printer friendly pageSTRAMGT 258: MSx: Strategic Management
This course deals with the overall general management of the business enterprise. Extensive case studies of a variety of companies of differing size, industry, and current conditions provide the basis for the comprehensive analysis and establishment of a strategic management approach for the organization. Frameworks are presented for strategy identification and evaluation; assessing industry attractiveness; evaluating the firm's capabilities, resources, and position; determining the optimal horizontal and vertical scope of the firm; entering into strategic alliances and joint ventures; and formulating and implementing strategy in multi-business organizations.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Hartmann, W. (PI)
STRAMGT 322: Create a New Venture: From Idea to Launch II
This is an integrated lab course in Entrepreneurship designed to teach students the process of creating a new viable venture - from idea to launch. It is a dynamic and interactive course organized around projects undertaken by teams of 3 to 4 registered students from the MSx and MBA programs, together with other graduate students within Stanford who bring expertise of particular relevance to the idea being pursued. This course is designed not only for students with immediate entrepreneurial aspirations, but also for any student considering starting an entrepreneurial venture at some point in his or her career. The course is a two quarter class, with admission to the class by team and idea. In the winter quarter, teams will research, craft, and morph their idea into a viable business concept. In the spring quarter they will further refine their concept and develop a strategy and plan to attract financial, human and other resources. At the end of the spring quarter, teams will present their plan to a panel of experts and potential investors to simulate the funding process. The new course builds on a predecessor course S356 "Evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities" and encapsulates new and important research and findings as they relate to the process of new venture creation. The teaching method is primarily learning by doing (LBD) through a structured process and supported by relevant lectures. Learning is further enhanced through meetings with the instructor, coaching by experienced mentors and review by peers. Field research as well as prototype product development are integral to the course. Since admittance to S321/S322 is by team and the quality of their idea, team formation takes place during the autumn quarter. Informal student mixers and seminars will be held to facilitate team formation and idea generation. Each team of 3-4 students should preferably consist of 1 or more MSx students and graduate students from the MBA program or other Schools - Engineering, Medicine, Law, Science, Education - to bring diversity and depth to the team. The application-selection process is described on the S321/S322 website.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Rohan, D. (PI)
STRAMGT 323: Design Thinking in the Context of Global Scale Organizations
Driving innovation at large global organizations is extremely challenging. As organizations establish and become successful, the culture and processes calcify and resisting changes becomes the norm. As a result, organizations fail to reframe big problems, identify unmet needs and challenge the status quo. The goal of this course is to prepare students for design thinking in complex, globally distributed organizations. Specifically, the goal is to impart students with a personal sense of creative confidence but also (1) be confident in their ability to navigate global scale organizations that are multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural, (2) recognize patterns of resistant behavior, (3) create coalitions of support at different levels of the organization (and externally), (4) be willing to adapt, adjust and even drop what they have learned about design thinking for a particular situation, (5) be patient, gritty and have the tenacity to drive change and (6) leverage technology to come up with design solutions. Students in this course will work in interdisciplinary teams to work on projects that will be sponsored by external partners including for and non-profit businesses and government agencies. The projects will be on real world challenges that global scale organizations face and on finding solutions using design thinking principles and technology. This full immersion course provides the opportunity for students to get practical training in design thinking, solve big problems while also figuring out a way to leverage design thinking and technology to create a lasting and global impact.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Shiv, B. (PI)
;
Yen, S. (SI)
STRAMGT 325: Starting and Growing a Social Venture
