Fall 2010 course bidding results were released today.
Although I saved myself the agony of bidding on C.K. Prahalad’s Special Topics – which this year broke 500 points for market clear – I was still a little nervous. A couple of my choices are considered “absolute must takes “ for anyone interested in corporate strategy and corporate social responsibility, so I wasn’t sure how many points they would go for. Luckily, my bid strategy worked, and I was rewarded with a seat in every class on which I placed a bid. So, barring any 2nd thoughts over the summer, my Fall 2010 courseload will consist of 2 Strategy, 2 Finance and 2 Operations classes. (Yes, you read correctly. I was not exaggerating when I said how much I fell in love with Ops this year.)
· FIN 615: Valuation. This is a deep dive into the most fundamental aspect of Finance. No matter what your career interest, no one should come out of b-school without knowing how to value a company. I lucked out, in that Gautam Kaul, whom I had for core Finance, will be teaching FIN 615 in Fall A, which guarantees we’ll have fun even as he drowns us in cases and problem sets.
· FIN 637: Finance and the Sustainable Enterprise. It’s fairly rare to find this class offered in any business school. It’s all about how to attach real, hard-core numbers to the ideals of sustainability and responsibility. A team of students worked with Gautam to develop this class a few years ago, and I’m told it’s an amazingly intense, crazy-rigorous analytical experience.
STRAT 646: Solving Societal Problems through Enterprise & Innovation. Funny thing: this is a Strategy course taught by a BIT professor. Michael Gordon has done a boat-load of work on innovation, technology and Base-of-Pyramid strategies, and this seminar promises to bring those disparate disciplines all together.
· STRAT 669: Advanced Competitive Analysis. After the quick-fire pace of 7-week classes throughout the core, it’s a little intimidating to think about a 14-week class, but this one is widely reputed to be the be-all and end-all in strategy. It’s taught by Gautam Ahuja, chair of the Strategy department, who is so popular, he actually filled up 3 separate sections – of 95 students each – in this year's bidding. I mean, wow. That’s over half the MBA2 student body clamoring to be cold-called by Ahuja.
· OMS 620: Supply Chain Management. When the fall line-up first came out, I was a little bummed because this class, another 14-weeker, was scheduled for Saturday mornings (are you kidding me?!) But a group of us lobbied pretty hard, so now my favorite professor Wally Hopp (from core Ops) has agreed to team-teach a Tuesday section in the Fall. The cool thing is, the class mixes MBAs interested in both Ops and Marketing (since suppy chain is, after all, the 4th P: Place) with students in the Masters of Supply Chain Management program, so I’m expecting to meet a lot of new people and hear a lot of new perspectives.
· OMS 624: Strategic Sourcing. No old syllabi in the Kresge archives for this one, so I'm going on gut instinct here. I’ve written elsewhere about my ideas on holistic CSR, of which I think responsible sourcing is a cornerstone. Besides, it's being taught by Damian Beil, nicknamed Prof. Dreamian by the MBA1 sections he taught for core Ops, so this is some consolation for being at 8:00am (!).
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