Electives

Lecturer: Eli Amir and Chris Higson

This course is about "fundamental" financial analysis; that is, evaluating the quality of financial information and using the information to reveal the economics of firms. These are core skills for equity and credit analysis, in investments, and investment banking and advisory work. The techniques we develop are also applicable to the analysis of financial and strategic decisions within firms. The course is advanced in the sense that we will be working at the frontier of current practice, however the style is strongly practical.

Lecturer: Shivakumar Lakshmanan

Financial reports are the primary means by which managers communicate company results to investors, creditors and analysts. These parties use the reports to judge company performance, to assess creditworthiness, to predict future financial performance, and to analyse possible acquisitions and take-overs. Users of financial statements must be able to meaningfully interpret financial reports, construct measures of financial performance and analyse the reporting choices made by companies. Also, since company managers choose accounting techniques when making their reports, users must learn to undo the effects of these accounting choices.  The purpose of this course is to give the foundation for such analysis.

Lecturer: Florin Vasvari

This is the first of two courses required of all accounting PhD students and recommended for finance PhDs. It provides a thorough, doctoral-level grounding in empirical methods of accounting. Masters programme participants may take this course as one elective. While the course is not designed primarily for MiFs or MBAs, a few participants each year may find that they provide an effective way to learn the rigorous foundations that underlie the accounting and financial analysis taught on the Masters programmes.  The PhD courses are very demanding but would be especially relevant to those who are interested in research in accounting, financial analysis and valuation.

Lecturer: Shivakumar Lakshmanan

This course focuses on the tools and techniques of securities analysis and the development of a framework for making investment decisions. The course covers fundamental analysis ("bottoms up", firm-level, business and financial analysis) and development of financial models for determining the intrinsic value of a firm's stock. The firms' financial statements provide the major source of information for the analyses. The course develops the analytical framework necessary to understand business performance and financial structure, and shows how to produce a full financial model of the firm. The framework can then be used by investors and outside analysts to appraise and value companies and, in doing so will cover alternative methods of appraisal and valuation. The course is particularly appropriate for those planning a career in investment banking, consulting, equity research, credit analysis or fund management.

Lecturer: Sir Andrew Likierman

As leader, manager, entrepreneur or analyst, you will need to measure the performance of organisations and judge the success of individual activities.  You will also be deciding on, and receiving, performance-related pay.  This elective provides a framework to understand the key arguments in the field, ask the right questions and apply practical tools, recognising differences in performance culture across the world.

Lecturer: Eli Talmor

This course covers the concepts, techniques, instruments and institutions involved in private equity investment.  The course addresses the various segments of private equity, including new venture finance, corporate venture capital and buyouts.  Particular attention will be given to the technology sector and to turnarounds, segments which comprise the majority of private equity investing.

The course is structured along five themes: venture capital contracts, valuation, deal processing and dynamics, structure of the private equity market; and harvesting. These themes cover the different stages of investment in a venture firm: from early rounds to the exit stage where the value of the investment is realised. The course contrasts buyout and venture transactions. It also covers the structure, strategy and performance of the private equity firm.

Lecturer:  Margaret Kyle

This course aims to help you build an understanding of how competitive strategy may lead to the creation and persistence of rents and monopoly profits. It will use a set of tools and concepts derived from microeconomics to analyze real-world business situations.  Participants will learn techniques to understand the competitive structure of an industry and company position in the industry. Entry, positioning, pricing, new ventures, technology, diversification and vertical integration decisions will be studied. The organisational issues associated with effectively developing and implementing strategies will also be analyzed. Additionally, the course incorporates an introduction to game theory and develops a tool to apply it to strategic decision making.

Lecturer:  Linda Yeuh

The aim of the course is to give a balanced evaluation of the opportunities and pitfalls for businesses in the main emerging markets of Eastern Europe, Latin America, South East Asia and Africa. A detailed framework will be provided within which to evaluate the risks and gains from doing business in a wide variety of emerging markets.

Lecturer:  Richard Portes

The European Union has long been the world's leading case of economic integration. Since 1990, it has been progressing towards an integrated financial area, culminating in monetary union (EMU). How does the European Central Bank differ from the Fed? Will the euro compete with the dollar as an international currency? Can European capital markets challenge the US for international portfolio managers and non-European issuers? Will Europe soon have serious venture capital and junk bond sectors? Will the European banking sector experience a deep wave of cross-border restructurings? Will European securities exchanges merge - or disappear? These and other key issues are explored.