This course is for students who may want to undertake an entrepreneurial career by starting and/or joining the senior management team of a social venture. It covers all phases of a venture - ideation and venture creation, resource acquisition, managing growth and harvest/exit. The instructors believe, for the most part, social ventures (which include both for-profit and non-profit structures) should be treated and managed like profit maximizing ventures, and many topics and themes encountered in this course will be similar to those covered in other entrepreneurial courses, such as Formation of New Ventures. Of course there are important differences related specifically to social ventures, some of which are critical to understand properly to effectively start and manage a social enterprise. We will highlight these differences throughout our sessions, so while that the lessons learned in this class can be generalized to all ventures, we do not advise you to take this class unless you really want to learn about social ventures. All the cases used in class and class discussions will be about early stage companies and organizations in the social venture space. Guests, both social entrepreneurs active in the field, and social impact investors, are heavily featured in class discussions and are an important part of the classroom experience.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Siegelman, R. (PI)
;
Hattendorf, L. (SI)
STRAMGT 350: Global Value Chain Strategies
This course addresses how the increasingly large number of firms that use or provide outsourcing and "offshoring" can create a sustainable competitive advantage. Students who complete the course will have a framework and a set of concepts that can be used to position a firm for strategic advantage in these supply networks. Positioning in and strategic analysis of product markets is covered in a variety of courses and books. A distinguishing feature of this course is that it addresses positioning and strategic analysis for firms operating as part of a network of providers, sellers and buyers... the factor markets. The course takes a general management perspective and provides examples through cases and discussions with visitors. The major theme of the course is that these firms must carefully consider how they position themselves in both the product and factor markets.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Lee, H. (PI)
;
Marks, M. (SI)
STRAMGT 351: Building and Managing Professional Sales Organizations
The focus of this class is on the challenges and key issues associated with the creation and management of a professional sales organization. Our emphasis is developing and managing the selling effort of business-to-business and business-to-consumer capital goods and services. There will be relatively little emphasis on sales technique (i.e., students should not expect a course on "How to be a Better Salesperson"). The course is organized to follow the development of the sales function from strategic inception through to execution and implementation: choosing a go-to-market model (e.g., direct sales, VARs, OEMs, hybrid models); building and structuring the sales organization (e.g., sales learning curve, organizational structure, allocating territories and quotas); and managing the sales force (e.g., hiring/firing, compensation, forecasting, culture). We will address these topics in the context of both early stage ventures and later stage enterprises.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 4
STRAMGT 353: Entrepreneurship: Formation of New Ventures
This course is offered for students who at some time may want to undertake an entrepreneurial career by pursuing opportunities leading to partial or full ownership and control of a business. The course deals with case situations from the point of view of the entrepreneur/manager rather than the passive investor. 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. Each section will have a specific focus, please select the instructor(s) with your interests: Leslie, Rachleff - High tech ventures; Ellis, Chambers, Childs - Diverse types of ventures; Foster - Diverse types of ventures; Siegel, Brady - High tech emphasis, but diverse types of ventures; Reiss, Chess - Very early stage ventures.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Ellis, J. (PI)
;
Foster, G. (PI)
;
Leslie, M. (PI)
...
more instructors for STRAMGT 353 »
Instructors:
Ellis, J. (PI)
;
Foster, G. (PI)
;
Leslie, M. (PI)
;
Reiss, P. (PI)
;
Siegel, R. (PI)
;
Brady, S. (SI)
;
Chambers, J. (SI)
;
Chess, R. (SI)
;
Child, M. (SI)
;
Rachleff, A. (SI)
STRAMGT 355: Managing Growing Enterprises
This course is offered for students who, in the near term, aspire to the management and full or partial ownership of a new or newly-acquired business. The seminar, which is limited to 40 students, has a strong implementation focus, and deals in some depth with certain selected, generic entrepreneurial issues, viewed from the perspective of the owner/manager. Broad utilization is made of case materials, background readings, visiting experts, and role playing. Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on the application of analytical tools to administrative practice.
Terms: Aut, Spr
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Dodson, D. (PI)
;
Ellis, J. (PI)
;
Grousbeck, H. (PI)
...
