MGT - Management

MOB1000 Foundations of Entrepreneurial Management 

The content of MOB1000 is equivalent to the material covered in FME 1000 and FME 1001. 

Students who are enrolled in FME therefore cannot enroll in this course. Foundations of Entrepreneurial Management (FEM) introduces you to how to think and act entrepreneurially (ET&A). FEM will help you apply ET&A – a method of applying creative and predictive logic to achieve economic and social value creation -- to a variety of business situations you might encounter during your career, including: Starting and leading a new for-profit, non-profit or social venture; joining the team of a growing enterprise; or infusing an established organization or family business with entrepreneurial vigor. In FEM you’ll learn about Babson’s method for entrepreneurial thought and action, giving you the foundation to move on to intermediate level coursework and pursue your own entrepreneurial dreams. 

Prerequisite: NONE

MOB1010 Organizational Behavior
4 Foundation Management Credits

The content of MOB1010 is equivalent to the material covered in FME1000 and FME1001. Students who are enrolled in FME therefore cannot enroll in this course.

Organizational Behavior is designed to help you improve your effectiveness as an individual contributor, team member, and leader in your current and future work environments. This course centers on developing your critical thinking regarding the complex circumstances that surround why people behave as they do in organizations and on using your knowledge to take more effective action and influence individuals and the wider organization in an ethical manner. Topics we will explore include emotional intelligence, behavioral styles, managing diversity, power and influence, negotiations, and culture. To become an entrepreneurial leader in a start-up venture, an established organization, or a social venture, you need to engage your understanding of organizational behavior.

Prerequisites: None

MOB3507 An Irish Journey: Leadership, Collaboration & Innovation in the Creative Ecosystem in Ireland
4 Advanced Management Credits (Elective Abroad)

This course will provide undergraduate students a unique opportunity to experience and examine the current economic, social and political trends in the creative ecosystem in Ireland. We will directly engage and interact with Irish entrepreneurs, business executives, artists, performers, athletes and historians to strive to understand the ways in which creativity and innovation occur, flourish and extend far beyond the boundaries of this relatively small island nation. Our goal will be to immerse ourselves into the creative processes, systems, cultural norms and institutions that have led Ireland to gain the reputation and standing as one of the most innovative economies in the world.

MOB3512 Leader Development: Enabling Transformational Change in Yourself and Others

(Formerly Leadership)
4 Advanced Management Credits

The focus of this course will be on leader development – your leader development. By wrestling with concepts and experiences, ideas and actions, identity and aspirations, we will explore leadership through the different lenses you all bring. Learning from experience is a critical part of this course. If you prefer to learn only the theories of leadership, this is the wrong course for you. We will work to identify and challenge assumptions and mental models of effective leader behavior and consider what it means to be an “entrepreneurial leader.” This course is appropriate for those who are or want to become leaders, and for students who want to understand leadership whether they aspire to the role or not.

For More Information: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/v6i3t

Prerequisites: SME2001 and SME2002

MOB3514 Leading in a Connected World
(Formerly Managing the High-Performing Or ORGANIZATION)
4 General Credits

This course will help you learn how to manage collaboration and networks for organizational performance and personal success. It will focus on ways in which successful leaders think about, analyze, and develop collaboration networks that help drive strategic advantage, innovation, and well-being in organizations. The course will also equip you with a range of network tools and frameworks that not only can make you a more effective leader and team member but give you a competitive advantage in the job market.

In this course we will specifically address:

• STRATEGY: Deriving strategic advantage in a knowledge economy.  The ability to innovate and leverage expertise has become central to wealth creation for organizations and entire economies.  The first 25% of this course will focus on how leaders can best define and develop networks that drive both organizational and personal success.  In addition, we will review practices and unique technologies that high performing organizations employ to better leverage and share employee experience and expertise.

