MBA Electives

This course is primarily targeted at students who are interested in strategy, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial finance, new product development, and economic development policy. Students will study a framework for developing an entrepreneurial strategy and an introduction to the business of artificial intelligence (AI).

The course is relevant for students who plan to work for businesses and other organizations that operate in multiple countries or compete with firms that operate globally; as well as for those who plan to work as consultants in international markets. The core premise of this course is that no business of any size or sophistication can operate successfully with a purely domestic strategy. Therefore, a principal objective of the course is to help students learn how to position, work in, and lead businesses that operate in multiple countries and/or compete with foreign-based firms.

This course will be of interest to students who are engaged in a venture start-up, would like to start a venture, or would like to work with early-stage ventures. The major emphasis in the course is a real world hands-on approach to learning what it’s like to start a company. Using a mixture of readings, exercises, cases and speakers, a broad spectrum of issues are introduced, covering the entrepreneurial process from opportunity recognition, to startup, growth and harvesting.

This course is primarily targeted at students who are interested in careers in strategy, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial finance, new product development, and economic development policy. The CDL Advanced Course follows the process of commercializing technological innovation by working closely with early-stage technology ventures seeking capital.

This course is for MBA students who are interested in exploring how ESG (environmental, social, and governance) and sustainability considerations are fundamentally changing the business conversation and landscape, spanning the formulation of strategy, the concept of value creation, the interaction with stakeholders, the expectations of capital markets and regulators, and collaborations with a variety of partners. This course takes an economics and strategy lens to consider how business leaders can and should respond to the rise of environmental and social concerns in a range of industries. Rather than focus on social enterprises or on firms whose primary mission is to address social and environmental concerns, this course explores how ESG issues affect ordinary companies in every sector.

The course is relevant for students who plan to work at multiple points along the healthcare and life sciences value chain in Canada or elsewhere, including pharmaceutical companies, healthcare suppliers, academic partners, distributors, providers, public agencies, and/or consultants. The course will provide institutional background about global pharmaceutical firms and the pharmaceutical value chain, as well as current strategic and policy challenges and opportunities that people face along the pharmaceutical global value chain.

This course is relevant for students who plan to work for firms that operate in emerging markets, or firms that compete with businesses in emerging markets. The course is also relevant to students who plan to work as consultants in emerging market contexts. This course focuses on strategies that firms based in emerging market economies around the world are adopting to compete in their home markets and, increasingly, in regional and global markets beyond their boundaries. The course also considers frameworks for identifying new markets through the development of new models in emerging markets, where emerging markets are defined as countries that have established moderate degrees of market-based infrastructure, including labour markets, property rights, legal transparency, capital markets, regulatory frameworks, governance, and physical infrastructure.

“Corporation 360°” is a chance to analyze a firm from many perspectives (360 degrees). In business school, we tend to look at corporations in one facet or another by studying strategy, operations, marketing, organizational behavior, or finance without considering the trade-offs that are created by choices in one area for impacts in other areas. What new insights emerge when we examine one company from multiple perspectives? And, further, what insights develop when we compare the corporation as an engine for creating and capturing private value (and thus providing returns to the shareholder) to that of the corporation as embedded in society and therefore affecting value creation (or destruction) at the public level?

This course aims to improve your ability to formulate and implement strategy in the healthcare delivery sector. The course will help prepare students for leadership roles in healthcare management, the life sciences, insurance, government, entrepreneurship, venture capital, and health sector consulting.

This course is suitable for those pursuing careers in general management, strategy consulting, and corporate finance. In this class we focus more deeply on these principles (synergies, ownership, and structure) to help understand how multi-business unit firms can gain (or lose) an advantage.

In this course, we will direct attention to the problems associated with pushing strategy forward in organizations. Senior and Middle Managers are increasingly responsible for managing and resolving competing claims for the organization’s limited resources (financial and human). Doing so requires advanced capabilities at managing across functions and business units. Managers thus need sophisticated leadership skills to translate their technical knowledge into effective actions to implement strategy. Equally important are the “systems” that managers must design, maintain, and update in order to facilitate the implementation of the organization’s strategy.

This course is aimed at students who may be relatively new to Canada, with little or no background in Canadian history and, also, at students who may have had some prior interest in business and Canadian history. The best business leaders know that only by understanding the past can they shape the present and the future. Thus, the course mission is to sharpen Rotman students’ abilities to utilize the lessons of the past to be more adept at making decisions that are applicable to contemporary Canada, Canadian business, and global capitalism.

The course is intended both for students interested in management consulting as a career, as well as those students interested in corporate problem-solving more generally. Strategy consultants help organizations analyze and solve some of their most challenging business problems. These problems are typically ill-defined and cross-functional, with clients frequently holding conflicting views on the situation. This course will help students to develop structured problem-solving, and work on their communication, team and influencing skills that will help to bring clarity and structure to the business problem and identify appropriate solutions.

This course is suitable for students pursuing management careers in technology-focused organizations, students interested in creating (or investing in) technology startups, and those interested in innovation policy. In this course students will learn how innovation and management of technology can be leveraged to generate and sustain competitive advantage.

This course is intended to appeal to students interested in the managing or financing of entrepreneurial ventures, as well as those interested in institutional investing and private equity. Students with public policy interests may also find the course rewarding. This course seeks to train students to evaluate the strategies of venture capital firms, to recognize and evaluate investment opportunities, and to understand the structure and dynamics of entrepreneurial finance.

