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This course focuses on using internal organizational data to improve decision making. In this class, we discuss cost behavior, the use of cost information for internal decision making, behavioral impacts on management planning and control, budgeting, variance analysis, and the measurement and management of innovation and customer relationships. Instruction is a mixture of lecture and case discussion. Grading is based on exams, assignments, and class contribution.

The goal of this course to prepare students to lead companies that have embedded social missions and to engage various stakeholders that are at the nexus of business and social value. Internally, leaders will need to be prepared to manage the organization's culture, establish a mission, and find synergies in pursuit of a triple bottom line. Externally, leaders must manage not only supply chain and customer relationships, but also seek to fundamentally change the social, environmental and legal environments in which business operates.We will study leading social entrepreneurs and their companies, providing compelling examples that doing well and doing good can be inextricably linked by using the levers of business to achieve profit and social impact. We will explore a range of cases, from small start-up organizations dealing with growth issues to more established firms that have successfully scaled their operations while maintaining a commitment to social mission.A major focus of the course will be on the challenges associated with connecting social initiatives and missions with bottom-line benefits. How can the goals of a company be articulated in and driven by the corporate mission? How can leaders establish a mission that is big enough to attract employees, customers and partners but specific enough to be achievable? Also, what does success look like for a social entrepreneur? And, which goals are established by the market and which by the mission?Students will also wrestle with questions on the implementation and execution of social entrepreneurship. Central to this theme is corporate growth. How can companies grow in reach and profit, while staying true to their mission and maintaining their quality of services or products? If companies chose to expand through partnerships, does the additional breath outweigh the risks of losing some control over their social mission? Furthermore, should social entrepreneurs focus their efforts on leading change of the broader system in which they operate, or should they focus on achieving impact within the existing system? What are the ramifications of such choices for the social, environmental and financial footprint of the company?

In today's business landscape, creative problem solving has become a critical tool for leaders to drive innovation and transformation across different industries. Design has rapidly emerged as a driver for innovation, organizational change, and growth. Design Thinking has been adopted by major consulting firms, large corporations, tech start-ups, and NGOs. The course offers an opportunity to learn, practice, and enhance design skills through a 'deep dive.' Structured around project-based teamwork, fostering collaboration is crucial. Students focus on exploring human-centered innovation using clear, hands-on frameworks. With support from selected readings, case studies, and insights from guest speakers across various industries, the course ensures a comprehensive understanding of design and innovation thinking and methods.

This integrative course is designed for advanced MBA students to develop an understanding of the drivers changing the nature of work, jobs, management, and leadership, explore the primary dimensions reshaping work and careers, and to prepare students to lead large organizations and startups with an understanding of these new dynamics.This is an integrative course designed to link and apply core management disciplines (organization, technology, supply chain, HR, marketing, strategy, finance and operations) with the complexities leaders face redesigning and re-imaging work, employing new workforce ecosystem models, and rethinking workplaces, collaboration and virtual work. Topics will include the changing nature of work with special attention on human-machine teams, the expanding nature of the workforce including the growth and challenges of the open talent economy (and the combination of on balance sheet employees and the alternative employment models), and the evolving nature of workplace arrangements with a focus on remote, hybrid workplaces strategies and the impact of digital and virtual reality. In exploring the impact on leadership, the course will consider the changing nature of careers (including the longevity dividend, the multi-generation workforce, and the challenges of life-long learning and re-invention); the dynamics of organizational strategies shifting beyond hierarchical (bureaucratic and administrative models) to networks, teams, and platforms; the opportunity to expand leadership and management models from a focus on direction and control to teaming, development, social dynamics and design. The course will conclude with consideration of how these changes impact individual workers, business and organization managers, and an introduction to public policy implications. The course will include a combination of lecture, discussions with detailed class cases, and guest lecturers to explore these topics.

This course is designed to introduce students to the challenges and pitfalls of financing new enterprises. The class sessions will combine lectures and cases. The course covers three broad topics: Identifying and valuing opportunities, contract design and financing alternatives, and exit/harvesting strategies.

Technology Company Exits is structured to provide MBA students with real world corporate transaction experience in an academic environment. Students, working individually and in teams, will play the role of investment bankers advising technology founders on exit transactions. In this course, students will be introduced to the three predominant technology company exit transactions: IPO, merger and acquisition, and leveraged buyout. After a brief academic introduction to each transaction type, students will work on real, forward-looking transactions involving companies in the technology sector.

