11 - 20 of 83 results for: GSBGEN

Successful leaders have to conceive, author, rebuild, pivot, differentiate, and finally maintain a personal reputation to make a lasting, recognizable and powerful identity. Reputation Management will explore how you can effectively communicate to create, adapt and maintain your personal reputation. Your reputation remains fluid as you navigate your career decisions and interact with different professionals along your journey. The course is designed along three interlocking elements: reputation management literature, relevant case studies, and curated guest speakers. Students will learn the fundamentals of strategic corporate communication and the risk of not managing reputation effectively. These frameworks will be extended with specific case studies to illustrate where individuals, groups, and firms have faced the challenge of managing reputation effectively. We will focus on both traditional and virtual components of communication including the relevancy of online reputation management. Finally we will invite well-known leaders from a range of industries who have built and sustained their reputations, through effective communication. Each leader has had to manage their reputations in the public eye, and alongside their peers, supervisors, and employees. Guests will be invited to discuss their conscious and unplanned strategies of how to successfully communicate the kind of person, leader, innovator, or public figure they strive to be. Students will benefit from a rich blend of frameworks, cases, and speakers enabling them to successfully enter the work force and create their own, personal reputations. Students will create a case study drawn from their own experience (or personal network), of a reputation dilemma. A final assignment requires students to articulate their own reputation using any media of the student's choosing and share that with others in the course. Throughout the course students will post at least one blog drawn from class concepts and respond to posts by peers in the class.

The course will be structured around the perspective of a high net worth individual who has decided to devote substantial resources to philanthropy and wishes to decide which philanthropic goals to pursue and how best to achieve them. Although there are no formal prerequisites for the course, we will assume that students have experience working at a foundation, nonprofit organization, impact investing fund, or similar organization, or have taken an introductory course in strategic philanthropy such as GSBGEN 381. (There is sufficient overlap with Paul Brest's Autumn course, Measuring and Improving the Impact of Social Enterprises ( GSBGEN 322), that students taking that course should not enroll in this one.) nnWe will explore selected topics including:n- the roles of the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors in society;n- choosing philanthropic goals, and whether giving to the poor is morally obligatory ;n- the justifications for tax-subsidized philanthropy;n- alternative legal and organizational structures to carry out philanthropic programs, including donor-advised funds, direct giving, foundations;n- whether foundations should exist in perpetuity or spend down over a finite number of years;n- fundamentals of nonprofit strategy;n- designing performance metrics (KPIs) and measuring philanthropic impact;n- barriers to the practice of strategic philanthropy;n- fundamentals of investment management for pools of philanthropic capital;n- socially motivated criteria for investing, including PRIs, MRIs, SRIs, and negative screens;n- impact investing and investor-funded pay for success programs.

This course focuses on strategy and actionable measurement in government, non-profit organizations, market-based social enterprises, philanthropy, and impact investing. "Actionable" means that measurement is used by managers, investors, and other stakeholders in improving outcomes. nn nThe course explores the intersection of several ideas that seem to be in some tension with each other. (1) "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." (Dwight D. Eisenhower), (2) You can't manage what you can't measure, (3) Measurement is expensive and its results are often ignored, (4) "Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts" (apocryphally attributed to Einstein), (5) "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for decision making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." (Campbell's Law). nnnSpecifically, the course will include: strategic planning, logic models, theories of change, monitoring, and evaluation; measuring the social impact of governments, non-governmental organizations, and market-based social enterprises, and asking how philanthropists and impact investors can assess their own impact; impact investing, performance contracting, and social impact bonds; and techniques for improving the behavior and accountability of individuals and organizations. These issues will be addressed mainly through business school case studies, which place the students in the position of CEOs, managers, and investors called upon to make major decisions. nnnWARNING: The course has a fair amount of reading - not more than is common in undergraduate and graduate courses, but more than is typical for MBA courses in the GSB.

The course explores the role of mindfulness, self-compassion and compassion in the workplace, and the contribution of these qualities to leadership. Topics addressed will include: How can mindfulness enhance clarity in purpose and productivity? What is the connection between mindfulness and compassion? Is compassion in the business world a strength or a weakness? Are compassion and profit motives fundamentally incompatible, or can they support each other? What does compassionate leadership look like? Can mindfulness and compassion be trained at the individual level, and built into company policy? How does self-compassion support effective leadership and recovery from setbacks? Participants in the course will engage with exercises from evidence-based programs targeting the development of mindfulness and the practical application of the skills of self-awareness, self-compassion, and perspective taking in the context of work and relationships.

This course examines trends and opportunities in the sustainable energy sector with a particular focus on low carbon energy. We examine these trends in the context of technological change, emerging business opportunities and the parameters set by public policy. nSpecific topics to be examined include: (i) the impact of regulatory policies and tax subsidies on the energy mix (ii) the growing competitiveness of renewable energy, in particular solar PV and wind, (iii) sustainable transportation (iv) adaptation by fossil fuel energy sources, (v) innovative financing mechanisms for energy projects, (vi) the venture capital perspective (vii) the changing role of utilities in the energy landscape.

