11 - 17 of 17 results for: GSBGEN

This course is open only to leaders of GSB Global Study Trips. It is experiential and designed to highlight and support opportunities for developing leadership skills through trip design and execution. Lectures will include best practices from past trips that can inform and speed trip design. Role plays, cases, and exercises will be used to demonstrate and try out skills needed to successfully lead a group of peers as they develop into a learning community that explores an academic topic in locations around the world. Topics covered in the class include creating a high performing team, setting and managing expectations among various stakeholders, creating trip culture, holding peers accountable, managing crises on the ground, and more. In addition to the weekly class, meetings with teammates and coaches and advisors are considered a part of the course time commitment.

The skills and attitudes learned as a graduate business student can (with a bit of coaching) be applied to managing one's life. This course will help students think through the 'brand' they want to have, how to modify a personal 'operating system,' how to set achievable goals, and how to: 1) Summarize one's non financial assets/liabilities, 2) Manage a professional career (or careers), 3) Extend themselves into service, political or educational opportunities, 4) Deal with difficult bosses, unresponsive people, job transitions, 5) Turn around an enterprise, 6) Build durable relationships (professional and personal), 7) Overcome challenges (personal and professional), 8) Manage litigation, conflicts, reversals, 9) Negotiate win-win outcomes, 10) Set MAD goals, establish habits, 11) Add value beyond business goods and services, 12) Help aging parents, siblings, 13) Plan for retirement (money, geography, location, activities), 14) Set up traditions, travel, continuing education, etc. 15) Deal with wealth, gifts to children/others/charity, 16) Manage a non-profit (and any number of other challenges our grads face). The course will involve readings, faculty-led discussions, short papers, in-class exercises and role plays. In addition, GSB alums at various stages of life will return to campus to share their journeys and challenges. The final product will be a confidential 'Life Plan.' The course will be offered on a Pass-Fail basis.

This seminar will explore the nature and role of leadership in organizations. We will examine such questions as (1) What is leadership? (2) Why is it important? (3) What is it that leaders actually do? (4) How do they do it? (5) How are leaders developed? (6) Why do leaders succeed or fail? (7) What about your potential for leadership and your strategy for developing it? Our primary objective in this seminar is to achieve a deeper understanding of the nature and role of leadership in organizations. Our approach will be to examine a small sample of the literature, together with the amazing story of Ernest Shackleton and his Endurance crew, and then to probe several key questions through lively class discussion. The discussion, informed by the readings and also by our collective experiences, will seek to develop some general principles and observations about leadership - particularly about how you might better develop yourself as a leader.

In this seminar we will explore the intersection of art and commerce in the entertainment industry. We will look at creating films and television programing that are artistically meaningful and/or have the potential for commercial success. The class will also look in depth at the rapidly changing business of entertainment. Films are increasingly used as a tool for social change, and we will examine this power. The entertainment industry is one of enormous importance - both from a business and cultural standpoint, and has influence on virtually every sphere of our society. Sometimes the industry can seem baffling, mercurial, and characterized more by madness than method. But despite its uncertainties, Hollywood does have its own rules, rhythms, methods and strategies - and examining and evaluating them will be a key part of this seminar. This is a time when many existing formulas are being reconsidered, retooled, or jettisoned, and new technologies and expanding markets are having a profound impact on the industry and tracking and analyzing this will be a key part of the course. I will also bring some of my professional experiences into the classroom (including directing, writing, and producing for film and television, etc.), and discuss these experiences through the intersection of the business and creative sides of the industry. We will discuss the entertainment industry's future, and address varied and effective paths for creating entertainment product with artistic and/or commercial merit. Students taking the course will be asked to be part of an in-class group exercise, and also complete a final group project where they will present their work in class.

This year -- 2023 -- will be a fascinating backdrop for national as well as state and local politics. Implications of the recent pandemic, its dramatic economic impacts and an uneven but recovering economy, Inflation fears, a war in Ukraine, and the looming presidential year elections in 2024 in the U.S. will continue to complicate the political landscape Politics, perhaps like no other arena, provides a rich and dramatic laboratory for studying the art and science of influential communication. Whether it is a local school bond election or a Congressional race, a Presidential debate or a State of the Union Address, the demanding communications of politics provide insights into our own strengths and gaps as communicators and leaders. Political campaigns, by their very nature, are highly visible, oriented toward very specific objectives, and increasingly leverage a variety of new media platforms. They are often emotionally charged, and rife with conflict and drama. The principles of political communications transcend politics, and are useful guides for leaders in business, the non-profit community, as well as government. How candidates, elected officials, and leaders in all kinds of organizations communicate vision, values, and experience, as well as how they perform in very fluid environments, not the least of which may be during a crisis, has a great deal to do with their career success. In its 15th year, this highly interactive course allows students to explore both theory and practice behind effective positioning and presentation. Students will analyze and evaluate both successful and unsuccessful communications strategies of political campaigns and candidates. History is a great learning tool, something emphasized throughout the class. As such students will explore historic examples of US Presidential debates, from Nixon/Kennedy to the present, as well other political events from the near and distant past. Popular culture, the effect of social media, disinformation will also be topics of discussion. Students will experience discussion of political events as they happen -- with each class drawing lessons from political developments around the nation and the world. Students will also hone their own strategic communications skills in activities requiring both written and spoken communication. This is not a course in political science, American government, or in public speaking. However, the engaged student will gain insights into those areas as well. The course is taught by David Demarest, former Vice President of Public Affairs for Stanford University. Demarest has broad communications experience across the public and private sector in financial services, education, and government. Typically, Prof. Demarest shares many of his experiences -- some successful, some less so -- through storytelling, and while those stories may be entertaining, they also provide real-life examples of communications challenges and strategies, After serving as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative, and Assistant Secretary of Labor in the Reagan Administration, in 1988 he served as Communications Director for Vice President George H. W. Bush's successful presidential campaign. He then became a member of the White House senior staff as White House Communications Director. After leaving government in 1993, he spent the next decade leading communications for two Fortune 50 companies, before coming to Stanford in 2005 to head the university's public affairs efforts.

This course provides an introduction to microeconomic theory designed to meet the needs of students in the GSB non-Economics PhD programs. The course will cover the standard economic models of individual decision-making, models of consumer behavior and producer behavior under perfect competition, the Arrow-Debreu general equilibrium model, and some basic issues in welfare measurement. This class assumes a basic knowledge of undergraduate intermediate microeconomics, comfort with multivariable calculus and linear algebra and some exposure to real analysis.