologies; targeting the base of the pyramid; and starting venture capital firms. Despite this fertile ground for new endeavors, success not only requires an exceptional product/market fit but great execution to start and scale a venture in problematic and sometimes adverse environments.This case-driven course is designed to help students identify new opportunities in developing economies around the world and across industries and to expose them to the challenges they will face. It is targeted at students who are thinking about creating, joining or investing in new ventures in developing economies.The cases and guests will reveal entrepreneurial challenges through the eyes of founders and investors who have seized these opportunities at different stages of the venture: ideation, launch and scaling. This course is designed to showcase innovative companies in high growth industries such as consumer internet, financial services, health care and education. It will feature the latest trends and opportunities in Asia, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. By taking this course, you will be better equipped to observe, explain and participate in developing economy ecosystems and the opportunities and challenges they present.

The main purpose of this course is to highlight the key innovation challenges faced by established firms: exploiting existing opportunities, exploiting new opportunities, and balancing the exploitation of existing and new opportunities throughout the firm's evolution. In particular, we will focus here on the conflicts inherent in having to manage these various challenges simultaneously. This course will also focus on entrepreneurship in large established companies: 'corporate entrepreneurship' aka 'intrapreneurship.' It examines the role of corporate entrepreneurs and how to manage project champions/venture managers, and what some of the organizational design issues are related to corporate entrepreneurship. In particular, we will study the strategic challenges that extremely successful companies face in trying to break out of co-evolutionary lock-in with their mainstream product-market environment, the strategic tensions arising between efforts to develop new businesses based on external acquisition versus internal development of new technologies, the strategic leadership challenges associated with trying to develop new growth opportunities that require significant cultural change, and the strategic leadership challenges associated with linking new business opportunities to corporate strategy.

This six-session (2-unit) Bass seminar focuses on strategic leadership and builds on core strategic leadership coursework in the MBA program. The course uses the seminar format with expectations of extensive contributions from all students to the discussion in each session. Through seminar discussions, we aim to deepen our understanding of strategic dynamics and transformational change at the industry and organizational levels of analysis in dynamic environments. The seminar's aim is to improve participants' ability to develop strategically informed action plans that are imaginative, inspiring and workable. The seminar's conceptual frameworks include traditional tools of strategic and competitive analysis from the core MBA course on strategic leadership, conceptual frameworks developed by the instructors that help understand the role of strategy-making in the evolution and transformation of organizations and industries, and theoretical frameworks that help understand the interplays between technology strategy and corporate strategy. Three of the six session will feature discussions with senior executives from key industry players. The seminar's pedagogy involves informed debate including with the guest executives to evaluate and hone well-researched views by the participants as well as the writing and presentation of position papers by small groups of seminar participants concerning the seminar's analytical topics. In this fall's seminar we will examine the evolution of the global semiconductor industry in light of the ongoing impact of Moore's Law and the convergence of computing and wireless communications industries, and how it has been and will be affected by strategic actions of entrepreneurial startups, incumbent corporations, and governments in multiple geographies. Several interrelated topics will be discussed as they impact three key industry segments of the global semiconductor industry that are the focus of the seminar.

This six-session Bass seminar is about strategic leadership driving the transformation of the advanced automotive industry. It will build on what students have learned in their MBA core strategic leadership course but will also provide additional conceptual frameworks developed by the instructors to help examine the major seminar topics. The seminar's pedagogy involves informed debate to evaluate and hone well-researched views by the participants. Consequently, there will be an expectation of extensive contributions from all students to the discussion in all of the sessions. Small groups of seminar participants will also be expected to write and present position papers concerning the seminar's analytical topics. The industry scope of the seminar is twofold: First, it is about autonomous, electric, and shared vehicles. And second, it is about the manufacturer and supplier incumbents as well as the tech industry and startup new-entrants. In the course of the seminar discussions, we aim to deepen our understanding of strategic dynamics and transformational change at the societal, industry and organizational levels of our analysis.

In this seminar we will study the structure and dynamics of the U.S. health care industry, especially in the face of ongoing regulatory change, and ways it intersects with the global health care industry. The seminar's aim is to develop participants' ability to create strategically informed action plans that are imaginative, inspiring and workable in this highly dynamic environment. The seminar's pedagogy involves informed debate to evaluate and hone well-researched views by the participants and instructors, as well as the writing and presentation of position papers by small groups of seminar participants on the key dynamics of the industry.In the course of the seminar discussions, we aim to deepen our understanding of strategic dynamics and transformational change at the societal, industry and organizational levels of analysis. After developing a complete picture of the structure of the health care industry and the strategic relationships among the key players ("the strategic landscape"), the seminar will focus on how health care reform and other external forces will affect the strategic opportunities and challenges of four types of players in the strategic landscape: (1) incumbents; (2) entrepreneurial startups; (3) cross-boundary disruptors; and (4) international health care providers. World-class leaders in health care will be brought in to supplement our understanding of each one of these players. Student teams will be formed to focus on one of the four types of players. Each team will prepare a research paper focused on determining how their type of player can take advantage of the regulatory, technological, social, cultural and demographic changes, and who will be the likely winners and why. This is a 2-unit version of STRAMGT 381.