This course is for students interested in honing their effectiveness in informal communication and formal professional presentations, both in person and online, in areas including verbal and nonverbal communication skills, presentation framing and logic, presentation visuals.

This course is for students interested in understanding the consulting industry broadly and its specific application within the health and life sciences sectors. The objectives of the course are to provide insights into healthcare consulting through a mix of in-class and practical field application experiences.

Since one of the main assignments for the class involves analyzing students’ networks with other students in the MBA cohort, this course is open to Rotman MBA students only. The purpose of this course is to cut through the clutter and help students gain a better understanding of how to create, use, and evaluate networks to generate value.

In this course students will be able to gain a pragmatic understanding of diverse and innovative consulting approaches and to apply core consulting skills to various real-life problems. The nature, scope of consulting and the role of consultants are quickly evolving to meet the clients’ changing needs in this digital age (e.g., ‘Traditional strategy projects’ now only accounts for 25~40% of projects, even for some of the major global ‘strategic consulting’ firms). In order to expose students to the most recent key trends, this course will touch on various approaches and topics of consulting with an emphasis on consulting related to digital/analytics/agile transformations and capability building – All being priority issues for clients across sectors these days.

This course is for students interested in understanding what makes modern organizations vulnerable to catastrophic failure and how strategic and organizational design choices can mitigate the risk of such failure. This course seeks to train students to recognize the inherent vulnerabilities of organizations to catastrophic failure, to understand why the risk of such failure represents both a profound challenge and a potential opportunity, and to become more effective decision-makers in general.

This course is aimed at students who want to start social ventures, change an existing venture to become more sustainable, or simply learn about the principles of social entrepreneurship. In this course, students will learn how entrepreneurs create organizations that address social problems using innovative, sustainable approaches. Students will examine a variety of social venture forms, and consider how such ventures can be evaluated, managed, and financed.

This course is for learners seeking to understand the drivers, landscape, barriers, models and future direction of health innovation in Canada and globally.

This course will be of interest to students interested in working in, consulting for, investing in, or founding low-carbon energy and related cleantech businesses. It will also be of interest to students with a general interest in following ongoing developments in technology, policy, and news around the global response to climate change. At the end of this course, students will have a broad familiarity with the functioning of a variety of energy markets and be able to assess the business prospects of a firm in an energy-related field with a deepened understanding of how the policy and regulatory environments create business opportunities and shape the competitive landscape.

This course develops a thorough understanding of the economic challenges and opportunities firms face when engaging in the global economy. For any given company, it is essential that comparative advantage is complementary to its offerings abroad – that is, is the country environment must be consistent with what the company seeks to sell abroad? This alone, however, is not enough to be successful in the global economy. Managers must understand how to navigate the many challenges companies face when entering foreign markets, including but not limited to an understanding of trade costs, tariff and non-tariff barriers, free trade agreements, the creation of global supply chains, protections for intellectual property, consumer preferences and tastes, trade finance, product affordability, and managing exchange rates risks.

This is a course in game theory and its application to management, including business strategy. It offers an introduction to a selection of the methods and results of modern game theory. Emphasis is placed on the practical applications of these tools. The audience for this course is anyone interested in the fundamental principles that are used in the disciplined and therefore necessarily abstract analysis of general strategic situations that cookie-cutter solutions and popular heuristics cannot cover. In particular, those interested in general management or consulting may enjoy the course.

Students interested in learning about the real estate industry and real estate development, specifically through class discussion and guest speakers. The focus is on the real world of development and planning rather than theory. The purpose of this course is to provide students with a fundamental background and basic skill set to understand the real estate development business and its interrelationships with urban planning. It will provide students with an introduction to the major disciplines and processes related to development, which can provide a basis for the pursuit of a career in the development field or simply an understanding of the mindset of the developer.

This course is designed for students interested in today’s globalization issues, including students with business, legal and general-interest perspectives. This course will introduce overarching economic frameworks and apply them to pragmatic examples of business and legal issues that feature in today’s news.

The course applies economic methods to make students better real estate decision-makers. This class is, therefore, designed to be useful across the MBA program. In addition to students who pursue careers in real estate itself, a background in real estate can be useful to students in banking and asset management. A background in real estate can also be useful to general managers to the extent that they deal with location decisions and because firms in other lines of business frequently own or rent significant real estate, and are therefore accidentally in the real estate business. Real estate is also important to consultants since real estate decisions are so important for the businesses that make them.

This course is for students who are interested in understanding and using regression-based forecasting techniques applicable to Finance, Marketing, Strategy and Economics. The course provides an introduction to forecasting techniques based on time-series methods (ARIMA) and single-equation econometric (‘regression’) equations.

This course will consider the economic and financial issues that are of fundamental importance in the analysis of real estate investment. The objective is to combine the analytic framework of financial economics with the real-world features of real estate investment and financing markets. The course will (1) help students understand residential housing price movements; (2) familiarize students with the key elements of the real estate investment decision process in both commercial and residential real estate markets; and (3) establish a meaningful framework within which students can identify real estate opportunities and manage the associated risks.