Digital technologies are changing how consumers interact and engage with the information, arts, and entertainment industries, significantly disrupting these markets, and in turn, gradually altering the fabric of society. At the same time, markets for cultural goods are complex and difficult to navigate, build, and maintain. Business leaders and entrepreneurs in these markets must, therefore, understand the structure and functioning of these markets and the corresponding ecosystem in order to sustainably capture economic value and maximize societal impact in the face of disruptive change, potentially by harnessing those same technological advances. The Culture & Media-Tech Intensive will explore and understand these disruptions and their strategic and cultural implications for business leaders, entrepreneurs, as well as public institutions and society through conceptual frameworks, tools and methods, and practical application of these concepts and tools in real-world projects. Students will analyze cases of organizations in a wide range of industries such as art, fashion/online retail, games, publishing/media, and theater to explore and understand the economic, organizational, and strategic underpinnings of audience/market-building and retention by media and culture firms, markets, and institutions operating in the digital context. The learning from classroom concepts and tools and methodologies will be supplemented by practical insights provided by the real-world projects and guest speakers.

Economic and financial development are inextricably intertwined. Unless companies have sufficient access to financial resources, they are unable to grow, become more productive and create new jobs. Entrepreneurial startups face particularly important challenges. In the early phases of their life cycle, few, if any, young firms have enough tangible assets that they can pledge as collateral. As a result, these companies usually find it difficult to borrow from banks. While this is true in advanced economies, this challenge is often unsurmountable in emerging economies. At the same time, however, startups tend to be particularly innovative. Without transformational entrepreneurs who have access to sufficient funding, it is difficult for emerging economies to foster technological change and productivity growth through a process of creative destruction. As a result, underdeveloped financial systems are generally seen as a major impediment to economic growth.Policy measures aiming at improving companies' access to entrepreneurial finance have frequently focused on reforming traditional banking systems. As we will discuss in this course, however, several new funding sources have emerged. In several emerging economies, angel networks have proliferated, whose investments in entrepreneurial startups have often been a stepping stone for gaining access to venture capital. China's venture capital market is already challenging Silicon Valley. India is not far behind, and several other emerging economies around the globe have made considerable progress in attracting venture capital from abroad and creating their own indigenous venture capital industries. At the same time, rapid advances in financial technology (fintech) are revolutionizing the way startups are able to borrow and attract equity capital. Increasingly, data-driven fintech lending is led by large tech firms, such as Alibaba, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Tencent. Several of these firms have become large corporate venture capitalists, helping create an ecosystem that is conducive to entrepreneurship and innovation. Although still in its infancy, alternative forms of entrepreneurial finance like crowd equity investing are also gaining significant momentum. In examining the growing role of alternative finance in emerging economies, we integrate theory with practice by organically blending lectures with country studies and businesses cases. While the course will focus especially on emerging economies, the class is generally suitable for students looking to start their own businesses or work in entrepreneurial startups focusing on the funding of their operations. Additionally, the class should be particularly useful for those who plan to seek careers in private equity and venture capital. Finally, students who have a particular interest in a career in international organizations such as the International Finance Corporation or in public venture programs would benefit from this course, too.

The goal of the Fintech Intensive is to immerse students in the emerging Financial Technology sector. We will explore the landscape, analyze past moves, discuss current trends, and identify future opportunities, while discussing real problems and solutions at start-ups, traditional financial services firms, and the VC and consulting communities which serve them.

The goal of the course is to give a systematic and rigorous introduction to the emerging areas of financial technology, cryptocurrencies and DeFi, digital economy, crowd-based financing and lending, and applications of big data, machine learning, and AI in business settings. This elective consists of seven intensive sessions of lectures, discussions, guest talks by industry leaders, and readings of media and research articles.

Sales and Business Development provides an overview of the principles and practices of direct sales and business development leveraging research, practical and experiential resources. Classes include instructor-driven content, expert practitioner guests, and experiential exercises. Participants will develop a go-to-market sales strategy for their startup projects as a final deliverable for the class.

This course is designed to develop your writing skills in the context of practical business applications. It begins with a strategic perspective on business writing and focuses on the elements that make your writing clear, concise, efficient, and effective. You will improve the engagement, clarity, content, and flow of your management writing as well as increase your confidence in your communication skills.

This course focuses on advancing the management presentation skills of graduate students. The course covers effective strategies and best practices for business presentations both in terms of content/organization and delivery (verbal and non verbal). The course emphasizes active learning and continuous student practice with feedback from peers and the instructor. By the end of the class students raise their understanding and appreciation of effective presentation practices, increase their awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses and become noticeably improved communicators.

