Elective Courses

Tuck continuously evolves its elective curriculum to offer courses that cover a broad range of timely and ground‑breaking topics.

This list is representative of the nature and number of electives offered each year.

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105 courses found

  • Advanced Management Communication (AMC)

    Communication

    Faculty: Julie B Lang, Amy E Florentino, Courtney H Pierson

    Subject Areas: Communication

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    As part of the Core at Tuck, Management Communication (ManComm) was designed to provide Tuck students with immediately applicable skills for professional communication. For students seeking to deepen their communication skills, Advanced Management Communication (AMC) expands beyond ManComm, shifting from a passive audience to an active one. In this minicourse, we’ll ask you to not only anticipate audience needs, but to actively manage questions from them. You’ll practice leading a dynamic discussion to reach a common set of objectives: soliciting audience input, asking for and answering questions and managing dissent. Similar to ManComm, we’ll follow the same prepare – present – reflect pedagogy and in-class time will be dedicated to presentations and feedback. Our learning environment will be in-person, although we will incorporate remote discussions into the term. You’ll have a chance to practice leading stand-up, around-the-table, remote, and hybrid discussions. Overall, best practices for giving in-person presentations hold in a remote world. The skills you practice in this class will help you navigate a variety of work situations. Post-Tuck, you’ll regularly be engaged in discussions rather than pure presentations. AMC is designed to give you more agility in working with each unique situation you face.

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  • Building and Managing Growth-Stage Ventures (BMGSV)

    Entrepreneurship

    Faculty: Peter J Levine

    Subject Areas: Entrepreneurship

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This course is designed for students aspiring to lead technology startups as executives or CEOs, or to contribute to venture capital firms driving innovation. It offers a comprehensive, hands-on exploration of the critical milestones new ventures face following a successful Series A fundraising round. Students will gain the strategic, operational, and leadership skills necessary to navigate the complex journey from early growth to a successful exit, whether through an IPO, acquisition, or other pathways.

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  • Cooperation and Competition in the 21st Century Global Economy (CCCGE)

    Economics

    Faculty: Emily J Blanchard

    Subject Areas: Economics

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    The 21st century global economy will be defined by how government and business leaders respond to today’s complex policy challenges. This mini-course centers on a handful of critical economic policy issues, organized around the central theme of cooperation and competition. Topics include the rise of global value chains, national security, and the innovation race; rising market power and international data security; the deterioration of global governance rules and norms; and the challenges of sustainable and inclusive globalization, including the coming battles over carbon taxes. The course will leverage economic tools and data to inform and refine our understanding of market outcomes, market failures, and the scope for policy. These economic principles will be balanced with an emphasis on the interplay between firms, governments, and international institutions and agreements in practice.

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  • Corporate Restructuring and Shareholder Activism (CRSA)

    Finance

    Faculty: Bjorn Espen Eckbo

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    This course discusses core financial restructuring decisions and shareholder activism. It develops an understanding of what activists do and why, how boards respond, and how financial restructurings work both in and out of bankruptcy. The course highlights out of court restructurings such as acquisitions, divestitures, spinoffs and splitoffs, the use of leverage recapitalizations to limit agency costs of free cash flow and, finally financial restructurings including "loan-to-own” strategies in bankruptcy. Results of empirical research are intertwined with specific case discussions. Class discussions typically open with a brief presentation of an activist case brought to class by a student team.

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  • Early Stage Venture Capital Workshop Practicum (PRVCW)

