MBA XB200P (1 unit)

Through in-depth reading and class discussions, get an introduction to a set of tools that will help you frame and solve problems in the future. Taken from design thinking and systems thinking, you focus on these five areas: observing and noticing, framing and reframing, imagining and designing, making and experimenting, and storytelling.

Formerly called Problem Finding Problem Solving

Faculty: Jennifer Caleshu, M.B.A

MBA XB295C (3 units)

Gain the core skills needed to identify opportunities that can lead to successful, entrepreneurial high-technology ventures, regardless of your "home" skill set (technical or managerial). Take an in-depth examination of the most successful approaches for entrepreneurial companies as a function of markets and technologies. Emphasis is placed on the special requirements for creating and executing strategy in a setting of rapid technological change and limited resources. This course is particularly suited for those who anticipate founding or operating technology companies.

Details

You take this course in the fall and/or spring term. The course lasts 15 weeks and comprises 3 hours of lecture per week. You take a final exam to earn a letter grade.

Faculty: Andrew Isaacs, M.S.

BUS ADM X419.7 (1 unit)

This course is a combination of class time, one-on-one coaching sessions and company site visits. Class time focuses on three aspects of your learning: excelling as a Haas student; identifying your professional path forward; and enhancing your personal and professional development. One-on-one coaching provides highly individualized support to discuss your own topics of interest, ranging from applying to graduate school, to clarifying how to bring together your strengths and interests to launch or enhance your career.

Faculty: Heidi Weller, M.B.A

UGBA XB196 (3 units)

Explore the structure and framework of entrepreneurial endeavors—both inside and outside of the business world. Learn the answers to such questions as: What is entrepreneurship? What is opportunity recognition and selection? How can you create and define competitive advantage? At the end of the course, you will understand the entrepreneurial business process and how you can become involved in those processes in your future career.

Faculty: Aaron McDaniel

UGBA XB152 (3 units)

Understand the theory and processes of negotiation so that you can negotiate successfully in a variety of settings. You'll learn about a broad spectrum of negotiation problems that are faced by managers and professionals in order to get their solutions accepted and implemented. Throughout the course, you will develop these skills experientially and place negotiation in useful analytical frameworks.

Details

You take this course in the fall and/or spring term. The course lasts 15 weeks and comprises 2–4 hours of lecture per week. You take a final exam to earn a letter grade.

Faculty: Holly Schroth, Ph.D.

UGBA XB168B (3 units)

Understand the frameworks and sensitivities to formulate and implement marketing strategies in order to compete globally. Explore international marketing in regions such as the Americas, Europe, Japan, China, India, Russia, Africa and Asia-Pacific. Explore topics such as:

• global versus local advertising
• international pricing strategies
• selecting and managing strategic international alliances and distribution channels
• managing international brands and product lines through the product life cycle international retailing
• international marketing organization and control

Details

You take this course in the fall and/or spring term. The course lasts 15 weeks and comprises three hours of lecture per week. You take a final exam to earn a letter grade.

Faculty: Wasim Azhar

MBA XB236V (3 units)

This is a course for current/future entrepreneurs on how to finance and fund a startup or high-growth business. The course centers on a model that includes strategic planning, financial analysis, business model creation, cash management, funding alternatives, investor pitching, alternative financing, and exit strategies. We examine the various options that a company has for financing at all stages of its life-cycle—from seed stage to later stage—using a blend of lectures, cases, readings and speakers (venture capitalists, CEO/founders, industry experts and service providers) to address the full range of financing options including angel, venture capital, debt financing, corporate/strategic investment and public markets.

Details

You take this course in the fall and/or spring term. The course lasts 15 weeks and comprises three hours of lecture per week. You take a final exam to earn a letter grade.

Faculty: Gregory La Blanc, J.D., LLM

MBA XB237 (3 units)

Changes in technology—such as universal Internet access, dramatic advances in cryptography and a mobile phone in every pocket—have changed how the financial industry operates. In this course, you will learn covers the basics of the payment system and how it is changing. You will examine how other stores of value embedded in mobile technology are used around the world, in both high-income and low-income countries. The course will also touch on changes in other financial sectors, including advice, banking and insurance. Finally, you will investigate the potential of cryptocurrencies and the possibilities for disruption inherent in an open, consensus ledger (such as Blockchain).

Faculty: Gregory La Blanc, J.D., LLM

MBA XB253 (2 units)

In order to improve the quality of your decisions, you will learn to be aware of and how to avoid common inferential errors and systematic biases in your own decision making. Then, you will learn how to improve your ability to predict and influence the behavior of others. Managers, consumers, investors and negotiators all make predictable mistakes. Therefore, understanding the psychology of decision making can give you an advantage.

Faculty: Barry Schwartz, Ph.D.

MBA XB296 (2 units)

For marketers and leaders, the digital age brings new challenges. They must shift attention away from incrementally improving their existing portfolio of product, customer service and branding initiatives and move toward finding new, latent, invisible needs that represent an opportunity to reframe customer value and establish the company's future relevance and uniqueness.

Details

In this course you will:

• Explore the new marketing realities.
• Understand digital disruption, its causes and consequences.
• Manage marketing in a world of digital disruption.
• Deliver differentiated customer experience in a digital world.
• Define new models for understanding, connecting to and engaging customers digitally.
• Lead marketing in a digital age.

This course lasts 8 weeks and comprises 4 hours of lecture per week.

Faculty: Peter Wilton, Ph.D.

MBA XB295T (2 units)

Get a hands-on learning experience on what it really takes to start a high-tech company. You'll experience all of the pressures and demands that take place in an early stage startup. Working in teams, you'll talk to customers, partners and competitors as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup works.

You will use a business model to brainstorm each part of a company and customer development. Finally, based on customer and market feedback, you will use Agile development to rapidly iterate your product to build something customers would want to use or buy.

MBA XB217 (3 units)

Learn advanced methods for data-driven business decision making. After a introduction to the R programming language, you will learn through problem sets that allow you to read and evaluate empirical and analytical approaches.

Details

You will learn how to:

• Design randomized, controlled trials in the field.
• How to evaluate natural experiments and machine-learning tools for forecasting purposes.
• Evaluate experimental and non-experimental data.
• Write code.
• Make business decisions based on the results.
• Understand the value of data-based decision making.
• Evaluate analytics tools and products.
• Conduct richer analysis of randomized and naturally occurring experiments.