Online courses directory (682)

The purpose of this Proseminar in Information Technology and Business Transformation (ITBT) is to provide students with a view of IT-enabled transformation and the strategic issues in the management of IT. The seminar will bring in CIOs, CEOs, and experienced consultants and industry observers to provide their perspectives and tell their stories about the use and management of IT today. Their talks will deal with the new technology, the new applications, the issues of implementation, the changes in industries and companies, and the strategic management of IT. In addition, there will be several case discussions of issues to be decided by senior management, with students taking on the position of executives and consultants. There will also be frameworks presented and used to position all material and speakers. Finally, one session will consist of ITBT alumni discussing career opportunities and issues for students, particularly from MIT, with these interests. Students will gain a perspective of the strategic role of and issues in managing IT as manifested in e-business applications, as a driver and enabler of business transformation, and as an underlying infrastructure resource for all businesses.

William Sahlman is one of the world’s leading authorities on entrepreneurship. As a professor at Harvard Business School, his research focuses on investment and financing decisions made in entrepreneurial ventures at all stages of their development. In this free online course, Professor Sahlman explains why the best money comes from customers not venture capitalists. He describes the key elements of an entrepreneurial venture using the example of John Osher who developed the spin toothbrush. You will learn how to achieve the greatest value by changing the relationship of these elements to one another. He identifies important factors to improve entrepreneurial success. He focuses on what drives entrepreneurs, the importance of recognising opportunity and dealing with change. He discusses how your organisation depends on great people and what to look for when hiring. This course will be of great interest to business professionals and students looking for greater knowledge and understanding of the key elements of entrepreneurial success.<br />

This course is an introduction to labor economics with an emphasis on applied microeconomic theory and empirical analysis. We are especially interested in the link between research and public policy. Topics to be covered include: labor supply and demand, taxes and transfers, minimum wages, immigration, human capital, education production, inequality, discrimination, unions and strikes, and unemployment.

The aim of this course is to acquaint students with traditional topics in labor economics and to encourage the development of independent research interests. We will cover a systematic development of the theory of labor supply, labor demand, and human capital. Topics include wage and employment determination, turnover, search, immigration, unemployment, equalizing differences, and institutions in the labor market. There will be particular emphasis on the interaction between theoretical and empirical modeling.

This is a graduate course in labor economics. The course will focus on covering theory and evidence on inequality, wage structure, skill demands, employment, job loss, and early-life determinants of long-run outcomes. Particular areas of focus are: (1) wage determination, including the Roy model, equalizing wage differentials, and models of discrimination; (2) the roles played by supply, demand, institutions, technology and trade in the evolving distribution of income.

This course will highlight the critical legal and business issues entrepreneurs face as they build and launch a new venture. We will explore real world scenarios, and address the legal and business issues that entrepreneurs face, from the moment they conceive of the "million dollar idea" to all of the important junctures along the path to success.

This course provides a basic understanding of legal issues that corporations face during their existence. The course starts by providing the basic building blocks of business law. We then follow a firm through its life cycle from its "breakaway" from an established firm through it going public.

The materials covered during 15.647 (the first half of the semester) emphasize the organization and financing of the company. In the second half of the course we examine a broad array of law-sensitive issues relating to intellectual property, product development, M&A transactions, international trade, the duties of directors and officers, business disputes, and bankruptcy and reorganization.

The goal of the course is not to impart technical legal skills, but to enhance the judgment which students will bring to their responsibilities as entrepreneurs, managers in established companies, or consultants and advisors. There are two take-home exercises, and no exams. Students wishing to take only the first half of the Manager's Legal Function should register for 15.647, which meets only during the H1 period.

By David Bradford and Allan Cohen

Great leaders are made, not born. Whether you’re a student, an individual contributor, a recent manager just starting to lead others, an experienced mid-level manager, or someone passionate about making an impact on your community, you too can benefit from leadership development! LeaderMOOC builds on the latest research from the Center for Creative Leadership on the “fundamental four” leadership capabilities needed for success: self-awareness, learning agility, influence, and communication. Participants will vote on one additional area they would like to explore. The emphasis throughout is “leadership for real,” so rather than taking an academic approach, the course allows participants to discover, for each topic, something essential about their own leadership strengths and challenges, as well as how to translate these insights into real situations in the workplace and community.