• ORGANIZATION: Attaining critical efficiencies and innovation through networks.  In order to develop innovative products and services, leaders need to develop innovative organizations through new and better ways of collaborating.  The middle 50% of this course will teach a specific process leaders can use for systematically assessing, improving and supporting collaboration inside organizations (especially in informal networks).   

• EXECUTION: Driving performance through team and individual level learning and execution.  The bulk of work done in organizations occurs in teams or other collaborative relationships.  The last 25% of this class will address unique ways to drive performance through teams by helping them more effectively work through networks.  In addition, specific focus will be paid to key things YOU need to think about in managing your own career and networks as you enter the work force.

Prerequisites: FME

MOB3515 Talent Management: What Many Leaders Miss

(Formerly Developing the Employee Experience (With a Human Resources Lens))
4 Advanced Management Credits

This course is designed to make you think about managing people – or Human Resources – in new ways. The purpose of the course is to help you learn how organizational systems and processes impact how jobs are designed, who gets hired, and how individuals are developed (or not) within an organization. In addition to these topics, we’ll discuss performance management, employee engagement, and employee separation. Overall, the course is designed to create comfort with the language of human resources management and understand how individuals, managers, and entrepreneurs ideally respond to human resource-related concerns.

For More Information: www.kaltura.com/tiny/p1nk5

Prerequisites: FME1000 and FME1001 or MOB1010

MOB3518 Lights, Camera, Management!: Leadership in the Arts 
(Formerly Arts & Entertainment Management: Balancing Creative Passion & Business Savvy) 
4 Advanced Management Credits  

In this course, students will explore leadership and management issues that surround the business side of the arts industry. Arts managers are responsible for all activities associated with the creation, running, and ultimately closing of an artistic production. This includes engaging in entrepreneurial activities to create and fund a production; networking across various stakeholders; marketing, sales and financial management to run the production, and working with various unions. Further students will gain an understanding of the overarching business models and operations within the arts. In this survey course, students will explore these issues across diverse arts industries including: Theatre, Film, Music, Dance, Events, Visual Art, and more. The course will culminate with an experiential class project that will allow students to use what they learned through the duration of the course. This course is ideal for students interested in a career in arts management and for students who love the arts and want to understand the management side of this industry. 

Prerequisites: FME1000 and FME1001

MOB3523 Building an Inclusive Organization: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging in the Workplace
4 Advanced Management Credits 

People in the workplace are constantly interacting with peers, managers, and customers with very different backgrounds and experiences. This course is designed to help students navigate diverse settings more effectively and improve their ability to work within and lead diverse teams to build more inclusive organizations. It also offers students the opportunity to develop their critical thinking on topics such as identity, relationships across difference, bias, and equality of opportunity, and specifically, how these topics relate to organizational issues of equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice. Class sessions will be experiential and discussion based. Readings, self-reflection, guest lecturers, case studies, organizational audits, and a team project will also be emphasized.

For more information: Building an Inclusive Organization

Prerequisites: (FME1000 and FME1001) or (MOB1010 and EPS1000)

MOB3524: Crafting a Meaningful Career

4 advanced management credits

One reason many of you came to Babson was to launch your careers. This class explores what it means to craft a career that is meaningful and can sustain you over the course of your life. We will also think about what it means to develop the careers of others. In this course, we take an evidence-based, critical approach to designing, evaluating, and updating our careers. We will use concepts you have learned previously in your Babson curriculum – like ET&A and design thinking – and apply them to designing careers, yours and others', so that they can be meaningful and sustainable. The class involves regular journaling, an intensive design workshop, a “hands-on” planning session with Babson CCD, and a final project to reinforce course concepts.

For more information: https://babson.instructuremedia.com/embed/155ca07f-2f36-4998-9d21-589a178ad4b0 

Prerequisites: (FME1000 and FME1001) or (EPS1000 and MOB1010)

MOB3526 Values Based Entrepreneurial Leadership
4 Advanced Management Credits 

This course has been created specifically for students who wish to develop their capability as a values based entrepreneurial leader. Specifically, the course is about helping students to better understand and develop their own values and learn how effectively apply those values as a leader. Being a successful entrepreneurial leader requires a clear set of values and a willingness to allow those values to govern decision-making beyond simple decision rubrics like profit maximization.

