Courses tagged with "Information environments" (172)

This half-term course examines the choices that we make which affect others and the choices others make that affect us. Such situations are known as "games" and game-playing, while sounding whimsical, is serious business. Managers frequently play "games" both within the firm and outside it – with competitors, customers, regulators, and even capital markets! The goal of this course is to enhance a student's ability to think strategically in complex, interactive environments. Knowledge of game theory will give students an advantage in such strategic settings. The course is structured around three "themes for acquiring advantage in games": commitment / strategic moves, exploiting hidden information, and limited rationality.

This course is designed to provide you with a competitive advantage in negotiation. You will learn and practice the technical skills and analytic frameworks that are necessary to negotiate successfully with peers from other top business schools, and you will learn methods for developing the powerful social capital you will need to rise in the executive ranks of any organization.

In this course, you will learn to successfully face the challenge of negotiating materially rewarding deals while also building your social capital. You will work with training materials on leadership and relationship building that have been used with over 200 principals and partners in international professional service firms (40% were non-US nationals), and a social capital assessment tool used by these executives to receive feedback from senior partners and over 2000 clients. In addition, you will have the opportunity to participate in a lunchtime workshop on "Leadership and Emotional Intelligence" led by an executive coach, Charles Wolfe of Charles J Wolfe Associates.

Overall, this course is designed to enhance your ability to negotiate within the context of an ongoing relationship. As a manager, consultant, or professional service provider you will negotiate with your counterparts, team members, clients, and subordinates on an ongoing basis. Further, in today's less hierarchical organizations, you will be forced to negotiate with others to get your work done. Every time a project falls behind, critical new information is uncovered, or the competitive landscape of your industry changes, you will need to renegotiate tasks, plans, goals, or fees with your key stakeholders.

In sum, we will focus both on the analytic tools necessary to become a highly successful negotiator and on the relationship building skills necessary to negotiate deals that will enhance your social capital, your ability to lead others, and your book of loyal clients.

The doctoral seminar 15.764 focuses on theoretical work for studying operations planning and control problems. This term's special topic, "Customer-Driven Operations," considers how a number of companies have succeeded in focusing their operation systems on the customer. The class reviews the quantitative models and theoretical tools underlying some of the customer-driven operational practices of these cutting-edge companies. Students will read and present research papers on topics such as distribution systems, short life-cycle product management, and forecast evolution models.

This MIT OpenCourseWare site is dedicated to the memory of Bhuwan Singh, a member of the class.

1.040 Project Management focuses on the management and implementation of construction projects, primarily infrastructure projects. A project refers to a temporary piece of work undertaken to create a unique product or service. Whereas operations are continuous and repeating, projects are finite and have an end date. Projects bring form or function to ideas or need. Some notable projects include the Manhattan Project (developing the first nuclear weapon); the Human Genome Project (mapping the human genome); and the Central Artery Project (Boston's "Big Dig"). The field of project management deals with the planning, execution, and controlling of projects.

The course is divided into three parts:

Part 1: project finance
Part 2: project evaluation
Part 3: project organization

This course will cover the basic tools, skills, and knowledge necessary to successfully manage a project through its inception, design, planning, construction, and transition phases. There will be several guest lectures discussing current projects, and a construction site visit to MIT's Media Lab extension.

Carrier systems involve the design, operation and management of transportation networks, assets, personnel, freight and passengers. In this course, we will present models and tools for analyzing, optimizing, planning, managing and controlling carrier systems.

This course in organizational economics prepares doctoral students for further study in the field. The course introduces the classic papers and some recent research. The material is organized into the following modules: boundaries of the firm, employment in organizations, decision-making in organizations, and structures and processes in organizations. Each class session covers a few leading papers.

This course was joint-taught between faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. The Harvard course is Economics 2670 Organizational Economics.

This class develops basic concepts for understanding individual, group, and organizational behavior through the critical analysis of important works in the field. Among the areas covered are: individual affect and cognition; group process and performance; and organizational culture and adaptation. The class also emphasizes the use of behavioral science concepts for stimulating new and useful organizational behavior research.

This course covers theory and evidence on government expenditure policy-- topics include: The theory of public goods; Education; State and local public goods; Political economy; Redistribution and welfare policy; Social insurance programs such as social security and unemployment insurance; and Health care policy.

