OIM2000 Digital Technology for Entrepreneurs

(Formerly Technology and Business Innovation)

4 Intermediate Management Credits

This course introduces Babson's business students to foundational digital technology concepts, how this technology is used to capture, manage, and create value from data, and the significant role that technology and data play in new product, service, and process innovation.

Participants in the global workplace are increasingly expected to comfortably work with modern technology tools and data. Business leaders will further be expected to leverage the influx of new business models and opportunities as digital, physical, and biological spheres come together in exciting new ways. Related to these changes will be a continuous and ever-expanding deluge of data that needs to be managed, leveraged, and protected by all.

Being tech and data savvy will enable you to build stronger relationships with your customers, partners, and suppliers, and to increase your value in the workplace.

Prerequisites: FME1000

OIM7505 Digital Transformation
3 Elective Credits

The digitalization of products, processes, and business models is accelerating the rate of change in every industry and how organizations deliver value. While the majority of organizations report having initiated digital transformation efforts, studies highlight that fewer than 30% of these digital initiatives deliver positive results. However, no single digital transformation strategy applies to every company's situation, as digital transformation depends as much on the business context and organizational design, culture, and talent as it does on digital technologies.

In this course, we will use the case method to explore digital transformation efforts for a number of organizations across a variety of industries, and learn about the emerging technologies (e.g., AI, blockchain, extended reality, robotics) driving their transformation. Students will gain critical-thinking skills, work in groups, learn to apply different perspectives and frameworks to analyze complex business scenarios, and practice communication skills. Case analyses and in-class discussions will be complemented with a digital transformation consulting project.

Prerequisites: OIM7800

MBA7401 Disruptive Change and Enterprise Transformation
(Formerly Business Model Innovation)
1.5 CreditsIndustry: Rapid changes in science and technology, a great rebalancing if not fundamental resetting of the global social and economic order, the blurring of traditional boundaries between industry sectors, shifting attitudes towards business and globalization, and greater concern for the environment, to name but a few of the major forces disrupting the world around us, are unleashing major tectonic shifts in multiple industries such as agriculture, clothing and apparel, education, energy, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, media and entertainment, mining and excavation, retailing, telecommunications, transportation, utilities, and even government and nonprofits. During the multi-decade span of one's career, a business manager and leader can very reasonably expect to be in the throes of such tectonic shifts at least once if not multiple times and must be prepared not just to survive but energetically thrive. During this 3-day interactive, executive-style workshop, students will learn to make sense of the bigger forces and narrower trends driving ecosystem-wide change, envision alternative scenarios for the future, identify implied strategic imperatives for an incumbent enterprise of their choice, and explore necessary transformations in the enterprise. Student learning will be facilitated by an hand-on, integrative approach that seamlessly weaves together concepts and tools from the MBA core curriculum as well the disciplines of entrepreneurship, innovation, technology, finance, marketing, operations, leadership, strategy, social concern, and sustainability. By way of context for student work and learning, students will be able to choose from any of the following five settings: agriculture, currency and payment systems, fashion and apparel, healthcare, and media.

LIT4604 Documentary Poetry: Engaging Reality
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsHow do contemporary poets engage their work with what's real in the world? How can poetry describe, define, explain, and/or challenge the information, the facts, the multitude of voices that surround and at times overwhelm us? Documentary poetry, an increasingly popular poetic form, engages as its subject matter real events from history, and may apply data from a range of realms: science, economics, literature, politics, psychology, current events, personal life. While documentary poets use this form as a way to think, research, explore, and satisfy curiosity, they are also potentially engaged in modes of inquiry, even skepticism. Thus documentary poems may result in the discovery of alternative approaches to meaning, new ways of understanding and telling stories, even sites of social change and activism. In addition, documentary poets tend to go beyond the traditionally poetic by applying to their poems mixed genres and media, including direct quotations, letters, diaries, court transcripts, medical records, images, testimonials, even embedded graphics. In this course, we will examine the origins of this form and study pivotal poems and poets in its development using work from a recent anthology of documentary poems as well as from several single-author poetry collections by poets Patricia Smith, Claudia Rankine, Tarfia Faizullah, Maggie Nelson, C.D. Wright, and Martha Collins. Students will write short analytical responses and an essay, but they will also craft and share their own original documentary poems as a way of understanding the form and its potential in their own lives for inquiry and discovery.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

MBA7501 Doing Business Globally: Highways and Landmines
1.5 Elective CreditsDoing Business Globally: Highways and Landmines (DGB) is a 1.5 credit course that combines Accounting, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Finance, and other disciplines. This course will focus on identifying opportunities, assessing and navigating risks, harvesting rewards, and understanding the economic environment of export countries. It has been developed with the AACSB's following statement in mind: _The shift toward more experiential learning and business engagement will mean that business schools may be seen increasingly as learning laboratories rather than as the traditional classroom learning environment." (AACSB, A Collective Vision for Business Education (https://www.aacsb.edu/vision, 2016) p. 9.)