For more information: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/0l0yj

Prerequisites: (FME1000 and FME1001) or (EPS1000 and MOB1010)

MOB3531 Career Launch: Internship Experience Lab
2 Advanced Management Credits

This course is open to all students who have secured internships that occur concurrently with the course , and is designed to enrich the internship experience by facilitating deliberate observation, reflection, and integration of learning with the actual workplace internship experience. To achieve this goal, students will complete assignments related to emotional intelligence, communication, teamwork, critical thinking, leadership, professionalism, and career management and relate these topics to their internship experience.

This course offers a unique opportunity for students to explore their roles in organizations while simultaneously building and enhancing their professional competencies. The curriculum is structured to work in lockstep with students' work experience, providing guidance and mentorship to succeed in their internship, explore and assess career readiness, evaluate organizational values and leadership, and practice professional behavior. Learning in this course will include readings, assessments, written reflections, group discussions, peer engagement, and supervisor feedback. 

For More Information Click here

Prerequisites: (FME 1000) or ( MOB 1010)

MOB3534 Management Consulting Field Experience
4 General Credits
 

The Management Consulting Field Experience (MCFE) course provides an excellent opportunity for students to apply principles that they learn in the classroom to real-world consulting projects. The students gain practical experience by solving actual business situations. Students also develop key skills in negotiation, group dynamics, organization, and planning. Previous projects include financial advisory, corporate finance, investment management, marketing, data analytics, and business strategy. Teams of four to six undergraduate students work as a consulting group for a sponsor company. The students meet with representatives of the company, analyze the problem, and explore possible solutions. The project concludes with a formal report and a presentation to the sponsor company comprising the group's recommendations. This course meets twice per week. During the fall semester class will meet Monday’s and Wednesday’s from 11:30-1:00 PM, in the spring semester meetings will be scheduled by team and MBA Project Leader at mutually convenient times. For more information: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/jrbdx
 

Prerequisites: Minimum GPA of 2.7, 2nd semester Sophomore, Junior or Senior status by the beginning of the project, and Permission of Experiential Learning Programs Associate Director

MOB3560 Global Strategic Management

(Formerly International Business Enterprise)
4 General Credits

This course provides a broadly based introduction to management of international business ventures and the strategies and operations of multinational corporations.

Prerequisites: ASM3300

MOB3580 Negotiations
4 General Credits

** This course is recommended for juniors and seniors **

This course explores the many ways that individuals think about and practice conflict resolution. Students will have a chance to learn more about their own negotiating preferences and the consequences of the choices they make. The course requires both intensive involvement in negotiation and mediation simulations/exercises and thoughtful application of theory through class discussion and written analysis. Class materials will reflect a variety of contexts from the workplace, including interpersonal, global, and cross-cultural interactions.

Prerequisites: FME1000 and FME1001 or MOB1000 and MOB1010

MOB3582 Global Management Communication 
4 General Credits 

Effective communications are at the core of all international business relationships. So this course combines theory with practice in order for students to discover best practices in cross-cultural communication and then to apply them to the challenges of the global business leader. To become successful in this role, students will study the relationship between issues of culture, gender, and ethnicity and successful business communications. MOB3582 will be taught using lecture/discussion sessions, short case analyses, simulations, self-assessments, and the development of coaching skills that build collaboration across cultures and identities. Students will also have the opportunity to enhance their oral and written communication competencies established within multi-cultural contexts. 