Family-controlled private and public companies are the dominant form of enterprise worldwide. Despite their prominence, teaching and research have traditionally focused on analyzing the widely-held model of the firm. This course explores the challenges and opportunities faced by family firms. It is taught by Leo Linbeck III, Lecturer since 2005 at the GSB and President and CEO of Aquinas Companies, LLC. The course balances managerial perspectives with general frameworks. The course is intended for four main audiences: (1) Students whose family owns a business. (2) Students who are considering working for a family firm. (3) Students who are interested in acquiring a private firm either directly (search funds, minority investments, etc) or indirectly (private equity, etc). (4) Students who seek to consult or provide professional services to closely held firms or their owners (wealth management solutions, management consulting, etc). The main objectives of this course are three. First, to understand the challenges and characteristics of family firms. Second, to provide a coherent and consistent set of tools to evaluate the most relevant decisions faced by family firms. Third, to focus on decision-making. The course uses a combination of case studies, guest speakers, lectures, and student presentations to explore the central ideas of the course.nn

This case study-oriented course will focus on the critical skills needed to evaluate, develop, finance (on a non-recourse basis), and complete standalone energy and infrastructure projects. The primary course materials will be documents from several representative projects - e.g. solar, wind, storage, carbon capture - covering key areas including market and feasibility studies, environmental permitting and regulatory decisions, financial disclosure from bank and bond transactions, and construction, input, and offtake contracts. Documents from executed transactions are highly customized. By taking a forensic approach, looking at several different deals, we can learn how project developers, financiers, and lawyers work to get deals over the finish line that meet the demands of the market, the requirements of the law, and (sometimes) broader societal goals, in particular climate change, economic competitiveness, and energy security.

Transforming the global energy system to reduce climate change impacts, ensure security of supply, and foster economic development of the world's poorest regions depends on the ability of commercial players to deliver the needed energy at scale. Technological innovation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for this to occur. The complex institutional frameworks that regulate energy markets in the United States and around the world will play a major role in determining the financial viability of firms in the energy sector. In this course we survey the institutional contexts for energy enterprises of all types and consider what kinds of business models work in each setting. We study in detail how markets function for carbon (assessing the advantages and disadvantages of different policy tools and considering in particular California's implementation of A.B. 32); electricity (with extensive discussion of wholesale electricity markets, energy trading, and issues of market power); renewable energy technologies (focusing on ways to manage intermittency and on how renewable energy businesses respond to government incentives); nuclear power (as a case study of how the regulatory process affects investment decisions); oil and natural gas (treating both conventional and unconventional resources and emphasizing the key role of risk management in an industry characterized by uncertainty and high capital requirements); transportation fuels (discussing biofuels incentives, fuel efficiency standards, and other policy tools to lower carbon intensity); and energy for low-income populations, for which affordability and distribution pose special challenges. A primary teaching tool in the course is a game-based simulation of California's electricity markets under cap and trade. Student teams play the role of power companies and compete to maximize return by bidding generation into electricity markets and trading carbon allowances. The objective of the course is to provide a robust intellectual framework for analyzing how a business can most constructively participate in any sector like energy that is heavily affected by government policy. Instructors: Frank A. Wolak, Director, Program on Energy and Sustainable Development; Mark Thurber, Associate Director, Program on Energy and Sustainable Development.

This lecture course will explore the U.S.-centered financial crisis of 2008 and the ongoing European financial crisis.nnWe will examine the causes of both crises, policies implemented during the crisis, and options for reform.nnThis is an economic policy course rather than a pure economics course. It will focus on the practical intersection of economics, financial markets and institutions, policy, and politics.nnTopics we will examine include the following for the 2008 crisis:n- Did a global savings glut, international savings flows, or Fed policy cause the credit bubble?n- What caused the housing and mortgage bubbles?n- How does a bad mortgage turn into a toxic financial asset?n- Why and how did large financial institutions fail? What's the difference between a solvency crisis and a liquidity crisis?n- What is Too Big To Fail? Is it real? Why was Bear Stearns bailed out but not Lehman?n- Was the global financial system on the verge of meltdown in September 2008? How? Why?n- What was the TARP? The TALF? The CPP? The stress tests?n- What can we learn from comparing the US financial crisis with that in other major economies?n- How effective were various policy tools during the crisis?n- How have policies enacted and implemented since the crisis changed the outlook for the future?nnFor the European debt crisis we will examine:n- The fiscal and economic situations in various European countries;n- The structures and history of the Eurozone;n- Policy options to address problems in troubled European economies;n- The interaction between European financial institutions and European governments; andn- Options for longer-term reform of the Eurozone.n nThere will be no exams. Students will write two individual memos and a group memo.