Among the disciplines and topics for this course will be:
-Accounting: Accounting will focus on allocating income streams, foreign exchange transactions, positions, and exposures, and international tax issues (i.e., both income tax, VAT, and U.S. sales tax),
-Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship will focus on assessing risks, choosing the right export market, common mistakes, competitor analysis, creating and reinforcing value networks, customer support, distributor relationships, financing, focusing on your core, identifying opportunities, logistics, prepping before going global, supplier relationships, supply chain issues, understanding the complexities, customer loyalty, and working capital concerns,
-Economics: International macroeconomics will focus on reading the economic and financial pulse beat of export markets. It will explain the interrelationship among the nation's or currency area's credit market, goods and services market, and foreign exchange market. Among the major macroeconomic performance indicators are real gross domestic product, inflation, unemployment, interest rates, exchange rates, balance of payments, stock market, banking system, government budget balances, foreign direct investment, and environmental quality.
-Finance: Finance will focus on hedging global risks, such as foreign exchange, interest rate, and counterparty exposures.
-Other: Among the other areas we intend to cover are cultural issues, customs' duties and international trade document, e-commerce strategies, insurance, law, legal obstacles, marketing, pricing, regulation, and compliance

Prerequisites: None

LTA2003 Dramatizing the American Dream (LIT)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThe American Dream is an indispensable, ubiquitous, and driving notion in this country. Its lure has brought millions of immigrants to our shores, given authors fodder for stories and novels, and allowed advertisers to sell the bigger car, the grander home, the better wardrobe. But what exactly is the American Dream? What are its tenets? Who gets to enjoy it? This course will examine how both male and female playwrights such as Susan Glaspell, Clifford Odets, Lorraine Hansberry, Sam Shepard, and Wendy Wasserstein have answered these questions in their dramatizations of the American Dream. As we study and watch various performances of the American Dream, we will take into account the voice telling the story and question the authority, privilege, and experience of that voice. We will evaluate how the plays speak to the American Dream, to each other, and to us. This course will require two papers, a mid-term and final exam.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

CSP2009 East Asian Cultures

(Formerly CVA2009)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsWelcome to Cultures and Values 2009, an intermediate level Liberal Arts course which will introduce you to the cultures of East Asia. This course builds on the themes and techniques in the H&S and A&H Foundation courses to analyze our subject using the materials and methodology of history pursued in an interdisciplinary manner. We will focus on the cultures of East Asia, China, Japan, and Korea; with thematic examples from ancient, medieval and modern periods. East Asia is integrated due to location and the influence that China had on the cultures of Japan and Korea. We will begin our study with the major ways of thinking in ancient China-Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, with some consideration of Legalism, and Militarism. The ethical structures, ideas, concepts and vocabulary in part one will inform and be assumed in our study of Japan and Korea. We will next study the uses of Chinese Ethics in Japan and Korea, Shinto in Japan, and Shamanism in Korea. Although these three cultures have elements in common, Japan and Korea developed in unique ways and in no way should be seen as pale imitations of Chinese culture. We begin our study analyzing written (Chinese) classical texts, which became classics throughout East Asia. These are elite cultural documents, but we will also consider their impact on popular culture. The fourth section of the course will consider East Asia as a cultural unit. We will interrogate the cultural constructions of identity and meaning in these cultures and the political and social contexts in which these were found. We will consider the impact of modernization and globalization, and the change and continuity within East Asian cultures. Some attention will be given to the cultural impact from and on the West. We approach this course through readings in philosophy, religion, anthropology, art, literature, film, and music.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Spring or Summer

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

SCN3602: Eclipses on Earth

4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

This course will involve an in-depth exploration of the Sun-Earth-Moon system and how that system results in eclipses. From understanding how the relationship between the Sun, Earth, and Moon generate eclipses, we will discuss the different types of eclipses, and explore the prediction of eclipses. We will consider the historical explanations and uses of eclipses in both the social and scientific realms. We will also examine the history of solar observations to understand safe solar viewing practices. This course is designed to fulfill the advanced experiential component of the curriculum as well. In teams you will work with local teachers and libraries to develop ways of teaching about eclipses to K-12 students and a general audience. You will also assist in developing safe solar viewing plans for your external "clients" on the eclipse day.

Prerequisites: NST 10XX

SCN3615 Ecology of Animal Behavior
4 Advanced Lib Arts CreditsThe study of the nature, variety and function of the fundamental types of animal behaviors. Communication, habitat selection, predation and antipredator defense, reproductive strategies, tactics and mating systems, and play and social behaviors will be compared and analyzed, and applications to human behavior will be discussed.

Prerequisites: NST10%
% - Wildcard

ECN3620 Econometrics
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Elective CreditsThis hands-on course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive introduction to the field of Econometrics. The course will be applied in nature and will be directed to undergraduate students that seek to further their understanding of how to use economic and statistical theory to develop economic models and forecast key financial and economic measures of performance while learning to assess the strengths and weaknesses of those models. These techniques can improve corporate financial planning, marketing, sales forecasts, production planning, legal consulting and many other decisions where better predictions in light of uncertainty can reduce costs, raise profits and lead to better decision making.

Prerequisites: (SME2031 or ECN2002)