Prerequisites: SME2001 and SME2002

STR3500: Scaling Strategy: Mastering the Four Stages from Idea to $10 Billion

4 advanced management credits

How do the most successful founders transform their idea into a large, fast-growing company? Scaling Strategy answers this question by investigating three fundamental questions:
• What are the stages through which an organization must evolve to turn a new business idea into a fast-growing public company?
• How can leaders capture the opportunities and overcome the challenges at each of these stages?
• How can CEOs assess their ability to lead their organization through the next stage of scaling?

Scaling Strategy explores these questions through a specific scaling framework developed by Professor Cohan and complemented with the work of other experts in the field of scaling strategy. As described below in Appendix A: Core Scaling Concepts, the course presents and applies concepts such as:

• Four stages of scaling – during which leaders seek to achieve different business objectives that are essential to transforming an idea into a large company;
• Seven scaling levers – the management tools that leader use to achieve these objectives; and
• Scaling quotient – a tool for assessing the company’s capabilities – both strengths and improvement opportunities – to hurdle the next scaling stage.
 

For more information please watch this video: https://babson.instructuremedia.com/embed/d2e3ddbb-d69a-4091-b285-1fe25c344a76 

Prerequisite: STR3000

STR 3501: BRAIN RUSH: GENERATIVE AI FOR BUSINESS GROWTH AND STRATEGY

4 advanced management credits

Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, much of the world’s attention has shifted to generative AI – a form of artificial intelligence that responds to natural language prompts with cogent-sounding responses.
Generative AI has prompted leading analysts to forecast trillions of dollars in new market opportunities while propelling the shares of a handful of publicly traded companies satisfying the corporate demand for the technology required to capture AI chatbots’ opportunities and risks.
The attention focused on generative AI raises many questions for business leaders, investors, and policymakers:
• Does generative AI hype anticipate real potential for the technology’s ability to create social and economic value?
• What should policymakers do to maximize generative AI’s opportunities and mitigate its risks?
• How can business leaders capture the opportunity and minimize the risks of generative AI?
• Which generative AI applications will create the most sustainable value for society?
• How can employees, managers, and executives use generative AI to perform their work more effectively and efficiently?
• How can investors pinpoint the companies with the most wealth creation potential and shun the rest?
Brain Rush provides students with core concepts and skills they will need to answer these questions as the technology evolves. As described below in Appendix AI: Brain Rush Core Concepts, the course presents and gives students the opportunity to apply concepts such as:
• New technology opportunity/threat matrix – framework for assessing the business and societal opportunities and threats of new technologies – such as the internet, nanotechnology, the blockchain, generative AI, and quantum computing.
• Value pyramid – a framework for assessing the potential value of generative AI applications;
• Generative AI CEO change agenda – a process to enable business leaders to create new growth trajectories by brainstorming, building, and deploying the right generative AI applications
• Generative AI ecosystem map – a map of the chain of industries – from semiconductors to consulting services -- aiming to deploy generative AI to improve the lives of consumers and organizations.
• Cognitive hunger assessment framework – a model for evaluating potential investments in generative AI startups based on analysis of what distinguishes the 0.4% of founders who take their startup public and run it three years or more thereafter from their peers.

Prerequisites: STR 3000

STR3506 Mysteries, Puzzles and Imagination

(Formerly MOB3506 Mysteries, Puzzles and Wicked Problems)
4 Advanced Management Credits

The course will help you learn how to think insightfully and become a skilled problem solver.  Excelling in both is essential for success, no matter what your choice of career.  Employers rank critical thinking and problem solving as prized skills that are difficult to find in business school graduates.  A rising number of companies look for these skills using case interviews.

We will learn a variety of techniques and approaches to solving strategic, consequential, and wicked problems.  Wicked problems are messy, multifaceted, lack sufficient information, and are difficult to solve.  It is easy to get them wrong, especially under time pressure.  We will approach them as mysteries or puzzles to better solve them.  And we will learn how imagination might play a role in solving business problems. 

