OIM3536 Scaling Lean Ventures
4 Advanced Management Credits
How do you enable an organization to overcome the constraints and risks posed by the nascent & uncertain operating environment found in an entrepreneurial venture? Scaling Lean Ventures is a capstone course for Operations concentrators and elective course for others targeted to 3rd and 4th year undergraduate students with an interest in strategic operations in small to medium sized organizations.
The approach to the course is driven by Lean Principles of Management including "learn by doing". The well-studied Toyota Production System serves us as the root file for many of these principles. Students will be assigned to a high priority project with an organization and will be expected to conceive & implement Lean Start-up principles to relieve the organization of a deeply embedded operating constraint on growth. This is not a consulting experience, but a learn-by-doing partnership for fourteen weeks. The students will be expected to be on site with the partner organizations regularly to make implementation progress.
In addition to their on-site time, the course will have an in-class component. During each in-class session, the students will be exposed to a new TPS concept and discuss how to implement it at their project. The students will also provide and receive feedback from their peers, instructors, and guest lecturers to gain insights on their implementation attempts to-date, thus better understanding their assigned problem and charting a path forward to success.
The partner organizations are from a wide variety of industries, including technology, consumer products, food, legal services, and socially-oriented manufacturing and service companies.
Prerequisites: FME and SME ; Juniors and Seniors status
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Operations and Information Management
- Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
- Course Number: OIM3536
- Number of Credits: 4
STR3500: Scaling Strategy: Mastering the Four Stages from Idea to $10 Billion
4 advanced management credits
How do the most successful founders transform their idea into a large, fast-growing company? Scaling Strategy answers this question by investigating three fundamental questions:
- What are the stages through which an organization must evolve to turn a new business idea into a fast-growing public company?
- How can leaders capture the opportunities and overcome the challenges at each of these stages?
- How can CEOs assess their ability to lead their organization through the next stage of scaling?
Scaling Strategy explores these questions through a specific scaling framework developed by Professor Cohan and complemented with the work of other experts in the field of scaling strategy. As described below in Appendix A: Core Scaling Concepts, the course presents and applies concepts such as:
- Four stages of scaling - during which leaders seek to achieve different business objectives that are essential to transforming an idea into a large company;
- Seven scaling levers - the management tools that leader use to achieve these objectives; and
- Scaling quotient - a tool for assessing the company's capabilities - both strengths and improvement opportunities - to hurdle the next scaling stage.
For more information please watch this video: https://babson.instructuremedia.com/embed/d2e3ddbb-d69a-4091-b285-1fe25c344a76
Prerequisite: STR3000
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Management
- Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
- Course Number: STR3500
- Number of Credits: 4
EPS3534 Scholar in Action Experience
2 General CreditsThis two-credit course is designed to help individual students in the Bernon Scholar Program research, draft, and plan, execute, and evaluate a programmatic response to social or community need or concern for which the student is passionate.
This course is accomplished in five parts: exploration of issue, benchmarking and research of existing responses, planning of student's response, execution of that response and the student reflection on efficiency and effectiveness.
Enrollment by Permission Only
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Entrepreneurship
- Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
- Course Number: EPS3534
- Number of Credits: 2
NST1090 Science of Sport
4 NST1 Credits
From the first recorded event at the ancient Olympic Games in 760 BC to the present, humans have long been captivated by sports. Humans are competitive by nature, and while sports are thrilling to both watch and play, sports are also a powerful demonstration of science. Every sport from soccer to cricket, baseball to softball, football, swimming and track and field all involve a complex symphony of science, technology, engineering, and math. This course will explore the science that underlies sport, specifically incorporating the traditional scientific disciplines of anatomy and physiology, physics, psychology, biomechanics and math. We will explore the systems of the human body that make it possible for a pitcher to throw a baseball at 100 mph, a marathoner to run 26.2 miles in just under 2 hours or a figure skater to land a quadruple axle. We will explore how science contributes to the limits of human speed, strength and endurance. We have accumulated considerable amount of information that contributes to our understanding of health, the human body and human performance in relation to sport and exercise. We will explore a range of topics from the effects of exercise on heart rate, oxygen consumption, muscle function and fatigue, joint mechanics, metabolism and concussion. Importantly, we will put the concepts we learn in class into practice in the lab and on the field to test them and collect and use data to critically analyze athletic performance and the underlying scientific principles that define it.
Prerequires: None
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Mathematics Analytics Science and Technology
- Level: Foundation Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: NST1090
- Number of Credits: 4
MBA7570 Science, Technology and the Enterprise -- Foundation
3 CreditsThis, the foundation course for the _Science, Technology, and the Enterprise_ MBA intensity track, is motivated by the increasing application of science and technology in many facets of business -- operations, processes, products, big data, and even management -- in enterprises of all types and regardless of scale, industry vertical, and commercial orientation. Shying away from the particulars of science and technology, the course addresses the distinctive perspectives, knowledge, competencies, and ethos critical to leading and managing science- and technology-intensive businesses and enterprises. The course is structured around four themes -- science and technology acquisition, development, and management; the enterprise and its ecosystem; plate techtonics, disruptive change, and enterprise transformation; and science/technology choice and human, social, and environmental consequence. Drawing on the disciplines of science and technology management, organizational development, strategy, public policy, and social change, the course uses contemporary topics and study materials for context. Student learning is reinforced by in-the-first-person visits by managers and leaders of science- and technology-intensive enterprises.
