Results for GSBGEN

GSB students are eligible to report on work experience that is relevant to their core studies under the direction of the Senior Associate Dean responsible for the MBA Program. Registration for this work must be approved by the Assistant Dean of the MBA Program and is limited to students who present a project which, in judgment of the Advisor, may be undertaken to enhance the material learned in the first year core required courses. It is expected that this research be carried on by the student with a large degree of independence and the expected result is a written report, typically due at the end of the quarter in which the course is taken. Specific assignment details and deadline information will be communicated to enrolled students. Units earned for this course do not meet the requirements needed for graduation.

Business leaders have marketing strategies, expansion strategies, finance strategies, even exit strategies. Successful leaders, however, also have communication strategies. This course will explore how individuals and organizations can develop and execute effective communication strategies for a variety of business settings.nnThis course introduces the essentials of communication strategy and persuasion: audience analysis, communicator credibility, message construction and delivery. Deliverables will include written documents and oral presentations and you will present both individually and in a team. You will receive feedback to improve your communication effectiveness. In the final team presentation, your challenge is to craft an oral presentation that will persuade your audience to accept your strategic recommendations. By doing this, you will see why ideas, data and advocacy are combined for a professional, persuasive presentation. nnThis practical course helps students develop confidence in their speaking and writing through weekly presentations and assignments, lectures and discussions, guest speakers, simulated activities, and videotaped feedback. An important new feature of this course is that a team of external communications coaches work in concert with the professor to ensure that students get rigorous and individualized coaching and feedback.nnIn this course you will learn to:nn- Create communication strategies at an individual and organizational leveln- Develop clearly organized and effective presentations and documentsn- Diagnose and expand your personal writing and oral delivery style n- Adapt your delivery style to different material and audiences n- Enhance oral delivery through effective visual aidsnnStudents at all levels of comfort and expertise with public speaking and business writing will benefit from this course. Waitlists have been long for this course, and you're encouraged to keep that in mind as you make your course selections. Waitlisted students are encouraged to attend the first two classes.

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. nnThe 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. nnStudents 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 research their own reputation history by projecting what they think their reputation is, creating their own survey for friends, colleagues and employers to take, conduct three interviews about their personal reputation with three individuals who have worked closely with them, and then synthesize all this feedback into a cohesive paper and short video that reflects their authentic work and personal reputation. 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 foundation or 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. (With the exception of several classes on strategy and evaluation, there is no substantial overlap with Paul Brest's course, Problem Solving for Social Change (GSBGEN 367) , which has a different focus from this one.)

Negotiation is a central part of business in the worlds of sports and entertainment. This course will examine negotiation dynamics and key takeaways for general management from multiple different settings where negotiations had an important role--these will include preparing for a negotiation, the negotiation process itself, contractual outcomes of negotiation and their execution and in some cases litigation. The settings will include negotiations over player and actor contracts, negotiations between leagues and players associations, negotiations between investors and movie companies, and negotiations between content providers (both in sports and entertainment) and distribution partners (such as cable stations, international media companies, and online companies such as Netflix). Each of the six sessions is planned to include at least one and in some cases two guests that have had extensive experience in negotiations.

The course will provide students from different disciplines with an understanding of the broad educational policy context. The course will cover topics including a) school finance systems; b) an overview of policies defining and shaping the sectors and institutional forms of schooling, c) an overview of school governance, d) educational human-resource policy, e) school accountability policies at the federal and state levels; and f) school assignment policies and law, including intra- and inter-district choice policies, desegregation law and policy.

This twice-a-week full-quarter workshop will offer techniques and practical in-class exercises for writing better -- better memos, emails, feedback for colleagues, news releases, responses to questions from the media and from interviewers, and opinion pieces. Glenn Kramon, an editor who has helped New York Times reporters win 10 Pulitzer Prizes, will teach the course along with accomplished journalists with expertise in powerful, persuasive writing for business. They will provide not only helpful tips but constructive feedback on students' work. They will also share thoughts on how best to work with the news media.

Stanford graduates will play important roles in solving many of today's and tomorrow's major societal problems -- such as improving educational and health outcomes, conserving energy, and reducing global poverty -- which call for actions by nonprofit, business, and hybrid organizations as well as governments. This course teaches skills and bodies of knowledge relevant to these roles through problems and case studies drawn from nonprofit organizations, for-profit social enterprises, and governments. Topics include designing, implementing, scaling, and evaluating social strategies; systems thinking; decision making under risk; psychological biases that adversely affect people's decisions; methods for influencing individuals' and organizations' behavior, ranging from incentives and penalties to "nudges;" human-centered design; corporate social responsibility; and pay-for-success programs. We will apply these concepts and tools to address an actual social problem facing Stanford University. (With the exception of several classes on strategy and evaluation, there is no substantial overlap with Paul Brest's and Mark Wolfson' course, Strategic Philanthropy and Impact Investing (GSBGEN 319), which has a different focus from this one.)