Lecturer:  Richard Portes

This course deals with the international financial environment facing firms in a globalised economy. It will provide tools for assessing the impact of economic policy shocks and financial disturbances on financial markets, exchange rates, and capital flows. It will be especially relevant for people with career interests in investment analysis, asset management, capital markets, hedge funds, corporate finance, and the finance/treasury function of corporates. The course is also suitable for anyone seeking further understanding of the international macroeconomy.

Lecturer:  Jean-Pierre Benoit

This course is an introduction to the methods and results of modern game theory applied to business strategy. The insights gained in this course will help you to forecast and understand the actions of your rivals and to formulate a good strategic response. The focus is on strategic interactions between firms (e.g. product positioning, R&D competition and mergers), within firms (e.g. incentive contracts and bargaining), and between buyers and sellers (e.g. asymmetric information, market design, vertical contracting and licensing).

Lecturer:  Andrew Scott and Richard Portes

The purpose of this course is to deepen your understanding of the way the global economy is evolving by considering current topical issues. The aim is to give you further experience in economic analysis as well as to provide you with the knowledge of what the global economic environment is likely to be in the five years or so after graduating. The course will provide an understanding of the likely behaviour of financial markets and the general business background as well as the issues facing governments in their policy choices. It will be of interest to those seeking a career in the financial professions, international consulting or those with a general interest in global issues.

Lecturer: John Mullins

Entrepreneurship Summer School is an experientially based, elective course in which the participants, working solo or in pairs, will conduct mentored due diligence on an entrepreneurial opportunity they have identified. It enables participants to learn the entrepreneurial way of life, gain self-awareness of their entrepreneurial visions, identify what is necessary to pursue them and develop and apply the skills required to contribute to successful entrepreneurial practice and build a network of key contacts.

Please visit the Entrepreneurship Summer School website for more information.

Lecturer: John Mullins, Antony Ross, Martyn Williams

This course is designed to introduce you to the issues and practices of financing entrepreneurial businesses (start-ups, emerging growth companies, management buy-outs and buy-ins, etc.) The course covers matters regarding raising finance, pricing & structuring financings, and exiting from the points of view of the entrepreneur and of the investor. The course is designed for individuals who want to start, buy or run their own businesses, either now or in the future; those who want to work in the venture capital industry; those who expect to provide financial or consulting services to entrepreneurial companies; and those who want to learn about personal investing in privately-held companies.

Lecturer: Rupert Merson and Keith Willey

Managing the Growing Business is an integrative course that concentrates on the general management challenges facing founders or managers in entrepreneurial businesses. To truly understand what entrepreneurship really means, one must get as close as possible to real entrepreneurs and their businesses. Students examine many entrepreneurial businesses so that they can recognise the patterns in business models and management processes, and learn how to manage the risks and convert opportunities.

Lecturer: John Bates

Students will explore how entrepreneurs identify and analyse the commercial feasibility of creative ideas, turn them into products and services, and take these products and services to market. Students will consider some of the most fundamental issues and questions facing creative entrepreneurs, such as the basics of value creation and how they apply to creative businesses. How to cope with demand uncertainty and substantial upfront fixed costs inherent in creative businesses?  To what extent is the creative process affected by technological change? Why and how does the culture of creativity matter? How to protect intellectual property? How to finance new creative ventures? How to build capabilities? What marketing pitfalls to avoid? How to expand internationally? In exploring these issues, students will have an opportunity to become acquainted with the management issues in creative ventures and gain an insight into career opportunities in the design, film and television, fashion, advertising, music, computer games, publishing and performing arts sectors.

Lecturer: Michael Davis

As with New Creative Ventures, students will explore how entrepreneurs identify and analyse the feasibility of innovative technical ideas, turn them into products and services, and take these products and services to market.  Where do sources of technological opportunities originate? How are innovations incubated? What do patterns of technological change suggest? Why and how does the culture of innovation matter? How to protect intellectual property? How to finance for new technology ventures? How to build capabilities? What marketing pitfalls to avoid? What partnership options to pursue? How to expand internationally? In exploring these issues, students have an opportunity to become acquainted with leading technologies from various sectors.

Lecturer: John Bates

The aim of the course is to provide an overview of the process and challenges associated with starting an entirely new business, and to equip students with the skills required to prepare a persuasive business plan, approach prospective investors, and get their business launched. Students gain a clear understanding of methods such as how to assess an entrepreneurial opportunity, what resources are needed to start a new business and the costs and challenges involved, how to produce a sound business plan and raise venture capital and other types of finance. The course provides an ideal springboard for students wishing to give an entrepreneurial bias to their careers, and a number of graduates who have taken the New Venture Development course have gone on to set up their own business while others have pursued careers in venture capital.

