Electives

Faculty: Julian Birkinshaw

Learn how to craft strategy when the future is uncertain, fast-changing and unknowable to meet the need for strategic agility to adapt quickly in the face of ever changing market conditions.

Discover how to structure companies to be more agile and engage and motivate employees across an organisation to help identify and act on opportunities.

Faculty: Simona Botti

Take one of the most applied and advanced brand management courses available anywhere in the world.

Rather than focusing on academic theory, take an extremely managerial viewpoint. Explore all dimensions of brand management, from defining brands, brand building strategies, brand architecture and extension issues to brand repositioning.

The course focus ranges from small start-up brands, consumer brands, service brands and B2B brands.

The course is run as an intensive block week course, and includes a variety of teaching methods including guest speakers who are senior branding experts currently engaged in branding issues.

Faculty: Francisco Gomes or Vikrant Vig

Gain a broad conceptual and practical platform for analysing issues in corporate finance. Examine the financing activities of firms, how firms raise capital and the implications of various financial decisions. In particular examine equity issues, dividend policy, corporate debt, and hybrid forms of financing such as convertibles and warrants.

Faculty: Donal Crilly and Dominic Houlder

Gain insight into the nature of corporate – as opposed to business – strategy. Many companies are not single businesses but 'groups', comprising a portfolio of more or less separate business units and one or more levels of 'corporate' management.

Also learn how to assess corporate strategies and develop superior ones. If you intend to become a strategy consultant or investment banker or to work in – and eventually lead, multi-business groups – this course is particularly useful.

Faculty: Derek Bunn

Get 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. 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.

Faculty: Rajesh Chandy and Rupert Merson

Equip yourself to deal effectively with the issues you are likely to face in entrepreneurial ventures in emerging markets.

Subjects covered include managing in times of rapid demographic and socio-economic change, innovating in emerging markets, managing in ethically corrupt environments, dealing with multinationals, building winning businesses in resource constrained environments, understanding consumers in emerging markets and what to do when the family calls and asks you to come home and save the family business.

Faculty: Michael Jacobides and Rupert Merson

Explore the management issues that arise when a financially-distressed firm needs a radical change to ensure its survival.

Explore the strategies and actions necessary to achieve significant performance improvement within a 12 to 18 month timeframe.

This course has a strong emphasis on the practical aspects of implementation. The focus is on financially distressed companies but the principles apply to any situation where rapid performance improvement is required.

Faculty: Chris Voss

Develop skills and understanding of the strategic, operational and marketing management of sport and entertainment. Enhance your strategic and operational thinking in this rapidly professionalising industry and unlock a potential source of future economic growth.

The business, product and service concepts developed in this class can be pursued further in other entrepreneurship electives.

Faculty: Rupert Merson and Keith Willey

Examine a range of entrepreneurial businesses and gain the ability to recognise the patterns in business models and management processes.

Learn how to manage the risks and convert opportunities on this integrative course that concentrates on the general management challenges facing founders or managers in entrepreneurial businesses.

Faculty: Marcus Alexander, Dovey Lavie and Alex Knaster

Analyse the strengths and weaknesses of mergers, acquisitions and alliances as strategic vehicles.

Conduct a deep analysis of how firms can best manage these processes as part of a larger strategic agenda.

Globalisation, deregulation, and technological progress have increased the rate of change and competitive intensity.

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.

Faculty: Julian Franks or Stefan Lewellen

Learn about the several forms of corporate reorganisations, including mergers and acquisitions, reorganisation through workouts and bankruptcy, divisional spin-offs and divestitures, and leveraged buyouts.

Examine the process of managing reorganisation, 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 their role in the economy is, and how they perform from the viewpoint of shareholders and other parties.

Real case studies and outside speakers will provide the applications of the course.

Faculty: Ena Inesi, Gillian Ku, Niro Sivanathan, Thomas Mussweiler, Selin Kesebir or Lisa Shu

Gain a broad understanding of the central concepts in negotiation and develop strategies for analysing and preparing for negotiations.