The class is designed for MBA candidates who are pursuing careers in corporate management and strategy, consulting, finance, real estate, and economic and urban development who need to understand how companies can make better location decisions and better engage their communities. This course will provide you with deeper understanding of the role of location decisions in business performance and it will equip you with the knowledge and understanding you need to make better, more informed location decisions for yourself and your family. A goal of this course will be to ignite your own passion for location, urban development, and cities.

This course should provide all students will useful knowledge in making informed personal and professional, investment, compensation, and transaction decisions. This course will develop a student’s ability to identify, understand, and evaluate tax-planning opportunities and will provide an overview of the income tax system and how it impacts business and investment decisions.

Basically, all MBA students could, and should, take the course. In particular, students interested in careers in consulting, corporate finance, equity research, investment banking, and anybody who wants to run a corporation. The objective of this course is to develop a set of tools for in-depth financial statements analysis and valuation. This course emphasizes the theme of data analytics and the “Accounting Art of War” (paraphrasing Sun Tzu) and extends it. The class emphasizes analysis rather than mechanical work and, consequently, uses a specialized software for the mechanical part (spanning from ratio analysis to company valuation).

This course is for students who wish to understand how to diagnose corporate financial distress and evaluate the various legal and out-of-court options for alleviating distress. This course aims to study the reasons why some firms find themselves in financial distress, alternative courses of action (including out-of-court and legal options) in response to financial distress, and the role of various stakeholders in the process.

This course is for students interested in understanding how the legal environment interacts with the business environment. This course is intended to focus participant’s attention on those areas of law that typically affect a business’s operations. In addition, we will examine those areas of law that reflect on the role of directors and officers of organizations in the profit and not-for-profit sectors. Recent case law provides numerous examples that illustrate the conflicting roles managers often find themselves in.

This course is useful for students pursuing a career where one needs to analyze financial statements. This course will help you analyze and value businesses using financial statements. We will discuss how accounting regulations and managerial discretion influence presented financial statements. You will understand how to interpret financial statements, analyze cash flows, and make judgments about earnings quality. Finally, we will use financial statement analysis prospectively to forecast and value firms using cash flow-based and accounting-based methods.

Previously RSM2215H – *Financial Fraud and Management Control

This course is intended for all MBA students who are interested in financial fraud, ethics, and corporate control. This course aims to broaden students’ understanding of how proper managerial control over financial reporting interacts with corporate governance designs helps avoid catastrophic outcomes.

This course provides accounting (financial, managerial, and taxation) related skills that are useful in these companies. Students who are interested in working for, or working with entrepreneurial companies should take this course. This course will introduce the accounting tools and develop the accounting skills related to the role of a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at a private, entrepreneurial company.

* = experimental course

The aim of this course is to help you learn to apply fundamental ideas of financial economics, which you already know from basic finance courses such as RSM1232, to problems in the area of corporate finance that reflect the complexities that the real world entails. The course will give you the opportunity to analyze practical financial situations, on the assumption that you are already familiar with fundamental ideas concerning valuation methods, risk analysis, CAPM, derivatives, and capital structure. In addition to analyzing specific financial issues, we will consider how those issues relate to the broader objectives of the firm and the underlying “big-picture” assumptions used in numerical calculations.

This course covers financial decision making inside non-financial firms. While we will always have to consider the perspective of financial markets and financial institutions as “constraints” for our decisions, and while financial markets provide some of the data we require (for example: the cost of debt and equity capital), the goal is to learn how to make optimal decisions from the perspective of non-financial firms. In this course, this also includes financial decisions inside small firms and even inside a non-profit firm. We take the perspective of various decision makers: not just the CFO, but also other executives including the CEO, COO, and divisional and functional heads. Since the decisions of functional managers (Marketing, HR, Operations, etc.) have to satisfy the financial goals and constraints of the firm, we will explicitly examine their decisions and their relationship to value maximization and financial risk management. We will also examine how firms can avoid “running out of money” while they grow and execute strategic plans.

Students who are interested the theoretical framework and real-world practice of portfolio management. This course provides a solid background for those who plan to work in the investment management industry in any capacity, and for others who have a strong interest in investing.

The course learning objectives have general applicability but are particularly relevant for developing skills for risk management, investment strategies, and securities trading. Concepts include: reviewing recent innovations in financial markets and securities, information processing, etc; developing modeling skills (e.g. coding, algorithms, Monte Carlo simulation, etc.) and; practicing decision making for investment, trading, and risk management strategies.

The course is particularly well suited to anyone willing to gain some general knowledge and historical perspectives on the functioning of our institutions today. The financial landscape is rapidly evolving as we are facing an unprecedented health and economic crisis. Many of the themes of this class have special relevance today: how banks and credit markets amplify or absorb economic shocks, how banking regulation limits the risks of a banking crisis, how monetary policy affects growth and inequalities, how financial institutions channel funds from households to firms, how central banks curb inflations. Examining these questions will provide you with a holistic view of finance, capital markets, and the role of financial institutions.

This course will focus on corporate financial management in an international context. We begin with a brief overview of the nature of international business activities and the evolution of multinational enterprises. Next is an introduction to multinational tax issues, international trade and international trade finance. We then cover the foreign exchange market and exchange rate determination, as well as other international financial markets and instruments. This sets the stage for learning about a variety of international financial management topics, including foreign exchange exposure measurement and management, financing the global firm, and foreign direct investment decisions.