Lecturer: Michael Hay

In part the growth of social entrepreneurship reflects an increasing recognition of the limits of capitalism. There's only so much that business, small and large, can do to create jobs, wealth and the prosperity needed to meet the needs of the population and the global challenges we face. It reflects too a growing realisation that there is a limit to what governments can do in terms of providing services such as health, education and housing.

Just as entrepreneurship is rooted in a sense of opportunity, so too social entrepreneurship is rooted in a sense that the limits of capitalism, combined with the limits of government, in creating both a new set of needs as well as new, require innovative opportunities for meeting those needs. Needs that are best met by social entrepreneurs committed to starting and building organisations that have a demonstrable commitment to creating social as distinct from purely economic value.

Lecturer: Francesca Cornelli/Brandon Julio/David Yermack

The main aim of this course is to enable students to apply the theoretical concepts, covered in the basic finance courses, to problems in the area of corporate finance with all the complexities that the real world entails. Through cases and discussion of topical issues, the course provides the opportunity to analyse practical financial situations and problems. Cases will be used to motivate the discussion of the gap between rigorous finance theory and its application to practical problems in corporate finance, and the thought-process required when faced with this gap.

Lecturer: Tarun Ramadorai

Discussed in this course are the two building blocks of behavioural finance: limits to arbitrage and psychology. Limits to arbitrage is a response to the classic critique of behavioural finance that irrational traders cannot have a long-lived impact on financial markets, because rational traders will quickly reverse any dislocations they cause through a process known as arbitrage. The focus then turns to psychology to understand the most common kinds of errors made by decision-makers. Insights from the course should have value for those pursuing or planning to pursue careers in investment banks or other financial institutions - whether in trading, research, capital markets, corporate finance or asset management, as well as for students planning to work in the finance and treasury areas of corporations.

Lecturer: Vito Gala/Francisco Gomes

Capital Markets and Financing (CMF) complements the Corporate Finance and Valuation (CFV) course, and forms the second part of a two-course sequence covering corporate finance.  While the focus of CFV was on valuing projects and companies, CMF switches the emphasis to financing decisions. While not a core course as such, CMF covers key areas of finance with which all MBAs, EMBAs and Sloan Masters programme participants should be familiar. For this reason the course is a pre-requisite for virtually all finance electives.

The aim of the course is to provide a broad conceptual and practical platform for analysing issues in corporate finance. CMF examines the financing activities of firms, how firms raise capital and the implications of various financial decisions. In particular we will examine equity issues, dividend policy, corporate debt, and hybrid forms of financing such as convertibles and warrants.

CMF provides an introduction to a key topic in finance, namely options. Options are pervasive in corporate strategy and finance. We will look at techniques for pricing options, which then will be applied to warrants and convertible bonds, as well as the insurance provided by underwriters in rights issues. We will also look at the real options approach to valuation of projects. Finally, we discuss how options and other derivatives such as forwards can be used in the context of hedging financial risks.

Lecturer: Viral V. Acharya and Stephen Schaefer

Fuelled in part by burgeoning growth in the credit derivatives market, this course will provide an introduction as well as an in-depth understanding of issues in credit risk, its modelling and applications, as well as new developments. The objective is to provide a balance between developing a conceptual framework and market understanding and insight. Topics covered include historical default experience and recovery rates, applications of structural models and default-intensity models of credit risk and credit spread options. This course is ideal for anyone interested in credit risk and credit derivatives, with a focus on modelling, valuation and hedging.

Lecturer: TBC

The objective of this course is to study the most important theoretical concepts in the field of investment management, to examine whether these theories are supported by empirical evidence, and to identify the practical implications for investment professionals. The course will emphasise topics where research provides an important message for professional management of the investment function. This should be of particular relevance to those working in investment, or seeking to open up career opportunities in asset management. It will also appeal to anyone who is likely to have contact with investors, fund managers, investment consultants or investment organisations

Lecturer: Suleyman Basak

The objective of this course is to provide students with the necessary skills to value and hedge a wide variety of derivatives contracts. The course presents a systematic, unified approach to the pricing of derivatives and adopts cutting-edge methods throughout. Continuous-time mathematics is developed and employed as the main tool of analysis. The course is necessarily quantitative and symbolically oriented, although practical applications are emphasized.

Lecturer: Suleyman Basak

The objective of this course is to undertake a rigorous study of fixed income securities.  The course is quantitatively oriented and requires some background in calculus and statistics. Students will learn how to manage interest rate risk, how to value securities with cash flows that are sensitive to movements in interest rates and how to determine the optimal exercise policy for a variety of embedded options in fixed income securities (e.g., when should a bond be called). The perspective of the course is from the viewpoint of a bond investor or a bond trader, but individuals working in corporate finance need to understand similar material as evaluating an investment in a fixed income security is the mirror image of the problem faced by a corporation in deciding whether or not to issue a bond.