more instructors for STRAMGT 355 »
Instructors:
Dodson, D. (PI)
;
Ellis, J. (PI)
;
Grousbeck, H. (PI)
;
Peterson, J. (PI)
;
Dodson, D. (SI)
;
Kelly, P. (SI)
;
Taweel, K. (SI)
STRAMGT 359: Aligning Start-ups with their Market
Most everyone associated with technology start-ups would agree that the most important initial characteristic of a successful endeavor is a compelling vision. The journey from vision to escape velocity is highly dependent on management's ability to translate that vision into a product or service that closely and economically addresses a customer's significant point of pain. Without a tight product market fit, the start-up's offering will not be able to break through the market's gravitational forces which strongly favor existing solutions, resulting in likely failure. With tight product/market fit, it is far more likely the company will achieve repeatable and growing sales success. Conventional wisdom dictates that a start-up launching a new product should focus its energy understanding what the market wants (problem) and then translating that knowledge into an optimal set of product features (solution). This is the ideal strategy if one is attacking a market that already exists. However if the start-up pursues an entirely new market or re-segments an existing market, customers are unlikely to be able to articulate the benefits and features they will need. The approaches required to pursue new or re-segmented markets are radically different from those applied to existing markets. As a result it is not relentless execution and exploitation of a well understood market that will lead to success, but discovery of a new market or segment that is in need of the product as envisioned. If done well, this process of finding the optimal product/market fit has a disproportionate impact on success. Our intention is to create a course that explores the many issues associated with optimizing product/market fit. Two group papers comprise 50% of a student's grade with class participation representing the remainder.
STRAMGT 353 is recommended prior to taking this course.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Barnett, W. (PI)
;
Rachleff, A. (SI)
STRAMGT 376: Entrepreneur Leader-Identity Development: A Critical-Incident Approach
Entrepreneurship can be an exhaustive experience. This course is structured to provide valuable skills and strategies aimed at enabling aspiring entrepreneurs to mitigate personal burnout while in pursuit of new ventures. In terms of this course, an entrepreneur is defined as a person who risks mobilizing resources to capitalize on a perceived opportunity of value-creation-change. A "social entrepreneur" creates social value, a "business entrepreneur" creates profit, and a 'hybrid entrepreneur' blends the two. This course will tailor student's class work to fit his or her entrepreneurial orientation. Students who opt to focus their coursework on social or environmental entrepreneurship may petition to have this course count toward the Certificate in Public Management and Social Innovation. nnResearch is showing that a significant career hazard of entrepreneurship is emotional burnout- exhaustion from raising capital, growing new teams, competing with established players, and more contributes to the challenges of entrepreneurship. The goal of this course is to teach students how to identify and develop an increased capacity in emotional resilience as a means of mitigating burnout in oneself and in the diverse "community of actors" one is attempting to mobilize into concerted action aimed at value-creation-change. Research is also showing that one of the key causes of chronic stress is leader-identity development: when men and women of diverse-identities - different from the dominant-identity, engage in value-creation-change within a given community of practice and context, chronic adversity is a given. The effort of diverse-identities to lead value-creation-change introduces a chronic re-evaluation and re-definition of 'leader' within the given culture. From a global perspective this chronic adversity dynamic is especially true for women leaders. For men and women of diverse-identity, this dynamic is a consequence of power inequity. Both the diverse-identity and dominant-identity leader need to strategically anticipate and proactively address this dynamic in order to sustain his or her role as an agent of value-creation-change.nnUsing the "critical-incident empathetic-inquiry" approach students will interview aspiring and practicing entrepreneurs on how they successfully recovered from, adapted to, and sustained perseverance in the face of situational and chronic adversity. These interviews will be recorded and analyzed from both a content and emotional decision-making perspective. Particular attention will be paid to how the practice of "empathetic-inquiry" in itself is a learnable micro-intervention with the potential of alleviating stress, supporting recovery, and sustaining effort. It is presented, taught, and practiced as a fundamental "emotional literacy" entrepreneur leadership skill.nnFrom a diversity perspective, students will also be exploring how unsupported leader-identity development within a given cultural context and community of practice can be a major cause of stress and burnout. Via the "critical-incident empathetic inquiry" process students will focus on interviewing and learning from "exemplars" with whom they identify, with the aim of learning from "exemplar's" personal leader-identity journey.nnThis course enables students to be practitioners of "empathetic inquiry" in entrepreneurial contexts in order to provide an added advantage to GSB students pursuing entrepreneurship after graduation and beyond.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Bristol, S. (PI)
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