Using various techniques and ways to think, we will learn to frame problems well to make sense of messy, ambiguous situations; identify needed evidence without wasting time on irrelevant information, draw upon different business disciplines but not be limited by any, find the story in numbers, use judgment, be original, and so much more.  Throughout the course, I will ask you how you thought and made decisions and how others thought and made decisions.  Effective problem solving needs such awareness about oneself and others. 

The course uses a workshop format to emphasize in-class exercises and practice.  We will minimize using conventional cases (14 pages of text and many more with exhibits).  Instead, to simulate case interviews and workplace realities, we will use cryptic cases and live cases.

Few business schools teach problem solving rigorously.  Acquiring this skill will differentiate you in the job market, prepare you for doing well in case interviews, and position you for success in your career of choice.

Prerequisites: (FME 1000 and FME 1001) or (MOB 1010 and EPS 1000)

STR3508 International Consulting Experience
4 Credits

The International Consulting Experience takes the consulting experience global by providing 3-4 students teams the opportunity to work on project assignments with international corporate sponsors. The program begins with pre-departure sessions focused on consulting methodology and intercultural competencies during the fall semester. Travel to the company site will take place over the winter break at which time students will develop the engagement contract and begin on-site primary research. Project work will be completed over the spring semester ending with the team presenting their findings and recommendations to their sponsor company in a written report and an oral presentation.

Students must apply for this course through the Glavin Office

STR3510 Moonshot Innovations

4 Advanced Management Credits

This course will provide Babson students with a deeper understanding of how a strategic approach to “moonshot” innovations can solve significant societal challenges. We will explore several historical examples, focusing on the original and emergent strategies and technologies, the characteristics of successful teams, and the role of strategic problem solving.

Today’s world faces seemingly insurmountable challenges: a global pandemic, rapid climate change, and income inequality at the top of a growing list. Businesses have been faulted for contributing to these challenges, but are also looked upon as strategic partners in finding solutions. Understanding the strategies that organizations and individuals can apply in solving today’s “moonshot” challenges requires us to deconstruct the strategic approaches of others who solved the seemingly insurmountable challenges of their day.

This course will examine past moonshots to learn the strategies, innovations, and processes that enable teams to achieve what most thought impossible. We will also look at failed moonshot efforts and explore how businesses and entrepreneurs can avoid their fate as they apply their energy and efforts to address today’s challenges.

Prerequisites: (FME 1000 and FME 1001) or (MOB 1010 and EPS 1000)

MOB3540 Israel Start-Up Strategy

4 (Elective Abroad) Credits

Program fee is paid to Glavin Office – program fee includes: accommodations, breakfast, bus transportation in Israel, program planned meals, and cultural excursions. Not included: tuition, international flight, visa costs, additional meals and personal expenses.

The purpose of this course is to provide students with an opportunity to understand the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) of Israel – a country of about seven million people with the highest rate of NASDAQ listings per capita of any nation.

Through direct interaction with entrepreneurs, capital providers, educators, and government officials in Israel, the students should come away with a new perspective on startup’s opportunities and challenges and get experience consulting to local startups while applying concepts from two books – Capital Rising: How Capital Flows Are Changing Business Systems All Over the World, co-authored by Peter S. Cohan with Srini Rangan, and Hungry Startup Strategy: Creating New Ventures with Limited Resources and Unlimited Vision (November 2012), by Peter S. Cohan.

Israel’s ability to spur entrepreneurial innovation vastly exceeds its size. Israel has 7.1 million people but the number of Israeli companies listed on the NASDAQ far exceeds its relative population. For example, India has three companies listed. Japan has six, Canada has 48, while Israel has 63. Israel has received as much foreign venture capital as the much larger Britain -- $2 billion in foreign venture capital invested there in 2008 alone. And Israel has the highest density of startups in the world 3,850 – the equivalent of one startup for every 1,844 Israelis. Moreover, during the last few decades, Israel’s high-tech innovations have spread around the world.[i]

How did Israel accomplish this feat? Israel has historically been geo-politically isolated from its direct neighbors, limiting trade and cooperation. An Arab nation boycott made regional trade impossible and it has very few natural resources. In addition, it has borne the impact of multiple military conflicts, putting pressure on its economy. As a consequence, Israel looks to the spirit of its people to overcome its many limitations. The way Israel has managed its human capital – a critical element of its EE – has allowed Israel to become an innovation hub.