This course is for students who expect to work in finance, or who would like to learn to use derivatives-based tools for personal finance and investing, or who somehow have special interest in derivatives markets. The objective is to provide a well-balanced, practically useful introductory course on financial derivative products. It emphasizes hands-on learning through a group-based project in trading options and futures.

The objective is to enhance student’s knowledge of the way in which derivatives can be priced, analyzed and hedged. The course starts with Black-Scholes analysis. This leads to a variety of approaches commonly used to value and hedge derivatives. This technology is then applied to a variety of exotic contracts. The second half of the course focuses on the types of models used in the swap markets.

This course is for students expecting to work in finance, particularly those who would like to work for a bank, insurance, or other large financial institution. This course addresses the way companies, particularly financial institutions, manage risk. It covers credit risk, market risk, operational risk, and model risk. The nature of bank regulation and the Basel capital requirements for banks are examined. Other topics include copulas and the calculation of economic capital. The course also covers recent regulatory changes and macroprudential policies that have significant impacts on the Canadian and international capital markets.

This course should be useful to any student interested in capital markets, investment banking/private equity, strategy consulting, corporate development, entrepreneurship, accounting and control, business journalism, general management, and advising senior management. The objective of the course is to provide an understanding of the strategic motivations and the drivers of value creation/destruction in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), as well as to develop skills in the design, evaluation, and negotiation of these transactions. Familiarity with M&A is a foundation for effective work in a wide range of fields including investment banking, private equity, strategic consulting, corporate development, and advising senior management.

The course is designed for students interested in pursuing a career in debt capital markets and who are interested in the functioning and understanding of the fixed income market, the deepest pool of capital globally. Key features of this course include a focus on the primary market through real transaction analysis, review of bond structures and pricing. The latter will also include an overview of the sustainable debt, the newest sector in the market – use of proceeds, structuring and oversight. The objective of this capital markets course is to link bond theory with market practice using traditional educational cases and current, real-world examples.

This course is for students interested in a rigorous course on company evaluation using the Value Investing approach. The mission of this course is to provide students with the skills needed to practically apply the value-based investment philosophy to investment decision-making.

This course prepares students for the emerging jobs where future leaders must apply their commerce training together with a deep understanding and appreciation for sustainability issues and goals. Examples of these jobs range from finance roles in asset management, where ESG/CSR and other sustainability objectives and measures (e.g. fossil fuel divestment, social justice, development etc.) are fast becoming required currency, to roles inside large and small non-financial corporations and non-for-profit institutions where financial literacy and finance skills are required in the pursuit of goals related to sustainability. The market for these jobs is expanding and they range from opportunities in the traditional financial sector to the corporate sector to small fin-tech firms to the entrepreneurial start-up world. Risk management is another sector that worries about global, national, and local risks arising in fields associated with sustainability like climate change and income inequality.

This course is of interest to those seeking financing for a venture and those interested in private equity, venture capital, investment banking, consulting, venture capital, private equity, and funds management (e.g. as an institutional investor). The primary objective of the course is to improve students’ ability to understand the concepts and institutions involved in entrepreneurial finance and private equity. Private equity firms (both those that specialize in venture capital and those that focus on leveraged buyouts) have demonstrated an ability to create value by acting as a financial intermediary, between firms and ultimate investors. The course will provide students with skill sets so they can analyze and understand entrepreneurial financing opportunities and private equity from multiple perspectives: the perspective of the individual/firm seeking and receiving private equity financing for their project; the perspective of the private equity fund (GP); and, the perspective of the limited partners (LP) that provide finance for private equity funds. The course utilizes tools and frameworks from economics, finance, strategy, accounting and law, applying them to case situations.

This course focuses on the financial management issues faced by private wealth holders. It will be of interest to students who aim to work in the private wealth industry or who want to better understand wealth management for their own families. The goal of the course is to help students develop an understanding of the unique financial management problems and opportunities faced by individuals and families of wealth, and the practical, integrated approaches to dealing with them.

This course will directly benefit students considering technology careers, including careers in both startups and established firms, as well as those considering careers in the financial sector, such as fintech, investment banking, venture capital, private equity. The course will also be valuable to students considering joining regulatory bodies, non-profits, and legal advisory services. The purpose of this course is two-fold 1) to provide knowledge and skills needed to understand the mechanisms behind various FinTech innovations, 2) to prepare you for careers in the technology space, particularly those focused on financial services.

* = experimental course

This course is designed for students who intend to work in the financial services industry or in an industry that is closely aligned to financial services. Students will learn about the businesses of banks under new regulations that have been adopted since the 2008 Credit Crisis and how these have worked in the pandemic of 2020. The increasingly important factor of technological disruption will feature in most discussions on bank’s core businesses. A discussion of how banks will compete with Fintech new entrants and the possibility of facing significant competition from Big Tech firms if they choose to enter the market. Students will learn how banks make money across each of their main business lines, the key components of their business model and the impact of regulation today. Senior subject matter experts in each class will allow students to meet multiple business leaders in person.

Machine learning is an important branch of artificial intelligence where a computer learns from large volumes of data. Many activities within financial services (as well as other industries) are being impacted by machine learning. For example, lending decisions, investment strategies, fraud detection, the marketing of financial products, and even hiring decisions now involve machine lending. The course will introduce students to the tools of machine learning and allow them to become comfortable with the way Python is used for machine learning projects.