Society needs confident, skilled and agile female professionals at every career level, especially in the earlier stages of their career, which provide the platform for future leadership opportunities. Female leaders face the same challenges as male leaders do, but female leaders also encounter an additional set of challenges (sociological, institutional, economic, cultural, social, familial, personal, sexual) that their male counterparts most likely will not. The same is true for female entrepreneurs, board members, managers, CEOs, social changemakers, educators and beyond, regardless of their career stage, access and background. Effectively overcoming female-specific challenges requires awareness, confidence and a practical skill-set that will be developed through an academic grounding in research, frameworks and case studies. Through a personalized learning model, students will apply learnings through active participation in in-class discussions and simulations, directly engage with industry leaders, and develop an individual leadership plan.

This course will explore the critical role diversity plays in successful organizations and challenge students to develop their own brand of leadership, learning from leaders in education who have grappled with these challenges. As impact-oriented leaders aspiring to address challenges across social, economic, and political arenas, we have an imperative to advance diversity, and education provides the perfect canvas on which to explore this imperative. High-stakes issues such as school district reform, teacher effectiveness, and the school-to-prison pipeline present complex dilemmas that demand superb leadership skills. In this course, we will: (1) explore the role that diversity plays in complex leadership challenges; (2) study a range of effective leadership approaches considering different topics in education; and (3) understand our own values and decision-making criteria, developing tactics to improve our leadership capacity. We will examine contemporary leaders and controversies from education, draw upon timeless historical thinkers, enjoy the wisdom of guest speakers, and work intensively in small groups to highlight challenges, opportunities, and tradeoffs. By exploring a range of approaches and situations, we will work to a deeper understanding of ourselves and how to become more capable, empathetic, and effective leaders.

Need approval from sponsoring faculty member and GSB Registrar. There is a limit on the number of units in courses of independent study that may be applied toward degree requirements.

Successful leaders understand the power of authentic, memorable communication.nnThis course uses the lens of oral communication and presentations, to introduce the essential elements of the strategic communication strategies that make authentic, memorable communication work.nnFocusing on oral communication and presentation, we introduce the essentials of communication strategy and persuasion: audience analysis, message construction, communicator credibility, and delivery.nnDeliverables include written documents, focusing on individual and team presentations, with students receiving continuous feedback to improve their communication effectiveness, and to sharpen their authentic leadership voice.n nThis highly interactive, practical course, is focused on feedback to help students at all levels of communication mastery develop confidence in their speaking and writing. Course includes presentations, assignments, lectures, discussions, simulated activities, in-class feedback, and filmed feedback.n nIn this course you will learn to:n-Recognize strategically effective communicationn-Implement the principles of strategic communication across different platformsn-Develop clearly organized and effective presentations and documentsn-Diagnose and expand, your personal authentic communication stylennAs you make your super round selection, keep in mind that wait lists have been long for this course.

This project-based seminar is a rare opportunity for students to focus on a significant, currently ongoing problem from their work/lives: with the help of classmates, participants spend 5 weeks exploring how various problem-solving methods and frameworks can apply to their chosen projects. Problems that students have brought to the course in the past range from business challenges (e.g., designing part of a complex project, evaluating a business opportunity, creating a marketing plan), to problems of a more personal nature (e.g., determining one's career path). Each seminar session is divided into two parts: whole-group discussion and practice of a particular problem-solving tool, followed by a practicum, where students work pairwise in partnerships and receive feedback and assistance on their progress. The course is designed to achieve two goals. First, it will give you tools that should increase the probability that you'll make (hopefully substantial) progress on your problem. Second, it will introduce you to research that explains why it's sensible to try those tools on hard problems, i.e., the point of those tools.[1] Please note that the first goal is stated rather cautiously. There are good reasons for this. I expect that most students will be working on hard problems. (Everyone in the class will be getting help from classmates on their particular problem; why bother your peers with an easy problem that you could solve yourself?) An important idea in cognitive science, Newell¿s Law, says that magic doesn't exist: if a problem-solving method is powerful (very likely to solve a certain type of problem), then it only works on a narrow class of problems. So this course will not give you tools that are both powerful and general. It can't: such tools don't exist. Happily, improving your problem-solving skills, at least in certain domains, is possible, and that's what the course aims to do. Progress on hard problems usually requires help from friends and colleagues. Virtually all researchers of creativity agree that most innovations that are both bold and useful involve multiple problem solvers. This course will implement this important pattern by requiring every student help a classmate with their problem. Another important empirical regularity in the field of innovation is that when problems are hard many (perhaps most) candidate-solutions don't work out. It's easy to accept that about other people's ideas; about my own, not so much. So a vital component of effective problem-solving is tough-minded evaluation. This implies rejecting bad ideas or bad parts of a would-be solution. Hence, at the end of the course you will be required to evaluate the progress that a classmate has made on his/her problem and to explain your assessment. (For obvious reasons you will not evaluate the same person you're helping.) In sum, every student will do three things in this course: generate new ways to make some progress on a problem of their own choosing; help somebody else work on their project; evaluate somebody¿s progress. Implementing this design effectively requires that everybody sign on to a social contract: everybody agrees to take all three roles seriously. [1] Some students taking GSBGEN 541 might expect a d.school style course. There are similarities: e.g.,GSBGEN 541 is project-based, as are many d.school courses. But there are also important differences. In particular, this course explains why some problem-solving techniques work better than others by introducing students to key research on cognition and organizational decision making.