This course uses the fictionalized story of Jim Barton as the CEO of a manufacturing company (first published in the book Harder Than I Thought and now dramatized in this course) to examine important issues in 21st century leadership.

This course explores how we use story to articulate ethical norms. The syllabus consists of short fiction, novels, plays, feature films and some non-fiction. Major topics include leadership and authority, professionalism, the nature of ethical standards, social enterprise, and questions of gender, cultural and individual identity, and work / life balance. Materials vary from year to year, but past readings have included work by Robert Bolt, Michael Frayn, Timothy Mo, Wole Soyinka, H. D. Thoreau, and others; films have included Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hotel Rwanda, The Descendants, Motorcycle Diaries, Three Kings, and others. Draws on various professions and national cultures, and is run as a series of moderated discussions, with students centrally engaged in the teaching process.

In this class you will be creating a leadership development tool for students like yourselves in the leadership program at Sloan. This tool might be a coaching guide for second-year pilots, a leadership workbook for MBA students to use during their summer employment, a leadership assessment for club presidents or a workshop on networking. You will be free to choose the tool that you want to develop, but by the end of the class there must be a product that can be used at Sloan. In addition, the tools must link in some way to the leadership model used at Sloan.

Combining leadership, management & entrepreneurship skills, discover the 21 Principles of 21st Century Leadership.

This course examines recent research to uncover the practical actions anyone can take to be a successful leader.

Through lectures, discussions, and class exercises, 15.322 analyzes the human processes underlying organizational behavior and change. The class makes students aware of the challenge of organizational change and equips them to better handle it. There are many psychological and sociological phenomena that regularly occur in organizations, though many of these forces are difficult to see. The aim is to increase the students' understanding of these forces – in themselves and in others – so they become more visible and manageable. The prerequisite for this course is 15.321, Leading Organizations I.

Improve your ability to manage creativity and to lead an innovation strategy in businesses, schools, hospitals, governments, and other complex organizations and institutions, by diagnosing likely innovation failures before they occur.

Free online course: 83 videos, 17 comprehensive problem-solving exercises. Digital text sold separately.

Build a personal life plan in a small group environment. Life Prep on Canvas Network is a course for self-discovery and goal setting. Progress through a series of short journaling exercises, engage in small group discussions, and get and provide feedback with peers as you build a personal life plan, revise your goals, and move toward your personal success. Plan on 2-3 hours of work per week and on being an active, supportive group member. Root your goals in your nature, beliefs, and values to move with clarity, purpose, and confidence.

The 15.821 and 15.822 Sequence

Marketing research may be divided into methods that emphasize understanding "the customer" and methods that emphasize understanding "the market." This course (15.821) deals with the customer and emphasizes qualitative methods (interviews, focus groups, Voice of the Customer, composing questions for a survey). The companion course (15.822) deals with the market and emphasizes quantitative methods (sampling, survey execution, quantitative data interpretation, conjoint analysis, factor analysis).

The methods covered in 15.821 are often used in the "front-end" of market research project, whose second-stage is a quantitative survey. The quality of information gathered in the second-stage is greatly enhanced in this way.

15.821 is designed for the nonspecialist, e.g., someone planning a career in general management, product or project management, R&D, advertising, or entrepreneurship. 15.822 teaches analytical techniques that are standard in consulting or marketing research, and is ideally suited for students planning careers in those fields.

Our subject is the ethics of leadership, an examination of the principles appealed to by executive authority when questions arise about its sources and its legitimacy. Most treatments of this subject resort to case-studies in order to illustrate the application of ethical principles to business situations, but our primary emphasis will be upon classic works of imaginative literature, which convey more directly than case-studies the ethical pressures of decision-making. Readings will include works by Shakespeare, Sophocles, Shaw, E.M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, George Orwell, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Henrik Ibsen, among others. Topics to be discussed include the sources of authority, the management of consensus, the ideal of vocation, the ethics of deception, the morality of expediency, the requirements of hierarchy, the virtues and vices of loyalty, the relevance of ethical principles in extreme situations.