Lecturer: Narayan Naik

The hedge fund industry has grown rapidly over the last decade and is getting recognized as an 'alternative' to the traditional mutual fund investment. University endowments and high net worth individuals have long invested in hedge funds. More recently, European pension funds have also started making significant investments in hedge funds, in spite of the relative lack of transparency, disclosure, liquidity, regulation, capacity etc. The regulatory authorities in Europe are opening up to hedge funds, considering harmonization of regulation; attempts are also being made to bring hedge funds to retail investors. This course will examine the raison d'être behind these developments, the modus operandi of hedge funds, their legal, organisational and operational structures, their risk-return characteristics, their model of aligning the interests of investors and managers, and the likelihood of their success in the future.

Lecturer: Raman Uppal

The aim of this elective is to provide an integrated view of international financial markets and the management of multinational firms. The focus will be on the markets for spot exchange, currency forwards, options, swaps, international bonds, and international equities. For each of these markets, students will study the valuation of instruments traded in these markets and, through cases, the application of these instruments to the following corporate decisions: (i) managing exposure to exchange rates and country risk, (ii) financing in international capital markets, and (iii) international capital budgeting in the presence of multiple currencies, international tax regulations, and sovereign risk.

Lecturer: Julian Franks/Paolo Volpin

This elective examines several forms of corporate reorganisations, including mergers and acquisitions, reorganisation through workouts and bankruptcy, divisional spin-offs and divestitures, and leveraged buyouts. Students will examine the process of managing reorganization, the role of the investment bank and other specialists, regulation, and cross-country comparisons. The course will have a strong conceptual approach, with an emphasis on why mergers and other reorganisations take place, what is their role in the economy, and how do they perform from the viewpoint of shareholders and other parties.  There will be a strong institutional flavour that will be communicated through papers of a more applied nature. Real case studies and outside speakers will provide the applications of the course.

Lecturer: Lars Lochstoer

Derivative instruments such as futures, swaps and options are now an indispensable part of the toolkit of all financial practitioners, from investment managers to corporate financiers. Like all powerful tools, though, they are as easy to misuse as to use. The purpose of this course is to provide students with the necessary skills to enable them to be an informed user of derivatives. Students will acquire a robust conceptual knowledge of the fundamental issues that determine the valuation and behaviour of these instruments, thorough grounding in both the real-world details of the products, and in the models used to analyse them. As mathematical models are central to both the existence and functioning of modern derivatives markets, the course is highly quantitative.

Lecturer: Francisco Gomes/Denis Gromb/Lars Lochstoer

This three term sequence provides a thorough, doctoral level grounding in the basic theoretical and empirical methods of finance, as required of all finance PhD students. Each term may be taken as one elective by MBA participants and while the courses are not designed primarily for MBAs, a few participants may find that they provide an effective way to learn the rigorous foundations that underlie the finance taught on the Masters programme. This would be especially relevant to those with a strong technical background who are interested in investment banking or research in finance.

The first term course introduces students to the modern theory of asset pricing.

The second of the three-term sequence course focuses on Corporate Finance.

The third term focuses on the empirical methods used in financial economics.

Lecturer: Sreeni Kamma

Over the last two decades, project finance - a new contracting technology for allocating the risks and rewards of large-scale projects - has become a highly visible force in the field of finance. Worldwide private sector investment in project finance deals now exceeds $100 billion p.a., and is expected to continue to grow. More recently, governments around the World have begun to switch to financing capital investment off balance-sheet instead of issuing government securities. An important part of this trend is PPP (Public Private Partnerships) and PFI (the UK government's Private Finance Initiative), pioneered in the UK and becoming widespread around the globe. This course focuses on the principles of corporate finance and the lens of market imperfections to examine how project finance can add value. Topics covered include why project financing is being increasingly relied on to fund investments; the advantages over traditional corporate finance; why some structures fail where others succeed; valuation challenges posed by such structures; if projects encounter financial distress, how should they optimally be restructured.

Lecturer: Elroy Dimson

This course provides a tour of the world of investment management, where students will learn about asset management in practice and be better prepared for a career in investment. Topics raised will include what jobs do asset managers and their advisers do and what are the challenges as new ideas are adapted to meet the needs of customers and clients. Students will study the real jobs of analysts, quantitative specialists, strategists, fund managers, distributors, consultants, real-estate and hedge-fund professionals and investment advisors.

Lecturer: Kiriakos Vlahos

The course explores the potential of business modelling in assisting management decision-making. Practical computer workshops and modelling projects aim to increase capability in the use of key modelling tools, e.g. advanced spreadsheets, intelligent systems software, etc. Such business modelling skills are regarded as essential by the leading financial and management consultancy firms.