Practise negotiation skills, receive feedback on individual negotiation problems and improve your ability to analyse the behaviour and motives of individuals, groups and organisations in competitive situations.

This course is suitable for anyone who communicates in their daily interactions with other people. It is also useful if you have interests in brand management, real estate, consulting, entrepreneurship or mergers and acquisitions.

Faculty: Rupert Merson

Get an overview of the process and challenges associated with starting an entirely new business, the skills required to prepare a persuasive business plan, approach prospective investors and launch your venture.

Gain a clear understanding of how to assess an entrepreneurial opportunity, the resources needed to start a new business and the costs and challenges involved.

Give an entrepreneurial bias to your career using this course as a springboard.

A number of graduates who have taken the New Venture Development course have gone on to set up their own business or pursued careers in venture capital.

Faculty: Gabrielle Adams or Eliot Sherman

See the world differently and equip yourself with the ability to recognise and know how to cope with difficult situations that may be encountered in a position of power.

Power has been called the "organisation's last dirty secret," and remains a topic that makes some people uncomfortable, but is a reality in much of organisational and social life.

Leadership involves building and using influence. Strategy implementation and organisational change both require mastery of influence skills.

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'.

Faculty: Oded Koenigsberg

Equip yourself with the fundamental tools and conceptual frameworks needed for making profitable pricing decisions across diverse industries.

Taking the perspective of the marketing manager, explore both the strategic and tactical dimensions that underlie the process of price management and gain a grasp of useful theories and practical approaches for solving pricing problems.

While the emphasis is on pricing, this is not independent of other marketing decisions, so an important challenge in this course is to consider pricing decisions in the context of other marketing activities, as well as marketing strategy.

Faculty: Lil Mohan

Examine the process of developing, implementing, and analysing strategies for successful marketing of a variety of existing and potential products and services using electronic media.

Besides well-established internet marketing tools such as e-mail, search engines and display advertising, a substantial part of this course is dedicated to understanding social media, analysing successful social media strategies, and tracking their effectiveness.

The course offers hands-on experience with some popular – as well as emerging – techniques, unique to electronic media. Special attention is given to metrics appropriate for the new media.

Faculty: Sendil Ethiraj

Develop an understanding of how a company can discover a new business model and how it can successfully migrate from its current position to the new.

Explore why established companies find it so difficult to innovate strategically and what they can do to improve the odds of success.

Gain an understanding of the circumstances where it makes sense for established companies to strategically innovate.

Faculty: Freek Vermeulen

Get answers to the question that keeps most top executives awake at night: "where should tomorrow's growth come from?"

Learn how to create the growing firm, and how growth strategies are not always 'designed' by managers but emerge from within an organisation.

Analyse how effective managers organise their companies to achieve continuous, organic growth.

Examine the firm's formal strategic choices, its internal organisational environment, the process of growth, and the role of historical accident and the background and personality of the managers involved.

You will learn how, as a manager, you can shape your organisation to deliberately manage and control the growth process of the firm.

Faculty: Lucrezia Reichlin, Elias Papioannou, Paolo Surico, Linda Yueh, Andrew Scott and Vania Stavrakeva

Deepen your understanding of the way the global economy is evolving by considering current topical issues.

Gain further experience in economic analysis and develop knowledge of what the global economic environment is likely to be five years after graduating.

Understand the likely behaviour of financial markets and the general business background as well as the issues facing governments in their policy choices.

If you are seeking a career in finance, international consulting or have a general interest in global issues this is the elective for you.

Faculty: Lucrezia Reichlin, Elias Papioannou, Paolo Surico, Linda Yueh, Andrew Scott and Vania Stavrakeva

Deepen your understanding of the way the global economy is evolving by considering current topical issues.

Gain further experience in economic analysis and develop knowledge of what the global economic environment is likely to be five years after graduating.

Understand the likely behaviour of financial markets and the general business background as well as the issues facing governments in their policy choices.

If you are seeking a career in finance, international consulting or have a general interest in global issues this is the elective for you.