This course is designed to provide you with instruction and experience in leading and contributing to high-performing teams that: (1) set clear goals and objectives; (2) develop, implement, and enforce appropriate internal team norms; (3) effectively collaborate, taking maximum advantage of diverse strengths and backgrounds; (4) produce well-reasoned analyses of complex business problems; and, (5) provide team members with appropriate constructive feedback from which further growth and development can occur.

The course will help students develop their strategic thinking, strategy formulation and strategic analysis skills. It will use a series of cases involving companies in different strategic situations such as in an emerging industry, mature industry, transforming industry, etc. and engage students in developing and / or evaluating appropriate strategies in these varied situations. It will build directly upon your prior core class in strategy but delve deeper and help build a skill in formulating strategy, refining strategy and very importantly evaluating strategy.

The objective of this course is to provide a framework for understanding digital marketing planning within the context of a total integrated marketing plan, with an opportunity to apply the learning in both this course's individual assignment and the team project course. The goal is to help students better understand the capabilities of the different digital marketing platforms to move the target along the customer journey and achieve the key business objectives brands measure: awareness, trial, repeat purchase (frequency & amount per occasion), advocacy, net promoter score, ROI or ROAS, conversions, sales, profits and market share. The course incorporates the latest thinking and practices in digital marketing plan development, taking big data into account.

The skills needed to thrive in marketing careers, and the skills needed to practice marketing in startups, are evolving very fast, from discrete campaigns, executed by creative people, to continuous processes, certainly designed by creative people but now executed by smart machines. Marketing is changing because we have much more data, new ways to store and deploy the data, new machine learning capabilities, more social forms of media, shifts in how retailing is done, new platform business models, and, resisting these trends, a growing consumer concern for privacy. This course examines several topics in data-intensive marketing, such as direct-to-consumer marketing, digital advertising, and multi-sided platforms. We study the new institutions that support marketing, and that is important for several reasons. First, marketing managers need to decide who to partner with. They have to assemble a stack of marketing technology partners and suppliers. Second, the entrepreneurs who build these institutions need to know how they fit together into an ecosystem, how they collaborate and how they compete. Third there is a tension between the tech giants, Google, Amazon, and Facebook, that offer themselves as fully integrated systems for the practice of data-driven marketing, and the rest of the institutional space, which contains large specialized firms and smaller niche specialists that must be integrated by the marketing clients. Marketers and investors should have a point of view on whether, or to what extent, the future lies with the giants, or the more open system of data flows among the niches. In sum, the goal of the course is to introduce the marketing ecosystem within which students of today, both data scientists and managers, will make their careers. The course uses case studies and guests.

The world is increasingly focused on transitioning to a more sustainable and lower-carbon future and that presents opportunities for business leaders. This course will explore the concepts of ESG and sustainability and build the case for them as a business imperative and driver of growth. Following a series of foundation-setting sessions, we'll leverage case studies and guest speakers to learn about: (1) Innovators focused on sustainability as a value proposition and core commitment; (2) Investors seeking financial returns alongside societal impact; and (3) Incumbents working to adjust their business models to capitalize on growing interest in sustainability. The course has been designed for students pursuing careers in technology with the conviction that command of this material will lead to better outcomes on the job. We'll explore the current and potential role of entrepreneurship to address some of the greatest sustainability challenges. We'll also consider the innovative business opportunities created by sustainability-related legislation and regulation. By the end of the course, students will be able to articulate the meaning of ESG and sustainability as well as distinctions between the terms. They will be able to describe the ways in which environmental and social topics may create opportunities and risks for companies and explain how companies and investors can make sustainability a driver of growth.

This course will take students through the entire entrepreneurial journey - opportunity recognition and evaluation, fundamentals of business model design and implementation, building the founding team and hiring early employees, evaluating funding options and acquiring financial resources, managing risk and uncertainty, growth and scaling up, and finally, realizing the (financial as well as personal) value of the venture through exit options. The course will help students learn and apply the lean startup methodology, popular among new digital ventures. We will primarily use case studies of a variety of digital entrepreneurial ventures and case-based exercises to illustrate these concepts and practice real world applications. BEV will equip students with the lean startup toolkit and is primarily designed for students interested in starting, working at, advising, or financing new ventures, but can also be of use to someone interested in leading entrepreneurial innovation in established firms. The final deliverable will be student choice: a take-home case analysis, or a business plan.