Lecturer: Derek W. Bunn

This elective gives London Business School students the opportunity to work with industry participants taking the Competitive Electricity Markets short course, which has been successfully offered by the Energy Markets Group at London Business School for the past nine years. Previous students interested in this sector have found mixing with the industry specialists in this course to be particularly rewarding.

The course focuses mainly upon electricity, but is also relevant to students wishing to be familiar with related issues affecting the oil and gas industry. The objective is to give students an introduction to the basics of power system economics, a review of the structural and strategic changes affecting the industry, investment issues and technology choice, a basic understanding of how the competitive markets for electricity, both wholesale and retail, work and how to model their price and implications.

Lecturer: Timothy Laseter

The course is designed to help students understand how to develop and manage efficient and effective global supply chains. In today's globally competitive environment, it is no longer companies but supply chains that compete with each other. Leading companies such as Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Dell, Amazon, Zara, GSK, IKEA, Deutsche Post/DHL, and also highly profitable niche players use Supply Chain Management in their quest for global market leadership. Supply chain management is a cross-functional, cross-company initiative whether working in finance, accounting, marketing, sales or operations. The overall aim of this course is to introduce and familiarise students with the concepts and skills necessary for supply chain management as a consultant, analyst or manager.

Lecturer: Bert De Reyck

Projects are the wave of the future in global business. Increasingly complex products, processes and services, vastly shortened time-to-market windows and the need for cross-functioning expertise make project management an important and powerful tool in the hands of organisations that understand its use. The increase in project-based organisations in areas such as consulting, information technology, product development, advertising, education, health care, infrastructure and engineering, places project management in the centre of attention. Project management provides organisations with a powerful tool that improves its ability to plan activities, controls the ways in which it utilises resources, and minimises risks.

With the globalisation of our enterprises and the penetration of technology into virtually every business activity, projects have become more complex and demanding regarding time, cost and performance. Professionals managing these projects must understand the concepts, methods, techniques and tools that support modern project management. Therefore, in this elective, frameworks, methods, techniques and tools will be presented for coping with the three principal dimensions of project management: time, cost and quality. In computer workshops, the participants will get hands-on experience with state-of-the-art software tools for project management (time planning, resource allocation, and risk analysis), although emphasis is also placed on organisational and strategic issues. 

Lecturer: Nikos Tsikriktsis 

This block-week course will have a hands-on emphasis, since students will work in teams on real life projects for Greek firms in the service sector. This is not a course on operations management. It is more of a consulting assignment, in which, depending on the problem at hand, various sets of skills are required. The main pedagogical objective of the course is to focus on experimental learning and implementation and also to provide exposure to a different culture.

Lecturer: John Morecroft

Why do so many business strategies fail? Why do so many others fail to produce lasting results? Why do so many businesses and industries suffer from fluctuating sales, earnings and morale? How can we translate our experience and knowledge of one business setting to manage a new or entrepreneurial endeavour?

To answer such questions the course aims to provide solid grounding in the disciplines of feedback systems thinking and systems dynamic modelling. The course enhances your ability to visualise business systems, to take an executive overview of firms and industries, to understand interdependencies and to unravel dynamically complex questions. You will learn how to build and communicate system dynamics models and how to use the modelling process to rehearse strategy with management teams before implementing new policies in the real business.

Lecturer: Kim Warren

The widespread failure of strategic initiatives poses a big challenge for leaders and advisors alike. Bullet-points and 2x2 grids are not enough - a more professional approach to strategic management is urgently required. Strategy Dynamics provides powerful yet practical frameworks to design and sustain performance, whether for commercial or non-profit organisations. This new paradigm, unique to London Business School, but now being offered in other international school, builds on established strategy concepts, but moves well beyond them - exposing limitations and offering solutions.

Lecturer: Sergei Savin

This course will improve your ability to build, apply and evaluate decision models, tailoring your analysis to the available time and resources.  Two primary objectives of this course are to serve as an encyclopaedia of typical modelling applications useful for a consultant and to enable students to develop facility in generating insights via modelling in a wide range of realistic solutions

The skills needed to be a successful modeller include the ability to recognise the key problem(s) in a situation, the skill to develop a structure for analysing the problem, the ability to carry out a cogent analysis, and the mental flexibility to present the analysis and insights to interested parties in a convincing, non-technical manner.  The skills developed here are vital to anyone helping today's organisations to navigate a course through undertain and uncharted territory.

