General Information
Promotional Video
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Instructor Bio
Kevin Bryan is an economist working on innovation policy and economic history. He runs the NBER Innovation PhD Boot Camp, founded an edtech startup, is the Chief Economist of the Creative Destruction Lab Toronto, and is in his 12th year teaching at Toronto after also teaching classes at Duke and UCAD Dakar in Senegal.
Target Audience
Much of management involves running organizations in their day-to-day operations more efficiently – how they finance themselves, how to align employees with an organization’s goal, and so on. This is important, but our class is intended for students who want to answer the bigger question of ‘how does progress happen’? That is, how do things that have never been done before get done? Why do some organizations, cities, countries create the Industrial Revolution, the agricultural Green Revolution, the most famous examples of new artistic and architectural techniques, and so on? What makes Silicon Valley special? To understand this, we will need to work together in a seminar-style course involving fairly heavy reading that is very different from your average business school class: each week, we’ll read business history, philosophy, economic theory, and history of thought, discuss together what we’ve learned, and conclude with a term paper (instead of exams) where you will be expected to make a novel contribution to understanding some instance of ‘progress’ in world history.
Prerequisite
RSM392, or with approval of instructor.
Format
12 weekly seminars, discussion heavy, requiring ~100 pages of reading each. Students will prepare a term paper as well as the main component of their grade, with original research.
Course Scope
This course is experimental. We are working with leaders in think tanks, private industry, and academic experts on innovation to prepare a reading list which is quite unique – and which we will modify in line with student interests. You will finish the course understanding ideas such as: 1) what is progress, 2) is basic science necessary for big technological breakthroughs?, 3) is liberty necessary?, 4) why does progress appear in certain places and times but not others?, 5) what caused the industrial revolution?, 6) how did man land on the moon?, 7) what makes Silicon Valley work?, and more. The purpose of the course is to prepare you to lead organizations during periods of social and technological change; it goes without saying that the current development of AI is among those changes.
Evaluation and Grade Breakdown
| Component | Due Date | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Final Paper | TBC | 100% |
Required Resources
Readings given in class