Theory is important as a foundation when it comes to the principals of leadership, organizational behavior, influence, and culture, but in this class we will solidify that underpinning, move forward, and gain an understanding of how to make real-world decisions even when the historical premise of management and power doesn't apply. How to look for and identify the behaviors of success in people - then let them participate in sustaining the culture, and ultimately the growth, of the company, all the while ensuring they are correctly compensated for their performance and contribution. As a leader how do you make the people decisions that will ultimately result in growth - your own and the company's. Utilizing the broad theories of management, corporate structure, and talent as a base to 'think from,' we will take a macro approach to studying power and leadership, with a focus on organizational culture. The cases we discuss in this course will give students the opportunity to apply their own creative thinking, rooted in knowledge, but about the actual situations depicted, all the while learning how to lead and empower performance within their organization. Learnings will also be gained directly from the real world, specifically the Instructor's experience in building and sustaining growth within companies. Using corporate culture as a driver, his companies have remarkably lower turnover as compared with the competition. From our discussions, you will piece together the important aspects to drive culture growth/sustainability and to drastically decrease turnover; flat organizations, entrepreneurial environments, role diversity, and increased responsibility. Culture is not free-beer on Fridays and ping-pong, it's what fuels creativity, innovation, and competitiveness?resulting in dedication! The goal of this course will be to strengthen student's abilities around how to become an effective leader through insights that include; the creation of culture while building a team or enterprise, managing many varied personalities and abilities alongside conflict and change, and how to create and sustain lasting organizational change. You will focus on how to enhance your people skills, improve your performance under both easy and stressful circumstances, better guide and work with teams while garnering respect, and how to be viewed as a leadership candidate even without formal authority. You will finish this course with an understanding of power, influence and the path to leadership but more importantly, how to get people to follow you.

This course introduces students to fundamental concepts in digital marketing and prepares them for roles as a marketer, entrepreneur or product manager. Students will be exposed to an overview of the major players in the advertising and digital industries, as well as a variety of tools commonly found in start-ups and technology firms. Course material will be covered with a mixture of case studies, lectures, and guest speakers.

What are the facts about the current state of women as leaders? What special challenges face women as they transition from students to managers to leaders? What do the latest research findings offer to organizations in Tech that want to benefit from more women leaders? In this course, we will take a multi-pronged approach to learning about women and leadership to better prepare students of both genders to lead in organizations. To do this, we will analyze case studies of women leaders pulled from a range of industries. We will review the current state of empirical evidence about the status of women as leaders, investigate the barriers that have made it more difficult for women to reach the top of the business world, and consider ways in which individuals and organizations can overcome them. Finally, there will be time to engage in deep reflection about what students expect from their careers, as well as a chance to consider the pathways they must take to become effective and inclusive leaders in increasingly diverse organizations.

This course will help students to gain the necessary skills of building a data product and using AI (artificial intelligence). Many industries today are faced with high data volumes and there is an understanding that data is the new gold. Business or customer value is not created by data; but rather, it is created by the application of data, ML (machine learning) and deep learning AI. This course trains students to link the possibilities of data and AI to business needs. This course will be held over seven class sessions of double-period length. These classes will be a combination of lectures, discussions, interviews, hands on training with data and AI and peer reviews. At the end of this course students will build their own AI driven product.

This is the foundational course for MBA students regarding technology considerations in business management decisions. Students will be exposed to a variety of current technologies and trends enabling them to achieve success in technology-driven enterprises and new ventures. The course explains the ever-evolving nature of technology opening new competitive advantages through the introduction of knowledge-intensive products and services. A broad variety of industry-changing products and services will be explored including connected devices (IoT), cloud computing, artificial intelligence driven virtual assistants, social media, blockchain, and shared economy offerings. The emergence of new advertising-based business models, multisided platforms, network effects, technology convergence, cloud-based business models, and the establishment of dominant technology standards as drivers of innovations and rapidly changed competitive landscapes will be covered. The creation, accumulation and usage of data as a powerful corporate asset and prediction tool is a theme throughout the course. Frameworks studied include the technology adoption curve, disruptive innovation, innovation diffusion, managing through strategic dissonance, and compelling value creation.In order to develop skills in technology impact assessment and marketplace strategy competitive moves, the course makes significant use of both new venture and large enterprise case discussions. Real world scenarios will be brought into the classroom by guest speakers representing entrepreneurial ventures and large enterprise endeavors discussing their approaches, decisions, successes, and failures.