Lecturer: Derek W. Bunn

This is a practical course developed to extend statistical capabilities and critical understanding in the analysis of time series of data. The main emphasis will be upon analysing high frequency financial data, but techniques for the medium term analysis and forecasting of business variables (sales, costs, earnings, etc) will also be covered. Although various advanced regression-based methods are reviewed, the course will not be mathematically demanding and students who were comfortable with the pre-programme, or first term, statistics course will be able to move onto this material without difficulty. The course material will be developed intuitively, rather than theoretically, through the exploration of many examples from financial and commodity markets as well as several business cases.

Lecturer: Bruce Weber

This course is for those who want to understand how financial markets operate and what traders do in them. Students are introduced to the theory and practice of financial trading on exchanges, in upstairs dealer networks, and via alternative trading systems.

This course will be valuable to those planning to work in the securities industry in sales and trading, the fund management or hedge fund business in investment implementation or proprietary trading, or in IT and management consulting for firms active in the markets.

Lecturer:  John Roberts

The goal of this course is to help students develop a comprehensive understanding of how marketing strategies can be developed and executed in dynamic and competitive global marketing environments. It is an integrative course that brings together the marketing activities of creating, capturing, and sustaining customer value in a variety of marketing contexts. Students will be exposed to the most recent theories and methods, analytical techniques, and current best practices for developing marketing strategies. The course is run as a block week and focuses on the interaction between the process of formulating, implementing, and controlling marketing strategies and the various stages of the product life cycle.

Lecturer:  Bruce Hardie

Marketing professionals and consultants are charged with a wide variety of responsibilities that require them to have a good understanding of the workings of the market (at both the micro-and macro-level), evaluate the impact of (and therefore demonstrate the value of) past marketing activities, and use these insights in the development of marketing programmes. The objective of this course is to familiarise students with some of the main analytical methods that have now become fundamental to marketing decision-making as well as to high-level marketing and strategy consulting engagements.

Lecturer:  Mark Ritson

Brand Management is a vital topic for any MBA, and this elective offers students the chance to take one of the most applied and advanced courses on brand management available anywhere in the world. Rather than focus on academic theory, the course takes an extremely managerial viewpoint. Explored are all dimensions of brand management, from defining brands, brand building strategies, brand architecture and extension issues, brand repositioning; these points will have particular focus two special topic areas: luxury brands and retail brands. The course focus ranges from small start-up brands, consumer brands, service brands and B2B brands. The course will be run as an intensive block week course, and will include a variety of teaching methods including guest speakers who are senior branding experts currently engaged in branding issues.

Lecturer:  Srikumar S. Rao

Creativity and Personal Mastery is a highly-rated and innovative course devised and taught by visiting Professor Srikumar S. Rao of Columbia Business School. It was designed to produce a profound change to one's life, and it is expected that participants will set out on a path of discovery that will last the rest of their lives. Only the individual can bring about this change, and this course provides the tools needed need to do so. The formal end of the course at the completion of the semester is a largely meaningless demarcation and many students who took it years ago are still actively pursuing their quests. The class is limited to 30 participants and students must undertake an extremely stringent application process to be considered for selection.

Lecturer:  Anja Lambrecht 

In today's global and competitive environment, how to go to market is an essential choice for most managers: when product or service excellence is given, the choice of the optimal go-to-market approach critically determines a company's success. This is true for B2C markets, B2B markets as well as services. A well designed and executed go-to-market strategy will be a major source of differentiation, a badly designed and managed go-to-market strategy will almost certainly lead to failure.

Yet, go to market decisions are extremely complex, require an in-depth understanding of your customers' needs and place a premium on getting it right the first time: they are likely to create conflicts of interest and are extremely hard to change. In this course you will learn the fundamentals on how to successfully design, manage and evaluate a company's channel and sales force strategy and tactics. Go-to-market decisions both affect and can only be taken in light of the overall marketing strategy., therefore we discuss the interaction of channel and sales force decisions with other marketing variables, such as branding, pricing, product characteristics or the product lifecycle.

Lecturer:  Marco Bertini

To improve performance, firms spend considerable resources trying to increase sales volume (through branding campaigns, sales force training and incentives, etc.) or decrease costs (through process re-engineering, R&D investments, etc.), but very little on trying to optimize price. This widespread tendency is in many ways perplexing because price affects the bottom line of an income statement like no other variable in the profit equation.  Successful pricing decisions involve an understanding of both supply side factors (e.g., costs) and demand side factors (e.g., willingness to pay). A broad, pragmatic view of pricing entails knowledge of economic, behavioural, and strategic considerations. This course aims to equip students with the fundamental tools and conceptual frameworks needed for making profitable pricing decisions across diverse industries. Taking the perspective of the marketing manager, we will explore both the strategic and tactical dimensions that underlie the process of price management.   To accomplish this objective, the course introduces useful theories and practical approaches for solving pricing problems. While the emphasis is obviously on one aspect of the marketing mix, it is important to keep in mind that pricing is not independent of other marketing decisions. An important challenge in this course, therefore, is to consider pricing decisions in the context of other marketing mix activities as well as marketing strategy. Ultimately, the effectiveness of pricing policy is evaluated vis-à-vis the broader objectives set by management.