Prerequisites: Full-time MBA students should have completed all their core courses; part-time and Blended Learning students should have completed a majority of their core courses
- Program: Graduate
- Division: Marketing
- Level: MSBA Elective (Grad),Graduate Elective (Grad)
- Course Number: MBA7570
- Number of Credits: 3
SCN3640 Science and Innovation
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsAn examination of the concepts, principles and policies related to research and development activities with examples from the history of the subject from its Greek beginnings to modern times. Successful and failed R&D projects from multiple disciplines will be explored as a driving force for innovation. The complex relationships that the scientific and engineering enterprises have to the innovation process will be examined with respect society, industry, and political motivations.
Prerequisites: NST10%%
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Mathematics Analytics Science and Technology
- Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: SCN3640
- Number of Credits: 4
FIN3520 Security Valuation
4 General Elective CreditsThis course is designed for students interested in investment banking, fixed-income valuation or equity analysis. Students develop tools and techniques for the valuation of different securities. Topics covered include: bond pricing, bond duration, the term-structure of interest rates, financial statement analysis, equity valuation models, and firm valuation. A major focus of this class is the valuation of specific firms and securities using finance theory and applications.
Prerequisites: SME2021 or FIN2000
Recommended: ACC3502
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Finance
- Level: Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Management (UGrad)
- Course Number: FIN3520
- Number of Credits: 4
HUM 1001: Self as Global Citizen
3 Credits course for Humanities and Entrepreneurship Certificate Students Only
Building on the first two courses in the Babson College program in Entrepreneurial Leadership, Self as Global Citizen explores the self in social context and in relation to a set of 21st century issues and problems. We begin with an exploration of the notion of citizenship, focusing especially on philosophies of nationalism v. cosmopolitanism as well as contexts such as gender, race, and identity, and then expand our previous work on trauma and the self to explore the broader cultural transmission and political implications of trauma, including intergenerational trauma. From there, we examine crucial issues that face each one of us as global citizens: climate crisis, toxic cultures, forced migration, technology and artificial intelligence, mental health and the future of medicine.
Students will analyze and synthesize material in weekly close reading and writing assignments. The major course project is an individual case study and presentation for an idea to address one of the issues we have studied. This work will be undertaken with the mentorship of Babson College seniors who have studied Entrepreneurship extensively and are currently taking an advanced course in human rights.
Prerequiste: Course is for Humanities and Entrepreneurship students only
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Arts and Humanities
- Course Number: HUM1001
- Number of Credits: 3
HSS2058 The Modern American City (HIS)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsIn this intermediate course, students will analyze how urban centers such as Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles have served as catalysts for major developments in nineteenth and twentieth-century American history. The course will consider how these cities have spurred the nation's economy, politics, and culture, and have shaped American identity by welcoming millions of immigrants, artists, intellectuals, and bohemians. Selected subjects include Boston's institutions of culture, Chicago's factory system, the popular amusements of Coney Island, the architecture and music of _Jazz Age_ New York, the development of public housing, the counterculture in San Francisco, and the urban crisis in Los Angeles.
Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: History and Society
- Level: Intermediate Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: HSS2058
- Number of Credits: 4
LIT4616 Shakespeare's Sex
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsShakespeare's works have long held a privileged position in the histories of sex, gender, and eroticism. In this course, we will consider how Shakespeare helps us "think sex" in its various bodily, psychological, political, textual, and historical dimensions. What counts as "sex" in Shakespeare's world(s)? What desires, relations, and practices are rendered perceptible-and/or imaginable-through his poetry and plays? Which categories, identities, and emotions mattered when Shakespeare and his contemporaries imagined sex and its meanings, and how do these align with, and diverge from, those which inform our present lives and erotic relations? To explore these and related questions, we will read four major plays and two works of poetry: Romeo & Juliet, Othello, As You Like It, Cymbeline, The Rape of Lucrece, and selections from The Sonnets. Drawn from across the Shakespearean canon, such works will allow us to consider how differences of genre and literary form shape erotic possibilities, as well as how issues of race, gender, status, religion, reputation, and ethnicity intersect with sexual meanings, both in that era and our own. To enhance our appreciation of these works and their erotic possibilities, we will routinely consider modern, cinematic adaptions of the plays we read, as well as select screen biographies (Shakespeare in Love, All Is True). Finally, we will attend to the curious case of Shakespeare's sex: not only what we know-and don't know-about the playwright's (sexual) biography, but why his erotic relations continue to arouse interest and speculation, some four hundred years after his death.
Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)
- Program: Undergraduate
- Division: Arts and Humanities
- Level: Advanced Liberal Arts 4600 Requirement (UGrad),Advanced Elective (UGrad),Advanced Liberal Arts (UGrad)
- Course Number: LIT4616
- Number of Credits: 4