printer friendly pageSTRAMGT 110Q: Making Sense of Strategy
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 will meet once a week to focus 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.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Demarest, D. (PI)
STRAMGT 319: Equity by Design: Building Diverse and Inclusive Organizations
This course equips you to create and build equitable organizations. We will discuss the power of inclusion as it relates to the employee and customer experience. We will study effective strategies for building diverse and inclusive companies, and will address the barriers that can often exist. We'll look at approaches to organizational design that limit unconscious bias and produce more objective decisions across the employee experience - from engaging and hiring candidates to retaining employees and helping them thrive. Finally, we'll dive into how to create inclusive cultures and a sense of belonging. Experts in diversity and inclusion, and executives at companies that have successfully incorporated inclusion programs, will join us for the class discussions.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Mandelbaum, F. (PI)
;
Sterling, A. (SI)
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: 3
Instructors:
Rohan, D. (PI)
STRAMGT 328: Startup Garage: Social Ventures Funding Readiness
Social Ventures Funding Readiness is designed as a follow on to the two quarters of the Startup Garage or Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability experiential learning courses or for Venture Studio residents and is specifically designed for students working on social businesses (nonprofit or for-profit or tbd). Designed for students who already have a solid understanding of the social or environmental need they are trying to address, this course will focus on the business planning needed to launch their venture. In weekly sessions throughout the quarter, teams will work through topics unique to social ventures (e.g. mission, theory of change, impact measurement) as well as topics common to any venture, e.g. product/service market fit, business/economic model, financial planning, early stage financing, logistics, sales/distribution, and board/talent development. Each team will receive significant one-on-one coaching from the instructors, as well as opportunities to share their work with peers and learn from/present to guest speakers. Teams will emerge with a solid business and impact model, ready to raise their first round of seed funding. This course will prepare students for the Stanford Social Innovation Fellowship, Echoing Green, and other similar post-graduate funding opportunities. The course will assume a level of familiarity with key social impact frameworks, so students are encouraged to take another social innovation course or to have prior experience working with mission and theory of change.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Meehan, B. (PI)
;
Starkey, K. (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, no/low touch, 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, Bowman - High tech ventures; Ellis, Saloner - Diverse types of ventures; Foster, Brady - 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)
...
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Instructors:
Ellis, J. (PI)
;
Foster, G. (PI)
;
Leslie, M. (PI)
;
Reiss, P. (PI)
;
Bowman, K. (SI)
;
Brady, S. (SI)
;
Chess, R. (SI)
;
Saloner, G. (SI)
;
Speiser, M. (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 45 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, Win, Spr
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Dodson, D. (PI)
;
Ellis, J. (PI)
;
Kelly, P. (PI)
...
more instructors for STRAMGT 355 »
Instructors:
Dodson, D. (PI)
;
Ellis, J. (PI)
;
Kelly, P. (PI)
;
Peterson, J. (PI)
;
Kelly, P. (SI)
;
Taweel, K. (SI)
;
Weaver, G. (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 course explores the many issues associated with optimizing product/market fit. A take-home midterm, a group paper, and an in-class exercise 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 368: Strategic Management of Nonprofit Organizations and Social Ventures
This course seeks to provide a survey of the strategic, governance, and management issues facing a wide range of nonprofit organizations and their executive and board leaders, in the era of venture philanthropy and social entrepreneurship. The students will also be introduced to core managerial issues uniquely defined by this sector such as development/fundraising, investment management, performance management and nonprofit finance. The course also provides an overview of the sector, including its history and economics. Cases involve a range of nonprofits, from smaller, social entrepreneurial to larger, more traditional organizations, including education, social service, environment, health care, religion, NGO's and performing arts. In exploring these issues, this course reinforces the frameworks and concepts of strategic management introduced in the core first year courses. In addition to case discussions, the course employs role plays, study group exercises and many outsider speakers.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
Instructors:
Meehan, B. (PI)
STRAMGT 502: Systems Leadership for the Digital Industrial Transformation
This course explores the details of how leaders at the world's biggest companies are driving frame-breaking transformational change inside of organizations that have grown up with an industrial foundation, or who are moving into the industrial sector as a new entrant. The course will delve into the need for systems thinking at multiple levels - of products, organizations, cultures and individuals. We will draw upon both academic theories of transformational organizational change and also the real-world implementation challenges that confront leaders who are moving simultaneously with both unprecedented scale and speed. The sessions will examine a variety of firms and industries being affected by the blend of digital and physical in order to lay out the unique operational and organizational challenges in a global context. How specifically should operating rhythms be changed and adjusted during this radical transformation? How does management both train a workforce with new skill-sets and also hire new employees with different talents? What are the unique internal challenges for industrial firms as they add digital products and services? What are the likely forces of resistance to these changes, and how should leaders effectively move companies whose histories have spanned over 100+ years? How should management ensure that existing revenue streams do not atrophy prematurely and how should these challenges be communicated to public markets? In addition, from the perspective of new entrants, we will study how companies can quickly grow and scale when leadership has the benefit of being unencumbered by legacy systems, but also faces unexpected challenges when they do not have the deep industry and domain knowledge or institutional culture that can provide insights into the demands of customers, channels and governments. This class will be co-taught with Jeff Immelt, former Chairman and CEO of GE.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2
Instructors:
Siegel, R. (PI)
;
Immelt, J. (SI)
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