Elective Courses
Supply Chain Management and Information Technology
M. Eric Johnson, Professor of Operations Management and
Director, Center for Digital Strategies
Last Offered: Fall 2006
( syllabus )
This course focuses on managing material and information outside of the factory walls including aspects of product design collaboration, demand planning and forecasting, inventory deployment, distribution system design, channel management, and logistics. We explore order fulfillment strategies and the impact of the internet on distribution and back-end supply chain processes. We also examine strategies for enterprise and extraprise integration. Stumbling blocks for supply chain integration such as high transaction costs between partners, poor information availability, and the challenges of managing complex interfaces between functional organizations have been rapidly dissolving on the web. We study the impact of these changes on traditional supply chains and on the creation of virtual chains.
Marketing in the Networked Economy
John Marshall, Adjunct Associate Professor of Business and Executive Fellow, Center for Digital Strategies
Last Offered: Fall 2006 ( syllabus )
This course takes an analytical approach to the study of the marketing function in the context of the networked economy. Attention focuses on the challenges and opportunities that organizations face in applying traditional marketing skills in the electronic marketplace. Guest speakers and case studies will be used to illustrate the key issues in developing effective marketing strategies for e-commerce. The major objectives of this course are to provide students with (1) an understanding of the role of marketing in the context of the networked economy; (2) a sound conceptual and theoretical “tool kit” for analyzing marketing problems faced by organizations in the networked economy; and (3) a forum for presenting and defending their recommendations and for critically examining and discussing the recommendations of others.
Strategic Innovation Management
Alva Taylor, Associate Professor of Business Administration
Last Offered: Spring 2006 ( syllabus )
This course provides a framework for managing innovations in businesses. The emphasis throughout is on the development and application of models and analytical tools that clarify the interactions between competition, new ideas, patterns of technological and market change, and the structure and development of internal capabilities. The course also examines the challenge to building and maintaining an innovative organization, and how individuals can successfully innovate in organizations. These tools can provide the framework for insightful planning when deciding how to structure your organization to innovate, how to manage groups that are innovating, which initiatives to invest in, how to structure your resources to gain competitive advantage over other industry participants, and how to use you capabilities to exploit innovative activities. The course should be of particular interest to those interested in managing a business where external or internal innovation is a necessity for competition, those interested in new business ventures, and consulting.
Core Course
Strategic Analysis of Technology Systems
Alva Taylor, Asst. Prof., Business Admin.
Andrew King, Asst. Prof., Business Admin.
Last Offered: Spring 2006
The purpose of this course is to ensure that every Tuck MBA is able to make an immediate impact in an organization where technology influences market outcomes. Virtually every modern enterprise must use technology (e.g. computing and communications) to create value for its customers. Additionally, most firms use software-enabled networks to link with both customers and partners. Finally, more and more enterprises also generate proprietary technological knowhow in order to serve customers better than do their competitors. Strategic Analysis of Technology Systems will prepare you to:
- Help your organization get the most out of its investments in technology
- Understand how your competitors and complementors are using technology to change the rules of the game
- Show your customers how to leverage their technological assets
- More accurately evaluate the strategic technologies of firms whose value you must assess
This is a strategy course for general managers. It is not a course in information systems, or research and development, or electronic commerce. Rather, it shows you how firms create and leverage proprietary technologies, particularly when these technologies are networked to one another as part of a larger knowledge system. Functionally, our perspective is more closely aligned with that of a vice president of business development than with a chief information officer's or a vice president of research and development's point of view.
Today's general managers must understand what is new about the "new economy." Increasingly, both products and processes can be connected to one another via a ubiquitous, standardized, software-enabled digital communications network: the internet. The cost of transmitting and receiving knowledge is falling toward zero, as is the cost of capturing unprecedented volumes of information from both products and processes. Consequently, you need an intellectual toolkit that helps you manage in an environment where firms and their products or services are embedded in an open network that tends more and more to every element of a truly global economy. The latter half of the course focuses principally on the strategic and managerial challenges posed by network technologies.
|