Israel’s entrepreneurial success depends on the people it attracts and how it harnesses their skills. Since Israel remains under constant political threat, all its citizens serve in the military which creates social networks and leadership training. Furthermore, Israel’s culture of critique, fostered by centuries of Jewish tradition, encourages a spirit of relentless improvement. Moreover, the Right of Return immigration policy for Jews augments Israel's population with people motivated to build new lives and livelihoods. The result is a business climate that embraces risk and spurs the growth of good ideas.

Many examples of Israel’s most successful start-ups spring from the application of its human capital to the gap between demand and supply. For example, drip irrigation was invented when a farmer in the Negev desert noticed one of his trees flourishing despite drought conditions. When he discovered a leaky underwater pipe, he had a moment of creative inspiration, developing a technology that spread around the world.

Many of Israel’s greatest innovations were in the area of information technology. They include PC anti-virus software, to AOL Instant Messenger, and the Intel Pentium microprocessor chip. Israelis also created medical devices such as radiation-free breast cancer diagnostics and the “Gut Cam,” an ingestible pill video camera that diagnoses abnormalities.

Hence one of the goals of the course is to explore how Israel has created such a vital EE and to give students a first-hand look at the Israelis who put the concept of entrepreneurship into practice.

The Israel Startup Strategy Elective Abroad is intended to provide students with the following benefits: to understand how Israel spurs startups, to get a deeper understanding of Israel’s business culture, to meet entrepreneurs, business educators, government officials, and capital providers in Israel.

STR3560 Global Strategic Management

(Formerly International Business Enterprise)
4 General Credits

This course provides a broadly based introduction to management of international business ventures and the strategies and operations of multinational corporations.

For more information please watch this video: https://babson.instructuremedia.com/embed/bc3c40f0-e41a-4abb-80e1-65fead445989 

Prerequisites: STR 3000

STR4510 Strategic Decision Making

(Formerly MOB4510)
4 General Credits

This course is an extension of the core Strategy courses focusing on strategy formulation and execution. It draws upon the insights from the field of strategy, economics, decision making and corporate financed and is suited for students interested in management consulting, investment management or corporate planning. It is intended to complement the course, Economics of Competitive Strategy, by focusing on how strategies are formulated and executed in specific competitive situations.

For More Information: www.kaltura.com/tiny/xx8ue 

Prerequisites: ASM3300

STR4572 Management Consulting

(Formerly MOB4572)
4 Advanced Management Credits

Elite armies of management consultants are at work advising companies ranging from the Fortune 500 to mid-sized Private Equity portfolio companies across all industries (and government) addressing such topics as market attractiveness, mergers & acquisitions, business strategy, operating and cost efficiencies, information/data management, human performance, and development/coaching of leadership. The over 700,000 firms (globally) that comprise this $250 Billion industry, employing the best students from leading business schools, use proprietary methodologies and tools to deliver real shareholder value to their clients. The objective of this course is to introduce to those students who seek to compete and prosper by addressing exigent business issues—that cannot be solved by leading firms without assistance from credentialed consultants—the skills necessary to be successful in the management consulting industry. This will be accomplished by reviewing the content and process frameworks and methodologies used by leading consulting firms, inculcating the perspective of the client when addressing challenging business issues, and helping students consider some of the career and lifestyle issues inherent in a consulting career. Topics will be introduced in facilitated discussions, in-class exercises, cases, and some selected pre-readings. In addition, there will be a group project—using client materials from a real company with which I was involved prior to coming to Babson—that will replicate a “typical” consulting project.

For more information: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/tjdwy

Prerequisites: STR 3000