Previously RSM2322H

The course introduces students to the nascent area of decentralized finance, the provision of financial services in decentralized networks, without the default involvement of financial institutions. Blockchain technology allows organizational changes that will change and replace the core operations and infrastructure of the financial industry. We will study how and which financial services that have traditionally been provided by “siloed” institutions can be provided on “decentralized platforms.” We will study the functions of these platforms both in terms of the basic technological functionality and the economic mechanisms that drive the interactions on platforms. As part of the content, students will learn about blockchain technology, cryptography, smart contracts, tokens, digital money, oracles, yield farming, decentralized exchanges, blockchain-based borrowing and lending, crypto trading, corporate finance with tokens, decentralized autonomous organizations and their governance, non-fungible tokens, crypto-regulations, stablecoins, and central-bank-issued digital currencies.

This course is for those that want to gain the foundational skills of working with data. 80% of business analysis efforts are spent on finding, extracting, cleaning, and visualizing data prior to performing the actual data analysis. Whether or not you are considering a career in data sciences, this course introduces the essential skills for working with data that can apply to careers in; information technology, business, finance, marketing analysis, or data sciences. This is a hands on course focused on developing practical skills across a broad range of the most common data management and analysis concepts, such as relational database design and its implementation with SQL and Python, programming fundamentals, data manipulation and data cleaning and preparation, and data analysis and visualization techniques using Python.

The course is intended for students interested in general management or careers in consulting, operations, or marketing. Understanding how supply chain management impacts business performance is also of value for those aspiring to accounting and finance careers. Supply chains are networks of organizations that supply and transform materials, and distribute final products to customers. This course views the supply chain from a general manager’s perspective. Supply chain management represents a great challenge as well as a tremendous opportunity for most firms. If designed and managed properly, supply chains are a crucial source of competitive advantage for both manufacturing and service enterprises. There is a realization that no company can do any better than its supply chain. This becomes even more important as product life cycles are shrinking, product and service variety is growing and competition is intensifying. The course emphasizes the use of qualitative and quantitative analysis in making supply chain management decisions.

Operations Management Strategy (Ops Strat) is a multidisciplinary course for students aspiring to leadership positions where thinking strategically, making sound decisions with limited data and devising and executing solid implementation plans spells the difference between average and outstanding executive ability. Ops Strat integrates the concepts, tools and practices of operations with competitive strategy, customer focus, innovation, change management and other goals such as sustainability — linchpins of firms’ competitiveness. Specifically, students will learn how an effective operations strategy creates an integrated set of operational capabilities that, as evidenced by diverse firms across multiple industries become a formidable source of competitive advantage that competitors must try to emulate (but will be unable to achieve). During the Pandemic, we have witnessed how organizations with high levels of agility and operational flexibility have been able to sustain and even build value during times of extreme stress, and we will examine this in our discussions. Furthermore, students will examine the role and measurement plays in successfully executing strategy in light of changing circumstances.

This course examines approaches for achieving operational competitiveness in service organizations. The class is intended for students interested in developing their management and leadership skills for service firms. We consider applications in various industries such as healthcare, travel/leisure, retail, consulting, and personal service. Students interested in taking leadership roles within service firms or management consulting positions addressing service operations would benefit from the course.

The course is intended for students interested in learning how to support decision making using business analytics. Specifically, we will focus on formulating models to enhance analytic decision making in applications such as finance, marketing, and operations. We will learn how to formulate, solve, and analyze models based upon optimization, decision trees, and simulation. These models and language will be required by any effective member of the C-suite in the future. In this course, we will learn how to structure, analyze, and solve business decision problems using business analytics tools. We will focus on problems involving decision-making and risk analysis. The emphasis of the course will be on systematic, critical and logical thinking, and problem solving and their implementation.

Previously RSM2409H – Management Analytics

This is for students who are interested in acquiring hands-on skills in data structuring and predictive modelling and analytics to support business decision-making. The course is designed for students interested in advanced analytics and data-driven decision-making techniques. Analytics (data science/ data mining/ machine learning) skills are increasingly important across a wide spectrum of industries and functional areas. In this hands-on course students will be exposed to all aspects of predictive analytics, starting with data acquisition, preparation and structuring, proceeding to data modeling techniques, and then using the results to support effective decision-making. The course will expose student to advanced software tools for data management and manipulation, data visualization and modeling.

This course will provide students with a toolset that will allow them to analyze, evaluate, improve, and create the operations of business models that address some of the major challenges faced by humankind. The focus is on a few topics: building a circular economy, scaling the operations of a profitable business that addresses a social challenge, access to healthcare, industry self-regulation, decarbonization, and digital transformation. Students will be able to identify sustainability goals for an industry they are interested in and to propose and evaluate the operations of new business models that achieve these goals. This course will examine and discuss global issues related to climate change, energy, waste, labour, and poverty. In addition, you will review the modern “schools of thought” on these issues through an entrepreneurial and managerial lens.

* = experimental course

This course is for students who want to sharpen their strategic thinking and enjoy case study discussion and active class participation. We learn the core elements of the strategic planning process to develop and execute strategy. This course examines the processes by which businesses decide how to compete in the markets they choose to serve. The emphasis is on the analysis of market opportunities and sources of competitive advantage. The course also looks at the strategic implications of market evolution and methods of allocating resources to new and established products.

