EPS7503 Creating Epic Organizations
3 Elective Credits
This course welcomes students who seek an intellectual and professional "sandbox" to pursue "EPIC" opportunities for themselves or for their companies. EPIC opportunities empower you and others to pursue big, bold initiatives, pioneer new technologies, markets, or business models, inspire new solutions to address the UN Global Goals, and require courage to tackle different problems. You will wrestle with managerial and societal issues that call for entrepreneurial leaders to take a stand and chart a new path with EPIC initiatives.


In this course, you will study historical and contemporary examples, role models, and scenarios of EPIC opportunities and pursuits. You will examine both academic research and practical resources to understand the core principles of operating with an EPIC mindset. You will learn a set of EPIC tools to apply immediately in your own ventures, workplace, or careers. You will create an action plan that outlines how you intend to pursue an EPIC opportunity - now or in the future.

Prerequisites: None

  • Program: Graduate
  • Division: Entrepreneurship
  • Level: Graduate Elective (Grad)
  • Course Number: EPS7503
  • Number of Credits: 3

EPS9551 Critical Questions Facing Business Families: A Coaching Retreat
1.5 Intensive Elective Credits
How do I move from a parent-child to a professional-peer relationship with my parents?


Topics include, how to build relationship capital in the family, living with your family history, understanding the goals for effective communication, developing next stage communication skills, learning to have hard conversations, how to stop acting like a child, how to get your parents to start acting like a peer, giving and taking feedback in the family, creating a self-coaching family team, creating sibling unity, having successful family meetings, and many more.

  • Program: Graduate
  • Division: Entrepreneurship
  • Level: Graduate Elective (Grad)
  • Course Number: EPS9551
  • Number of Credits: 1.5

OLN7500 Engineering for Humanity: Helping Elders Age in Place Through Partnerships For Healthy Living (Olin College Spring 2013 Course, specially aimed at 3-College students)Olin College: Engr 2141/AHSE 2141
Instructors: Caitrin Lynch and Ela Ben-Ur
Day/Time: Mondays and Thursdays, 12:30-3 [time can be shifted slightly to accommodate
commute time and lunch; contact the profs]

Do you want to make a positive difference in the lives of older adults in the local
community? We're looking for students with passion to help others and with diverse
backgrounds in arts, humanities, social sciences, business, and/or technical fields. This
innovative, intergenerational course is a partnership between college/graduate students
and local senior citizens. It is co-taught by two Olin College professors with experience in anthropology, design, and mechanical engineering, and will take place at Olin College and in the local communities (home visits and fieldtrips). We will partner Wellesley-Babson-Olin student teams with local senior citizen volunteers, and ultimately the students will design real, implemented solutions to specific everyday problems.

Projects will be customized to meet the needs of the senior citizen partners. Possible projects: students might design a device to help someone who has difficulty reaching up to change a light bulb, something to help hold a newspaper steady with shaky hands, or something to enable someone to get clothes out of a dryer that is difficult to stoop down to reach. The class meets 2x/week; some sessions are devoted to co-design with the client population or to team meetings, other sessions involve guest speakers and fieldtrips, others are for discussion of topics relevant to aging and/or design. No prerequisites; a sense of adventure highly recommended.

More info? See http://e4h.olin.edu/spring2013.html
Questions? Contact Caitrin Lynch clynch@olin.edu


Prerequisites: None

  • Program: Graduate
  • Division: Other
  • Level: Graduate Elective (Grad)
  • Course Number: OLN7500
  • Number of Credits: 2

MBA9502 Customer Acquisition and Persuasion
(Formerly Selling Ideas, Products and Services to Executives)

1.5 CreditsThe growth of business revenue depends directly on a firm's ability to create additional value for
current and potential customers. This course will focus on the professional selling process, to include identifying opportunities, gaining access to and engaging decision makers, asking high gain questions, building long term relationships with decision makers and influencers, presenting winning proposals, handling resistance and objections, completing the sale or obtaining commitments and following up. The course will use the value creation methodology to identify solution options aimed at creating value and enhancing the other party's (e.g., customers) competitiveness. The course will use a number of inputs to share current academic thinking and best practice. Course participants will also be challenged to apply the learning to potential opportunities. The art and science of ethically and effectively convincing another party about self, ideas, solutions, products, services, etc., is an imperative for everyone, whether in family or social settings, profit or not-for-profit ventures. It's a life skill. This course is therefore for everyone.