Core Leadership Skills for a VUCA World is designed to provide students with an opportunity to expand their knowledge and understanding of the key leadership skills required for success in today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous business world through discussion and interaction with an experienced practitioner and former leader of the United States Army. The course will be comprised of four modules: 1) Leadership Principles for a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous World; 2) Developing and Communicating Vision and Strategy; 3) Setting Conditions for Success; and, 4) Character and Leadership. Coursework to include readings, discussion, and a final paper.

In the course you will learn about the most important trends in cyber security: evolving threat landscape and customer expectations of security; the need for companies to be open and trustworthy when it comes to handling data; changes in the US and global regulations in security and privacy; significant market growth of security technologies.To be effective in today's business and to make better decisions for all stakeholders, business leaders need to understand the implications of cyber security and data protection. In the modern business world, not having a technology background is no longer an acceptable reason for poor handling of data. Discussions and case studies will provide a rich forum for class participation. After a successful completion of this course, students will be able to:Assess the key organizational threatsHave a foundational knowledge on how to build more defensible and resilient organizations Know to exercise ethical decision making with regards to security and privacyDiscuss most important trends with industry leaders

We live in an age of data abundance. Vast amounts of data are being collected and analyzed to inform decision-making. Introductory knowledge of SQL database systems is a requirement for analytics-oriented positions and a differentiator for other functional roles. The objectives of this course are firstly, to build from scratch your ability to write SQL code in order to retrieve, clean, and organize datasets stored in databases, and secondly, to expose you to different kinds of business datasets and potential uses. In other words, this is a unique SQL course targeted at business students.

This course provides fundamental concepts and tools to value assets, including firms and projects, using an economic framework. It begins with an overview of two approaches to valuation: 1) discounted cash flow (DCF) and 2) valuation by multiples using comparable assets. We will first discuss the fact that valuation by multiples and the DCF approach are one and the same. Then, we will discuss the DCF approaches in detail, including projections and costs of capital. We will wrap up the course with a case discussion of valuing hyper-growth technology firms and issues specific to valuing high-tech/start-up firms. This course is especially useful to anyone preparing for a career role in product management, including marketing and operations, and valuing entrepreneurial opportunities (e.g., startups). Both conceptual understanding and practical implementations through case studies will be emphasized.

What does it take to make an idea or concept into a successful commercial undertaking? Well, a whole lot - a great product in a compelling market, a strong team with determination, and most certainly a sound business model. A business model defines how a company creates value with key resources and processes, how that value is delivered to customers, and ultimately how the company makes profits for shareholders. This course will cover different business model types as they evolve through a company's growth as well as the implications communicated via its financial models.

This is a course modeled on a core curriculum comprising foundational texts that provide a comprehensive and shared base of knowledge that enables students to critically examine the role of technology, and by extension, their own role as leaders in the current social, economic, and political context. Like any 'Great Books' course, this course aims to prepare informed and active leaders for the greater good in the digital era. The books we will read in this seminar-style, discussion-based course are both cheerleaders and challengers of technology and business and the classroom discussions of the merits and demerits of the arguments in these books will help students learn about both the impact of technology on business and in society as well as how to mitigate the negative and augment the positive consequences. It will also build students' abilities to analyze topics and construct and articulate arguments.

Product Managers find themselves at the center of product-led companies, wearing many different hats, and having a lasting impact on organizations. While a technical background is an important quality for a PM to have, softer skills are equally important and necessary to truly be effective. A common misnomer is that a PM is the CEO of their own product; while the Product Manager does set the vision and metrics for success of their product much like an executive, they also need to be able to influence and persuade stakeholders and teammates at all levels to be successful. Most of the people who will help you as a PM build your product won't report to you (i.e., engineering, finance, marketing, design). This class will help you build the skills to get your team on board with your vision and help you convey these abilities in a situation where you are being evaluated.

This course on behavioral economics delves into its growing influence in business, particularly in product design, customer experiences, and managerial decision-making. Designed to cater to diverse student backgrounds and career goals, the course begins by exploring key theories and insights in behavioral economics. It then transitions to practical applications within business contexts. Emphasizing the applied application of behavioral economics insights, the course includes case studies for in-class discussion and hands-on projects like behavioral audits, A/B test design, and proposing behavioral solutions. It is particularly beneficial for students aspiring to careers in product development, data science, consulting, product marketing, or entrepreneurship.