This is for students interested in investigating social and psychological foundations of consumer thought and behaviour. Course content is oriented toward basic principles of psychology and other social sciences and their application to a wide range of consumer activities. The primary goal of this course is to enhance understanding of consumer behaviour, from determining consumer needs to building customer relationships. Behavioural concepts from various social science disciplines are used to examine cultural and social influences, individual differences, motivation, learning, perception, memory, attitudes, decisions, and actions. The emphasis is on using this knowledge to capitalize on marketing opportunities.

This is a must-take for everyone remotely interested in marketing as it covers grounded events, discussions, and frameworks that are crucial in building a toolkit that’s useful for marketing professionals as we will cover current and emerging technologies ( A/R, V/R, A/I, Machine Learning & Digital technologies). If students seek a career in marketing, they should take this course. If students plan to work with Marcomm (Marketing Communications) as a general manager, consultant or communication expert, they should take this course. If students are interested in transforming marketing through digital disruption, they should take this course.

This course is for students interested in issues regarding data-driven marketing and marketing analytics. Marketing research serves as a central basis for marketing decision making; therefore, it is critical for a manager to understand marketing research and be able to specify what needs to be studied, how to study it, and how to interpret the results. The goal is to familiarize students with the fundamentals of marketing research and enhance their abilities to define and solve marketing problems and formulate appropriate data-driven marketing strategy.

This is a must-take for everyone interested in a career in sales and sales management who understands that the role of a sales manager will continue to evolve and adapt to market dynamics and global competition. It is also valuable to anyone in a marketing or consulting role who wants a successful sales career. This course aims to help students prepare for a successful, exciting, prosperous career in sales or sales management.

This course is for students who plan to work in financial services, consulting, venture capital or strategy roles, as well as those generally interested in the startup space, digital disruption and innovation. FinTech Marketing explores the number one issue for CEOs of every successful player in financial services: the onslaught from a wave of well-funded, disruptive startups looking to carve out their most profitable lines of business. The course addresses this from the perspective of disruptors, established financial institutions and venture capital firms, looking at issues of customer segmentation, positioning, product development (including minimum viable products), pricing, distribution, customer acquisition, scaling of offerings and competitive insulation.

Students interested in a career in marketing will find the material essential. Students interested in financial careers should feel at home with the idea that products become brands through marketing investments. Brands are financial assets that can be leveraged, bought, and sold, just like any other asset. Students interested in management consulting should appreciate that brand strategy is an important sub-practice at most strategy-oriented consulting firms. Students interested in legal careers will find the material on brand equity relevant to cases involving trademark infringement/deceptive advertising.

This course is appropriate for anyone who expects to be involved in the determination, execution and communication of a price. This includes students who plan careers in general management, marketing, sales, strategy, and customer services. The course is not restricted to any particular industry, and is appropriate for both B-2-B and B-2-C, and for both products and services applications. Price setting is one of the most important marketing mix decisions. It involves an understanding of both supply side factors (e.g. costs) and demand side factors (e.g. consumer willingness to pay). While traditional approaches to pricing theory have revolved around an economic and financial framework, a broader and more pragmatic view entails a comprehensive understanding of the demand side, both at the level of individual customer values, and the more aggregate level of price sensitivities of the market. Using product categories as diverse as hardware/software, healthcare, industrial products and consumer packaged goods, we will study economic and behavioural approaches to pricing, value pricing, price customization, bundling, and retail pricing strategies, amongst other topics.

Students will learn the fundamentals, methods and application of Futures Thinking (when, why, and how it is practiced), and build an in-depth understanding about the practice of Futures Thinking in the context of business design, including real-world cases and in-class presentations by practitioners. After being introduced to the basic principles and process of Futures Thinking, students will engage in an applied, futures-focused project. This ‘transformative recommendations’ project will be facilitated through a series of hands-on exercises that provide students with several practical approaches for the application of Futures Thinking to business planning and innovation.

This course is for students interested in the impact of technology on business, including digital marketing and technology entrepreneurship. Social media, search engines, mobile commerce, digital advertising, and online marketplaces are impacting competition for all firms, large and small. Drawing on some common themes across digital marketing platforms, we examine (i) how companies find and serve customers using digital tools, (ii) the kinds of digital products that companies offer, (iii) the role of distance in the customer-company relationship when information is digital, (iv) the locus of control of brand-related messages, (v) the concept of privacy, and (vi) the digital targeting of marketing tactics. Broadly, for each technological innovation, we will emphasize what is different, and what is not, for consumers, and for the production, distribution, and communication of goods and services.

This course is relevant to students with interest in marketing, general management, strategy, design, policy and finance. Core topics of the course include: the role of emotions in decision-making; how expectations and other context variables shape perception; surprising ways people think about time and money; risk; and self-control. We also develop an understanding of choice architecture as a managerial tool – how controllable variables such as time, assortment, and complexity influence decision-makers.

This unique Business Design Fundamentals course introduces students to the most prolific design practices and methods used in business decision-making today. Through a combination of lectures and experiential learning activities, students will gain an understanding of design’s growing impact on business – particularly on customer-centred innovation development and management. This foundational course is a pre-requisite for RSM2524H – Business Design Practicum (Corporate Consulting Challenge) and is strongly recommended as preparation for RSM2527H – Design Research and Insight-Driven Storytelling, and for those intending to graduate with an Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Business Design emphasis. This course will challenge you to navigate uncertainty, sample qualitative research methods, design techniques and collaborate in solving real, yet case-based business challenges over an intensive six weeks.