Prerequisites: None

  • Program: Graduate
  • Division: Other
  • Course Number: MBA9502
  • Number of Credits: 1.5

OIM7556 Cybersecurity
(Formerly MIS7555)
1.5 Elective Credits

If you took and passed MIS7555, you cannot register for OIM7556, as these two courses are equivalent

The course is designed for the next generation managers who need to appreciate both the technical aspects and business impacts of cybersecurity in the enterprise. Different types of security break from a manager's perspective are explored. Students will also learn to design or support cybersecurity initiatives such as a risk management, policy creation, incident response and continuous improvement. The course uses a combination of readings and current events, class discussion and quest speakers for learning.

Prerequisites: None

  • Program: Graduate
  • Division: Operations and Information Management
  • Level: MSBA Elective (Grad),Graduate Elective (Grad)
  • Course Number: OIM7556
  • Number of Credits: 1.5

QTM6110 Data Exploration (Quantitative Methods)

1.5 CreditsData is valuable when it is used to make good decisions and avoid bad ones. We consider the value of data as a resource by studying how the variety of information available can be displayed, interpreted and communicated. Students will see the different approaches suggested by both traditional statistical methods and the recent advances in big data analytics. The course will emphasize the ways in which managers and entrepreneurs are both producers and consumers of data.

  • Program: Graduate
  • Division: Mathematics Analytics Science and Technology
  • Course Number: QTM6110
  • Number of Credits: 1.5

QTM7200 Data, Models and Decisions

2 CreditsData, Models and Decisions (DMD) - This course is concerned with identifying variation, measuring it, and managing it to make informed decisions. Topics include: numerical and graphical description of data, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, regression, decision analysis, and simulation. Applications to Economics, Finance, Marketing, and Operations illustrate the use of these quantitative tools in applied contexts. The course utilizes spreadsheet, statistical, and simulation software.

  • Program: Graduate
  • Division: Mathematics Analytics Science and Technology
  • Course Number: QTM7200
  • Number of Credits: 2

STR7509 Decisions, Decisions, Decisions - How Managers Make Good and Bad Choices
3 Credits
MBA students are exposed to a wide variety of concepts and tools which should enable them to make intelligent decisions. However, the decision-making performance of corporate managers, most of them trained in these concepts and tools, is very uneven.

This course will seek to enable a student to understand some key factors that can influence the quality of decision making. Using case examples from both business and government, the course will build on a basic understanding of analysis and decision making to expose participants to the circumstances that can limit the effectiveness of the techniques they have learned and help them understand the challenges they will face as members of leadership teams making complex choices throughout their careers. Students will also learn about the factors involved in providing information for decision-making, and the roles that information technology plays in decision situations.

At the conclusion of the course, students will have an appreciation for the factors they will encounter in leadership roles and the methods they can employ to ensure that they contribute to the making of good decisions. Their exposure to the broad topics presented should also acquaint them with areas which may draw their interest for more intensive study in specific academic disciplines.

Prerequisites: None

  • Program: Graduate
  • Division: Management
  • Level: Graduate Elective (Grad)
  • Course Number: STR7509
  • Number of Credits: 3

FIN7550 Derivatives: Theory and Practice
3 Credits
This course examines the pricing and use of derivatives in depth. It will cover the mathematical underpinnings of forwards, futures, options, swaps and more exotic derivatives, as well as the practical uses of these derivatives to hedge and manage risk. This course will cover the Black-Scholes option pricing formula, binomial trees and risk-neutral pricing. Applications include financial hedging of foreign exchange risk, commodity risk, and interest rate risk; as well as portfolio immunization techniques.

Prerequisites: FIN7200 or FIN7800

  • Program: Graduate
  • Division: Finance
  • Level: MSBA Elective (Grad),MSF Elective (Grad),Graduate Elective (Grad)
  • Course Number: FIN7550
  • Number of Credits: 3

ACC7503 Designing a Business for Profitability
3 Elective CreditsIf you have taken and passed ACC7201, you cannot register for ACC7503, as these two courses are equivalent

This course is focused on the connection between strategy execution and profitability. Students develop skills in quantitatively grounded logical analysis in order to be able to:


- Judge the financial feasibility of plans for launching new businesses or for redesigning existing ones.
- Grow profitable and sustainable ventures.
- Create business models that make money.
- Integrate analytics and Industry 4.0 concepts to make business decisions.

Prerequisites: None

  • Program: Graduate
  • Division: Accounting and Law
  • Level: Graduate Elective (Grad)
  • Course Number: ACC7503
  • Number of Credits: 3