Poor moral judgment can ruin a manager's career or even sink a company. In general, an organization cannot survive without the trust of numerous stakeholders, and ethical lapses destroy trust and threaten vital stakeholder relationships. In today's volatile and fiercely competitive business environment, a manager must be able to identify and effectively resolve ethical issues that inevitably arise in the pursuit of business (and career) objectives. This course is designed to enhance students' skills in moral reasoning as it applies to managerial decision making. It thus examines normative concepts and principles that typically enter into moral reasoning and uses those concepts and principles in analyzing real-world cases. Discussions are designed to help students understand the moral issues confronting the decision makers in the cases and explore how those issues might be addressed in ethically responsible ways.

We are in the midst of a digital tsunami. Digital technologies have progressed exponentially over the last decades and a tipping point has been reached. Further the pace of progress in digital technologies shows no signs of slowing down. All industries are susceptible to the forces of digital transformation and most executives are or will soon be confronted by the dynamics of digital disruption. There will be significant new opportunities as the underlying forces of digital disruption and value creation are understood and leveraged. Succeeding in this rapidly changing world will require both a solid understanding of digital products, services and business models and an inspirational leadership style to be bold, take risks and lead complex change.The elective course should be of interest to all MBA and graduate students. The goal of this elective course is to provide an effective combination of theory and practice in digital transformation and innovation for executives. Lectures and mini-cases will provide a rich forum for in-class discussions. Students will be encouraged to share experiences from their own firms and the class will aggregate key lessons for an organizational digital roadmap along five important dimensions: data platforms, organizational agility, customer customization, ecosystem leverage and digital culture. Students will leave the elective better prepared to help their organizations to compete as digital technologies re-shape the economy. A specific focus will be put on the organizational change and digital transformation that has to occur in incumbent leaders as they seek to leverage digital technologies.

One goal of this course is to develop your proficiency in quantitative modeling within the environment of Microsoft Excel (good spreadsheet design and effective presentation of information through spreadsheets, including advanced Excel features). Another goal is to extend your skills and understanding of advanced quantitative tools such as Solver optimization algorithms, Monte Carlo simulation, and decision analysis. The course is hands-on, and largely conducted in lab.

Negotiation is the art and science of securing an agreement between people who have some conflicting interests.Seen this way, you negotiate every day-with partners about travel plans, with roommates about dishwashing, with teammates about who writes the first draft of the paper. And you can begin to see how you can turn situations into profitable negotiations-getting a hotel room upgrade, managing a dispute on a client team, finagling a deadline extension.The goal of this class is to help you do better in these and other important negotiations. As is true in life, there is no formula you can simply apply to achieve success in negotiation. Nor is there a single right answer to the question of what is the best tactic to use. What we will do, however, is provide you with frameworks and empirical findings that shed light on which tactics are likely to be effective, given particular situational constraints (relationships, few outside options, etc.). Your jobs are to hone your ability to decide when a tactic is likely to work, and to practice using the appropriate skills to gain experience and confidence.

The purpose of this class is to introduce you to fundamental concepts in data science & machine learning (ML) and prepare you for your career path as an entrepreneur or various business roles (e.g. product manager, marketing, operations, consulting?etc) in for-profit & non-profit organizations. This course differs from the classes offered from the engineer side in that we will use a business-centric approach, where we first begin with the business problem to be solved, and then we cover the technical methodologies to solve the context-specific use cases. Throughout the course I will teach you a decision-making framework to unite the various disparate use cases under a common thread. This framework draws upon my years of experience as both an AI researcher and as a business consultant. I have been fortunate to apply ML to various business contexts, from Silicon Valley startups to the Fortune 500, from private equity to non-profit organizations, and I am actively using and evolving this framework in my current role as an entrepreneur in my own AI startup. I will show you how to use this framework using a mixture of business case studies, real-world context data sets, lectures, and guest speakers. My hope is that you will leave this course with the skills to assemble the talent/resources to tackle the data science and ML challenges that you will encounter when you work for large firms or starting your ventures.

Technologies and platforms developed for gaming are even forming the foundations of emerging development of the metaverse and virtual reality. Even Microsoft, the company built on OS and Office, owns Xbox and Minecraft and just made the almost $70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. This crash course in video games will examine the gaming's beginnings in coin operated arcades, through the console wars, to today's mobile and cloud platforms, and the business drivers behind the modern industry. We'll examine the media impact and revenue models, and explore marketing and promotion opportunities to reach the huge base of consumers who play games. The class will review the social media tools and ecosystems surrounding the gaming universe, such as Twitch, Discord, and how they work for building and maintaining and connection to the communities in the gaming world. We'll finish by looking forward to virtual worlds, e-sports, and emergent metaverse platforms, as well as NFT based gaming.