Product Design and Development is a project-based course that covers modern tools and methods for product design and development. The cornerstone is a project in which teams of management, engineering, and industrial design students conceive, design and prototype a physical product. Class sessions are conducted in workshop mode and employ cases and hands-on exercises to reinforce the key ideas. Topics include identifying customer needs, concept generation, product architecture, industrial design, and design-for-manufacturing.

This course focuses on the specification and estimation of the linear regression model. The course departs from the standard Gauss-Markov assumptions to include heteroskedasticity, serial correlation, and errors in variables. Advanced topics include generalized least squares, instrumental variables, nonlinear regression, and limited dependent variable models. Economic applications are discussed throughout the course.

The course is a comprehensive introduction to the theory, algorithms and applications of integer optimization and is organized in four parts: formulations and relaxations, algebra and geometry of integer optimization, algorithms for integer optimization, and extensions of integer optimization.

This course is a survey of world economic history, and it introduces economics students to the subject matter and methodology of economic history. It is designed to expand the range of empirical settings in students' research by drawing upon historical material and long-run data. Topics are chosen to show a wide variety of historical experience and illuminate the process of industrialization. The emphasis will be on questions related to labor markets and economic growth.

This course focuses on alternative ways in which the issues of growth, restructuring, innovation, knowledge, learning, and accounting and measurements can be examined, covering both industrialized and emerging countries. We give special emphasis to recent transformations in regional economies throughout the world and to the implications these changes have for the theories and research methods used in spatial economic analyses. Readings will relate mainly to the United States, but we cover pertinent material on foreign countries in lectures.

15.389B Global Entrepreneurship Lab: Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa enables teams of students to work with the top management of global start-ups and gain experience in running, and consulting to, a new enterprise outside the United States. The focus is on start-ups operating in emerging markets throughout the world, with a special focus on Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. The course combines an internship in a growing firm with in-class discussions of the issues and policies that affect the climate for innovation and start-up success around the world.

Special Features

15.389B is part of a two-section course and includes materials that cover entrepreneurship in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. 15.389A Global Entrepreneurship Lab: Asia-Pacific is also available on OpenCourseWare and covers topics pertinent to these additional regions.

15.616 is an introduction to business law which covers the fundamentals, including contracts, liability, regulation, employment, and corporations, with an in-depth treatment of the legal issues relating to breakthrough technologies, including the legal framework of R&D, the commercialization of new high-technology products in start-ups and mature companies, and the liability and regulatory implications of new products and innovative business models. There is extensive attention to national and international intellectual property protection and strategies. Examples are drawn from many industries, including information technology, communications, and life sciences.

Note: This course used to be numbered 15.648.

Much of 15.617 focuses on mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and the law-sensitive aspects of financial services and financial markets. The course is designed to be an introduction to business law that covers the fundamentals, including contracts, liability, regulation, employment, and corporations. This class also provides an in-depth treatment of the law of finance.

Diversity begets creativity—in this seminar we tap the amazing power of swarm creativity on the Web by studying and working together as Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs). As interdisciplinary teams of MIT management, SCAD design, University of Cologne informatics, and Aalto University software engineering students we will explore how to discover latest trends on the Web, and how to make them succeed in online social networks. We study a wide range of methods for predictive analytics (coolhunting) and online social marketing (coolfarming), mostly based on social network analysis and the emerging science of collaboration. Students will also learn to use our own unique MIT-developed Condor tool for Web mining, social network analysis, and trend prediction.

This subject discusses the broader trends in the labor market, how urban labor markets function, public and private training policy, other labor market programs, the link between labor market policy and economic development, and the organization of work within firms.

This class offers a broad coverage of technology concepts and trends underlying current and future developments in information technology, and fundamental principles for the effective use of computer-based information systems. There will be a special emphasis on networks and distributed computing, including the World Wide Web. Other topics include: hardware and operating systems, software development tools and processes, relational databases, security and cryptography, enterprise applications, and electronic commerce. Hands-on exposure to Web, database, and graphical user interface (GUI) tools.

This course is intended for students with little or no background in computer technology. Students with extensive education or work experience in computer technology should consider taking a more advanced course.

Continuation of 15.871, emphasizing tools and methods needed to apply systems thinking and simulation modeling successfully in complex real-world settings. Uses simulation models, management flight simulators, and case studies to deepen the conceptual and modeling skills introduced in 15.871. Through models and case studies of successful applications students learn how to use qualitative and quantitative data to formulate and test models, and how to work effectively with senior executives to implement change successfully.