This two-week, six-session workshop will offer techniques and practical in-class exercises for writing better -- better memos, emails, feedback for colleagues, news releases, responses to questions from the media and from interviewers, and opinion pieces. Glenn Kramon, an editor who has helped New York Times reporters win 10 Pulitzer Prizes, will teach the course along with accomplished journalists with expertise in powerful, persuasive writing for business. They will provide not only helpful tips but constructive feedback on students' work. They will also share thoughts on how best to work with the news media.

Ever wonder if your online audience is paying attention to your web presentation or meeting? Have you wanted more engagement from your participants? Communicating virtually - using conference or video calls, web tools, and mobile devices is very challenging. Yet more and more communication is happening with presenter and audience connecting electronically.nInformed by scholarly research and industry best practices, this workshop will provide a hands-on, practical introduction to immediately applicable techniques that will help you prepare and deliver engaging, participative, and impactful virtual presentations.nnSpecifically, you will learn techniques for confidently delivering virtual presentations, how to create content that invites engagement, and how to facilitate speaker-audience interactions that invite collaboration without losing control. We will also cover best practices for responding to audience input and questions that will amplify your message and for handling challenging interactions and questions. With these virtual-presenting skills, you will feel more confident presenting and your audience will be more connected and engaged.

This course examines the strategies that highly educated women and men use to combine work and family and the strategies that managers and policy makers can use to help others strike a balance. Topics include the tradeoffs in becoming a stay-at-home parent, the economic value of unpaid labor, the consequences of balancing two high-powered careers and children, the economics of marriage, fertility, child care, and elder care, the gendered division of labor in the home, time-management , workplace innovations, and policy initiatives. Guest speakers add their own perspectives on these issues and describe the roles their organizations play.

GSB Graduates will be entering and re-entering the workforce needing to know and understand how to build, broadcast, maintain and protect their personal brand. Project You will help each student realize: What is a personal brand and how can it be unleashed as a valuable, competitive advantage? Why do you need a personal brand? How do you differentiate yourself and create a brand identity and strategy? How do you use social and traditional media to enhance your brand effectively as well as measure the metrics of social media responses? And how do you know when to pivot and evolve your brand for sustainability? GSB Lecturer, Allison Kluger, a former Television Executive and Co-Lecturer, Tyra Banks, Supermodel/Entrepreneur/Television Executive/Business CEO, will lead this class. They will help students create their own specific image to support their brand, teach them how to navigate on-air exposure, and help them create a long-term strategy for how to promote their personal brand across several media platforms. Within a highly interactive learning environment, image transformations, live broadcasting of presentations at a television station, live streaming of portions of the class on Facebook Live, and YouTube recordings of presentations will all be part of the assignments and requirements. The class culminates with the students sharing their honed personal brand to the public via three viable platforms (Facebook Live, local television, YouTube) to jump-start their personal brand extension. A 1:30 video stating "Who you are, what your personal brand is, and what you want it to be?" will be a mandatory requirement before Class #1.

Effective decision making is a critical skill for political and business leaders. Decisions must be made under pressure and often with incomplete information. George Osborne was Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the global economic crisis, and this class will study three of the biggest challenges global economic policy makers faced during this time. Students will gain a framework for how senior leaders approach decision making, and will be given the chance to put this into practice. Each class will include a simulation where students are put in the role of a senior policy maker facing a key decision.

Academics must effectively communicate the importance of their research to a wide range of audiences, including colleagues, students, stakeholders, and the general public, as well as in a variety of contexts, from academic conferences and job talks to one-on-one conversations, news interviews, and social media.n nThis highly interactive course is designed to equip PhD students with the skills to confidently present their research and connect with varied audiences. Students will craft an elevator pitch for academic settings, create a 3-min TED-like talk aimed at the general public, learn how to document and tell the "story" of their research, and practice responding to Q&A and research critiques. This class combines best practices from public speaking with elements from related fields, including the art of improv and the science of communication.

This course covers various advanced quantitative methods with applications in marketing and economics. Topics include simulation-based estimation, dynamic decision processes, and other topics relating to empirical models of demand and supply. The course stresses the conceptual understanding and application of each technique. Students will learn to apply these techniques using Matlab or an equivalent language.