Lecturer: Michael Frese 

This is a hands-on course in which exercises, cases, and guest speakers give answers to the following questions: Who leads global businesses, and what skills do they possess? How do today's CEOs see the essential skill set for their successors? What is required to do cross-border business? What essential strengths and weaknesses do you have as a cross-cultural leader and how can you maximize your potential? How can you change organisational culture to suit the needs of a global business?

Lecturer: Margaret Ormiston

The purpose of this course is to help students understand the general principles and processes of effective leadership so that you can lead in a wide variety of situations.  The course covers a broad variety of leadership situations and particular attention will be paid not only to leader attributes but to the "leadership" that arises from understanding group processes and the ways in which team members influence one another. Topics covered include understanding more about the nature of leadership, learning what separates successful business executives from their less successful counterparts and how to develop confidence as a leader. Students who take full advantage of this course will be prepared to lead teams effectively, and the course is relevant for any student pursuing a managerial career.

Lecturer: Richard Jolly

As an increasingly fundamental part of business, change management is a crucial skill for managers, whether the company is large or small, local or transnational. Coming up with the right strategy is only a small part of organisational success - the hardest challenge is in getting key stakeholders and people throughout the organisation not just implement the strategy, but to own it. This course will build the student's understanding of, and practical capability to implement, the many facets of change management and how to plan for and cope with change and its implications.

Lecturers: Gillian Ku, Madan Pillutla and Ena Inesi

The course is designed to be relevant to the broad spectrum of negotiation problems that are faced by the manager and professional. Students will gain a broad understanding of the central concepts in negotiation, as well as learn and develop strategies for analysing and preparing for negotiations. Students will have the opportunity to practice negotiation skills, receive feedback on individual negotiation problems and improve their ability to analyse the behaviour and motives of individuals, groups, and organisations in competitive situations. The course is suitable for anyone who communicates in their daily interactions with other people, and will be useful to those with interests in brand management, real estate, consulting, entrepreneurship or mergers and acquisitions.

Lecturer: Richard Jolly

Power has been called the "organisation's last dirty secret," and power remains a topic that makes some people uncomfortable. But power is a reality in much of organizational and social life. Leadership involves building and using influence. Strategy implementation and organizational change both require mastery of influence skills. The overall aim of this course is to help students see the world differently - to change what they notice and think about and how they apprehend the world around them. It will also equip students to recognize and know how to cope with the difficult situations that may be encountered. Topics covered include: 'The paths to power: Finding your way and preparing yourself', 'Building your path to power: Creating a domain' and 'Falling off the path: What's different when you have power and how power is lost'.

Lecturer: Phanish Puranam

Most large companies, and many quite small ones, are not single businesses but 'groups', comprising a portfolio of more or less separate business units and one or more levels of 'corporate' management. Such portfolios may be apparently 'diverse', spanning several different industries, or more 'focused', with a number of directly parallel business units, or businesses in closely related industry sectors. Whatever the composition of the portfolio, there remains a question as to why it should exist at all, and to what extent it is worth more as a whole than the combined value of its constituent parts. The prime aims of this course are to clarify the nature of corporate, as opposed to business, strategy, and to help students assess corporate strategies and develop superior ones. The course is particularly useful for those intending to become strategy consultants or investment bankers as well as those who plan to work in, and eventually lead, multi-business groups.

Lecturer: Louise Mors & Harry Korine

In this course, you will learn to understand both the economic underpinnings and the managerial implications of global strategy. Our objective is to provide you with the diagnostic skills to create and implement global strategy. Should you choose to go into an advisory career in consulting or investment banking, you will take away a refined ability to evaluate the quality of client firms' global strategy.  Should you choose a career on the front line of strategy making in an established firm or start-up, you will take away a strong sense of how to use global strategy to your advantage.

Lecturer: Dr Stuart Slatter/Michael Jacobides

This is an integrated general management course with a strong emphasis on the practical aspects of implementation. The aims of the course are to explore the management issues that arise when a financially-distressed firm needs a radical change to ensure its survival; and to explore the strategies and actions necessary to achieve significant performance improvement within a 12 to 18 month time frame. While the focus is on financially distressed companies, the principles apply to any situation where rapid performance improvement is required.