Pre-requisite for RSM2524H – Business Design Practicum

This practicum course is aimed at students who are interested in understanding design’s role in business innovation and applying design principles and methods as marketers, strategists and consultants. The course focuses on using human-centred design (aka stakeholder-centred design) methods and developing a strategic and creative mindset to navigate the uncertainties of business innovation. This class offers an in-person studio experience and field-based research activities and discussions with a real business challenge sponsor. It involves a combination of instructor-led, peer-to-peer and team-based learning and knowledge exchange. This course will expose you to uncertainty, while encouraging you to creatively and collaboratively solve business problems.

Pre-requisite: RSM2523H – Business Design Fundamentals

This course is for students seeking to deepen relationships and improve networking and written & verbal communication skills. In this course, you’ll apply leading edge research on building relationships and effective persuasion. You’ll practice presenting and get feedback on presentation skills. And weekly assignments, small group meetings and journals will help you build new habits to incorporate class insights into your daily routine.

Previously RSM2530H – Creativity and Business Innovation

This one-week (5 days) intensive course will challenge you to develop your personal and professional creativity. Creative thinking skills can be developed and refined, albeit with effort and practice. Through a combination of light lectures, thought experiments, field trips, and immersive in-class activities, you will engage in creative ways to see problems and opportunities more clearly, and develop solutions unseen and unimagined by others. The goal of this course is to provide a variety of methods and experiences that focus on fostering your own creative abilities, along with how to apply them in teams and as a leader on problems that matter.

Previously RSM2516H – Design Research and Data Storytelling

In this course, you will learn how design research helps to uncover patterns, develop insights and inform strategies. Design research is a sub-set of qualitative research methods that focuses on studying people through rigorous observation, in-depth interviewing and collaborative co-design. Design research methodologies help us uncover deep actionable insights that de-risk the launch of new products, services and technologies. You will learn and practice ethnographic techniques to develop compelling insights, co-design solutions and apply visual analytics to tell data-rich stories. Design research and data storytelling are used extensively in management consulting, product and service design, marketing strategy, sustainability, communications, organizational development, etc., as deep insight into people’s real-world behaviour is fundamental to business success.

Previously RSM2518H

In this course, you will learn how service designers take a human-centered approach to researching and designing solutions. Service Design is a subset of design disciplines that takes an action-oriented approach to co-design solutions with customers, citizens, or end-users. Service Design methodologies help us understand key pain points and preferences and prototype solutions based on the needs of actual consumers. You will learn and practice service design techniques on an applied team project, developing compelling insights, co-designing and implementing an omni-channel solution. Service Design methods are being rapidly adopted by technology start-ups, management consultancies, governments, software developers, AI/ML, marketing, sustainability, communications, organizational development specialists, as designing desirable and usable services is fundamental to business success.

This course is for those who are interested in gaining insight into how organizations work, why they so often don’t work very well and how to be more effective working in and with organizations. The purpose of this course is to make you aware of the hidden assumptions, concepts and principles that underlie the way organizations are designed. Organizations are designed to induce certain kinds of behaviour. This insight will enable you to see what the organization should be good at and the kinds of limitations and constraints that the design puts on its functioning. If you are aware of the intentions and the limitations, you will be able to be more effective in your own work, more effective in dealing with other organizations as suppliers or customers, and ultimately more effective at designing an organization for which you have responsibility.

The target audience for this course is any student interested in developing a sophisticated set of negotiation, influence, and conflict management skills. Students will learn how to implement negotiation, mediation, and alternative dispute resolution methods to resolve disputes in business and other organizations. We will also consider structural mechanisms by which organizations can manage conflict. There are no perfect formulae for successful negotiations and conflict management, but by understanding and analyzing negotiation and conflict situations systematically, especially with a sophisticated appreciation of the social psychology of conflict, you will learn skills that help you to manage new situations and to decide which strategies are most likely to be effective in different situations.

Pre-requisite: RSM2604H – Managerial Negotiations

This course is intended for students who aspire to work effectively with other people. This class provides an opportunity for students to develop their interpersonal skills and learn the basics of effective negotiation. Negotiation is the art and craft by which decisions are made, agreements reached, and disputes resolved between two or more parties. This introductory course has three main aspects. The first is to discuss and apply theories you may find helpful in improving your own negotiation skills. The second, to help you sharpen your skills by having you negotiate with other students in realistic settings. The third, to help you feel more comfortable and confident with the negotiation process. This course is intended to be relevant to the broad spectrum of bargaining problems that are traditionally faced by managers.

Pre-requisite for RSM2603H – Advanced Negotiations and Conflict Management

This course is designed for graduate students who have an interest in learning about new paradigms for talent management. Students successfully completing this course will better understand the role of talent management practices in the strategic management process, and how to align these practices to support the firm’s strategic direction. Students will develop their skills at hiring, evaluating, and managing talent. In our increasingly competitive, dynamic, and global business environment, a firm’s ability to attract, develop, and manage talent has become one of the primary drivers of success and a major source of its competitive advantage. Because the management of talent is becoming less of a functional responsibility and more of manager’s responsibility, the concepts that are learned and the skills that are developed in this course are applicable for many positions in a wide variety of organizations.

