Business Strategy in Creative Industries Bocconi University - 2020, 2019, 2018 Business strategy is concerned with answering two central questions: “How and where should a business compete?” The goal of this course is to develop your understanding of how firms create a sustainable competitive advantage in the complex, dynamic environments of creative industries. We adopt the perspective of a general manager who has the overall responsibility for the performance of the firm. The general manager’s most basic tasks are to understand the drivers of current firm performance, identify the changes that are most likely to affect future performance, and determine how to utilize the firm’s resources to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. The concepts and frameworks of the course will help you to structure complex problems in business strategy and provide a solid foundation for strategic decision making.
University of Chicago Summer Organizations Seminar University of Chicago - 2015 Starting from the fundamental question posed by Ronald Coase, we will examine why it is that organizations exist in some market contexts, as opposed to purely decentralized market coordination. The course will cover the basic definition and activities of organizations, as well as research in organizational studies that attempts to answer questions about why organizations take the form they do, why some survive and others do not, and develop implications for the strategic decisions of managers.
Sociology BA Senior Seminar (Preceptor for 11 BA Theses) University of Chicago - 2014-2015 During their fourth year, students majoring in sociology are expected to complete an original project of sociological inquiry on a topic of their choice, culminating in a final paper from twenty to forty pages in length. The project is an independent research project in which questions are formulated and data are collected and analyzed by the student. The senior project is researched, discussed, and written in the context of the senior seminar, which is a required yearlong course. The senior project is written under the guidance of the preceptors of the department.
TEACHING ASSISTANT
Augmented Intelligence Booth School of Business - MBA - 2018, 2017 (James A. Evans) An executive’s most prized adviser or network contact may no longer be a consultant or another member of the C-suite, but a machine. Enhanced with big behavioral, operational and financial data, machines now augment rational decision-making, estimation, prediction, pattern recognition, and combinatorial search. Executives, on the other hand, excel in creativity, intuition, and cognitive flexibility. Together they have the potential to assemble teams, networks and crowds endowed with powerful collective intelligence. Using hands-on cases and applications—including IBM’s Deep Blue and Google’s AlphaGo, computers that beat Chess and Go's Grand Masters—this course shows how to use critical machine learning tools to transform numbers, text, images and arbitrary data streams into promising new strategies, unbiased decisions, creative product designs and convincing stories, and to lead augmented data science, decision-making and design teams by understanding the limits and potential of machine intelligence. The overarching goal is for you to develop the imagination and experience to incorporate machines strategically to augment your cognitive skills, grow collectively intelligent businesses and disrupt Grand Masters in any field.
Strategy and Structure: Markets and Organizations Booth School of Business - MBA - 2018, 2017 (Johan Chu), 2015 (Elizabeth Pontikes) This case-based course seeks to inculcate different ways of thinking about corporate strategy. A framework for analyzing the relationships between strategy, industry structure, firm structure, and competitive advantage is used throughout the course. The real learning, however, comes from in-depth analysis and discussion of firms’ evolution (or lack thereof) in response to internal and external pressures. Several lenses for viewing the relationship between strategy and structure will be introduced during the course.
Leading People and Organizations University of Michigan Ross School of Business - MBA - 2017 (Maxim Sytch) Leading People and Organizations prepares you to lead high-performing, successful groups and organizations and seeks an understanding of human behavior to enhance management practice. The primary objective of this course is to provide you with rigorous, analytical frameworks for understanding how to diagnose organizational problems, develop solutions that appreciate the complexity of your organizational context, and lead your group or organization in the implementation of more effective strategy and action. You will learn how to influence others without relying on formal power and authority, negotiate and make effective decisions in uncertain and complex environments, as well as how to build and utilize your social capital. You will learn how to effectively manage conflict, organize, and lead teams. Finally, you will develop skills that enable you to manage organizational boundaries, initiate and drive organizational change, and align people and organizational processes in ways that enable your organization to thrive in today's dynamic, competitive, and global marketplace.
Organizational Analysis University of Chicago - Undergrad, MA, PhD - 2015 (Edward Laumann) This course is a systematic introduction to theoretical and empirical work on organizations broadly conceived (e.g., public and private economic organizations, governmental organizations, prisons, professional and voluntary associations, health-care organizations). Topics include intraorganizational questions about organizational goals and effectiveness, communication, authority, and decision making. Using recent developments in market, political economy, and neoinstitutional theories, we explore organizational change and interorganizational relationships for their implications in understanding social change in modern societies.
Internet and Society University of Chicago - Undergrad, MA, PhD - 2015 (James A. Evans) The course explores the Internet and its influence on modern life. We consider the history, growth and structure of the Internet, email and the World Wide Web; the meaning and consequence of the "digital divide" between rich and poor; online identities and intimacy; social media and community; political participation and polarization; media sharing, mash-ups and cultural diversity; the knowledge economy, online markets and the evolution of intellectual property; immersive and virtual reality; information overload; searching, surfing and distributed intelligence on the Internet. The course surveys a wide variety of arguments about these issues, generates new questions and theories about Internet and society, and interrogates them all in discussion and through online investigation and experiments.
The History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Modern Science University of Chicago - Undergrad, MA - 2015 (James A. Evans) This course explores the rise of modern science, from the birth of the Royal Society, the first scientific society and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, its first journal. In recent years, science has provided some of the biggest headlines in the world's press. From concerns over the nuclear capability of Iran and North Korea to the ability of new treatments to slow the spread of AIDS, from concerns over Japan’s degrading nuclear reactors to those about genetically modified foods, and from the controversies over alleged spying at Los Alamos and Italian geoscientists sent to jail for failing to predict earthquakes to the struggle over intellectual property in digital media, many of the major issues of the day emerge from the domains of science, technology and medicine. This course finds much of its rationale in such cases, where scientific questions become inseparable from social ones. It has two main aims. First, to help students understand what science itself is, as a social as well as intellectual enterprise, through examination of its emergence and evolution. And, second, to help them decide what role the scientific enterprise plays—and should play—in our society.