Lecturer: Phanish Puranam

Mergers, acquisitions and alliances (MAAs) are essential to the performance of firms. Globalisation, deregulation, and technological progress have increased the rate of change and competitive intensity to such an extent that many firms now need to rely on mergers, acquisitions or alliances to be successful. This course draws upon leading practice and the most recent research to analyse MAAs along a series of important dimensions related to this interplay. The course will analyse the strengths and weaknesses of mergers, acquisitions and alliances as strategic vehicles, as well as conduct a deep analysis of how firms can best manage mergers, acquisitions and alliances as part of a larger strategic agenda.

Lecturer: Markus Reitzig & Costas Markides

Strategic innovation (or the strategy of "breaking the rules") is the discovery of radical new business models in existing industries that grow the market by attracting new consumers. This course helps students to understand how a company can discover a new business model and how it can successfully migrate from its current position to the new. Explored will be why established companies find it so difficult to strategically innovate and what they can do to improve the odds of success, as well as the circumstances under which it makes sense for established companies to strategically innovate.

Lecturer: Freek Vermeulen

 "Where should tomorrow's growth come from?" surveys indicate that this is the question that keeps top executives awake at night. This course is about how to create the growing firm, and how growth strategies are not always 'designed' by managers but they emerge from within the organisation. It analyses how effective managers organise their companies to achieve continuous, organic growth. Examined are the firm's formal strategic choices, its internal organisational environment, the process of growth, but also the role of historical accident and the background and personality of the managers involved. Students will learn how, as a manager, they can shape their organisation to deliberately manage and control the growth process of the firm.

Lecturer: Dr Claudio de Magalhaes

This course focuses on characteristics of the principal European real estate markets and in particular, the dynamics of those markets.

Delivered by the Faculty of the Built Environment, students will be able to:

• demonstrate awareness of the contextual factors, such as legislation, tax structures,  planning systems, legal processes and professional property practice in European countries, variations in which will influence property development and investment activity. Why for example, are yields and therefore capital values of the 'same' office block, different in Stockholm, Madrid and Birmingham?
• demonstrate sophistication in gathering, analysing and interpreting comparative market statistics; thus for example preparing good advice for an investor
• show an appreciation of and express an informed opinion, about how those markets are going to change in the future and what impact this will have on property investment and development patterns.

Lecturer: Bruce Weber

The module provides instruction in the impact and use of information technology in the financial services sector, including exposure to and experience with different kinds of financial services software applications.

Upon successful completion of the module, students will

• understand information technology's impact on banking and markets:
• have knowledge of the leading-edge applications of information technology in financial services firms
• understand financial automation and how industry continues to be altered by telecommunications and information systems;
• understand how to implement computer-based financial analysis and models and how to use financial decision support software
• have knowledge of specific classes of financial information systems such as electronic communications networks (ECNs) and other market systems, trader workstations, funds transfer networks, and back office systems
• be able to apply the knowledge and understanding they have gained in real-world financial services contexts.

Lecturer: Dr Fiona Adamson

The concept of globalisation is increasingly being used as a way of characterising a series of structural changes in international politics. Yet, there is an ongoing debate regarding the meaning of globalisation, the extent to which it is new or not, and the ways in which it does or does not impact on international politics.

The course will address the question of governance through a critical examination of the roles of the territorial state, international organisations, non-state actors and global civil society in shaping international order. In addition, the course will cover a number of functional areas, including international political economy, political culture and political identities, international migration, and international security.

Some of the issues that will be addressed in class will concern questions of global inequality, the impact of globalisation on national identities, the emergence of postnational and transnational identities, international migration and regional migration regimes, transnational security issues, and questions of democratic accountability in and beyond the nation-state.

Lecturer: Michael Edwards

This course is in two parts.  The first (over a five week period) introduces students to the range of market and planning mechanisms governing the built environment in Europe. This focuses strongly on city regions and larger areas in Europe, on policy instruments applied at these levels and on the outcomes.  It seeks to indicate the spheres in which significant variations in practices exist between places and the main debates on local, national and supra-national practices. The second part (over a further five week period) focuses on projects, developments and episodes in the development of metropolitan regions in Europe. It analyses the relationship between planning systems, institutions of land ownership, law, taxation and market conditions seeking to develop frameworks for understanding the genesis and the outcomes of urban developments.  It also emphasises the interaction between these local changes and the development of the metropolitan region as a whole. There is non-compulsory field trip to Brussels mid-term - the details of which have not been confirmed. This field trip is not assessed.

Students should obtain:

• a strong grasp of the main variations across Europe in the way cities and regions have developed and the role played by forms of planning
• skills in researching the historical development and current practices in European planning using library and on-line resources
• further experience in presenting their work in a seminar context and in written and graphic form.