In this course, students will learn from a weekly mix of early-stage executives concerning how to build strategic intent around sustainability and innovation, and how to deliver innovation to market through the design and delivery of business models that generate new, sustainable economic growth. Hence, we will examine sustainability as a source of innovation to drive new growth through sustained, long-term resource efficiency. Students will learn how to analyze industry value chains to identify business model innovation, as a means to either optimize existing customer value propositions or design new business opportunities. Moreover, students will learn about entrepreneurship, by working in groups to build sustainable start-ups. Those interested in a career as an entrepreneur or with companies that have built strategies anchored around sustainability and innovation will find this a very practical approach to gaining meaningful insights and learnings from industry leaders.

The goal of this course is to give students a sound understanding of the processes of globalization and development, both economic and social, such that they can find opportunities in the fast-changing world for business in general but also for their own roles (careers) in it. Course learning is framed by two key paradigms. First, it places equal emphasis on economic growth and social progress as the guiding paradigm for inclusive development. Second, it integrates the theories and frameworks of both business and international development in understanding how economies and societies progress, and how they can do so in an inclusive way. Finally, the course examines these themes through the lens of environmental risks and the need for sustainable models of development.

This course is for students interested in accelerating their careers by better understanding the role of social skills at work, receiving numerical feedback on their social skills (via a 360 assessment and experimental exercises), improving their social skills, and learning how to improve the social skills of the people they work with and manage. Students will gain knowledge of what comprises social intelligence and how these skills affect their own professional activities. Students will appreciate the importance of social intelligence to their own leadership and decision making, and in such diverse organizational experiences as negotiations, decision making, customer service, and marketing. The course adopts a People Analytics approach. As such, students will receive and analyze confidential, numerical feedback about their strengths and weaknesses. Students will develop their own social skills and learn how to develop the social skills of other people.

This is a course about learning to use power and influence as effective tools for understanding your surroundings and achieving your goals. It is a course about getting things done in the real world, where politics and personalities often seem to hinder rather than help you. P&I is a course for those of you who want to make things happen, despite the obstacles that might stand in your way. It is also a course to prepare you to use power responsibly, resist its corruptive perils, and wield it to create positive change in organizations everywhere. This course presents conceptual models, tactical approaches, and self-assessment tools to help you develop your own influence style and understand political dynamics as they unfold around you. By focusing on specific expressions of power and influence, this course gives you the opportunity to observe the effective—and ineffective—uses of power in different organizational contexts and stages of a person’s career. The subject matter will challenge you to define for yourself what will constitute the ethical exercise of power in your life.

This course is intended for students interested in developing a sophisticated skill set in leading teams. Teams expand capability beyond what a single individual can do. For this reason, most businesses could not even function without the teams that accomplish the lofty and complex objectives that business seek to do, with teams found among shop floor production crews, in the executive suite, and virtually, spread across locations, time zones, cultures, and at times languages. Even as they are a way of life in many organizations, misconceptions and difficulties stand in the way of effective teamwork, necessitating a need for leadership. However, leaders, too, can be misguided in the choices they make to lead teams, for example, by breaking morale in their pursuit to achieve performance objectives. This course proposes an effective way to lead teams – the coaching model – to accomplish complex objectives and sustain morale.

This course is for students interested in issues regarding/understanding how to build high performing teams, know how to spot “winners”, ways to coach high performing teams and methods for overcoming learned helplessness when a team experiences setbacks.

This course is designed for students interested in meaningfully developing and strengthening their Leadership mindsets and capabilities, particularly with respect to motivation, agency, accountability and commitment. It is based on approaches taken by many leading organizations in supporting the leadership development of their managers and executives.

This course is for students who aspire to broaden their thinking and add to their decision-making and problem-solving toolkits. In class, we will discover knowledge about how we think and develop methods for improving our skills in identifying, defining, and solving problems.

Students interested in leadership, social innovation, the social economy, and sustainability will find this course valuable. Students who are interested in the application of core course concepts to real-life problems will also benefit from this course, as students will have the opportunity to work directly with not-for-profit organizations to solve unique business and social challenges. Leading Social Innovation introduces students to the practice of deep learning and offers opportunities to engage with this concept in two ways. First, from having an open dialogue with diverse social entrepreneurs and leaders in the social economy and second, by working with and learning from existing not-for-profit organizations on current issues they are facing.

For all information on RSM2700H courses, please see the Registrar’s Office webpage on Global and Experiential Learning.

For all information on RSM2701H courses, please see the Registrar’s Office webpage on Global and Experiential Learning.

For all information on RSM2702H, please see the Registrar’s Office webpage on Global and Experiential Learning.

For all information on RSM2703H, please see the Registrar’s Office webpage on Global and Experiential Learning.

For all information on RSM2706H, please see the Registrar’s Office webpage on Global and Experiential Learning.

For all information on RSM2709H courses, please see the Registrar’s Office webpage on Global and Experiential Learning.

GettingItDone provides participants with a Comprehensive Management System, complete with over 20 proven Leadership/Management Effectiveness Tools, used for developing a winning strategy, getting organizational alignment to that strategy, deploying that strategy, and then consistently and continuously improving. This course is designed for anyone who plays or plans to play a Leadership role and who wishes to achieve results through improved personal, team, and organizational effectiveness. This course is designed for anyone who plans on Getting It (the right things) Done effectively and without wasting time.