    Finance

    Faculty: James M P Feuille

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Practicum

    The goal of the Early Stage Venture Capital Workshop Practicum is to engage students in an in-depth, hands-on, team-oriented exploration of real-world early stage venture capital (VC) deal making, first by giving students an intensive grounding in the core elements of early stage venture capital—venture capital fund portfolio construction, deal sourcing, deal screening and selection, due diligence, valuation of early stage companies, convertible notes, capitalization tables, term sheets, the elements of an investment memorandum and negotiations with entrepreneurs—then by engaging students in a series of “deal workshops” whereby students will work on analyzing and conducting “due diligence” on nine “live” venture capital deals, three at a time, meeting with the founders or CEOs of companies that are then active in the marketplace raising Seed, Series A and Series B rounds of venture capital to hear their pitches and ask due diligence questions, and selecting three of those deals (one per set of three) to recommend to their “partnership”, consisting of practicing venture capitalists from around the US, by writing a full investment memorandum for each of the three deals and presenting and defending the investment thesis for the deal in a meeting with the venture capital partners. Unlike interns or associates in venture capital firms, who support the partners in their work, in this workshop, students will take on the role of the partners in a venture capital firm who are leading deals for their firms. In the final week, the deals phase of the workshop concludes with mock negotiation sessions where the teams will negotiate an investment term sheet with three of the nine entrepreneurs, one per team. Field Studies in Venture Capital (FSVC) is a prerequisite for this Practicum. No exceptions.

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  • Early Stage Venture Capital Workshop Practicum (PRVC2)

    Finance

    Faculty: James M P Feuille

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Practicum

    The goal of the Early Stage Venture Capital Workshop Practicum is to engage students in an in-depth, hands-on, team-oriented exploration of real-world early stage venture capital (VC) deal making, first by giving students an intensive grounding in the core elements of early stage venture capital—venture capital fund portfolio construction, deal sourcing, deal screening and selection, due diligence, valuation of early stage companies, convertible notes, capitalization tables, term sheets, the elements of an investment memorandum and negotiations with entrepreneurs—then by engaging students in a series of “deal workshops” whereby students will work on analyzing and conducting “due diligence” on nine “live” venture capital deals, three at a time, meeting with the founders or CEOs of companies that are then active in the marketplace raising Seed, Series A and Series B rounds of venture capital to hear their pitches and ask due diligence questions, and selecting three of those deals (one per set of three) to recommend to their “partnership”, consisting of practicing venture capitalists from around the US, by writing a full investment memorandum for each of the three deals and presenting and defending the investment thesis for the deal in a meeting with the venture capital partners. Unlike interns or associates in venture capital firms, who support the partners in their work, in this workshop, students will take on the role of the partners in a venture capital firm who are leading deals for their firms. In the final week, the deals phase of the workshop concludes with mock negotiation sessions where the teams will negotiate an investment term sheet with three of the nine entrepreneurs, one per team.

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  • Ecosystem Strategy (ES)

    Strategy

    Faculty: Ron Adner

    Subject Areas: Strategy

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Over the past 20 years, the notion of business “ecosystems” has become pervasive in discussions of strategy, both scholarly and applied. Its rise has mirrored an increasing interest and concern with interdependence across organizations and activities. In this course we will develop a perspective on the challenges of innovation and competition with a particular focus on the context of ecosystems – settings where value creation depends on aligning multiple parties in novel ways.
    • How should we approach the challenge of picking the right opportunity, aligning the right partners, and targeting the right market and, perhaps most importantly, setting the right expectations for a new venture?
    • How should an ecosystem context affect competitive strategy, both offense and defense?
    • What new management challenges arise when value creation and capture no longer depend just on satisfying customers and beating rivals, but also on our ability to identify, align, and maintain critical partners and partnerships? We will explore these questions using a set of analytic lenses that will help us assess the potential of new opportunities and to strategize about how to best exploit them. We will apply these tools using a combination of cases, exercises, and reflection essays.

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  • Fundamentals of Web Programming (FWP)

    Operations and Management Science

    Faculty: Devin Balkcom

    Subject Areas: Operations and Management Science

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This hands-on minicourse will teach the basics of web programming (Javascript, HTML, and CSS). During the course, you will build a web-based e-commerce site from scratch. By the end of the course you will be able to reason effectively about designs for and potential capabilities of web applications. We'll also explore automated AI coding tools -- both their strengths, and their limitations. There are no prerequisites for the course.

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  • Global Insight Expedition (GIX)

    Experiential

    Faculty: Gail A Taylor, Charlie Donovan, Scott D Anthony, Robert A Shumsky, Gordon M Phillips, Kirsten H Detrick, Melody B. Burkins, Aram Mourad Donigian, Daniella L Reichstetter

    Subject Areas: Experiential

    Course Type: Experiential Course

    Global Insight Expeditions (GIXs) are immersive, faculty led courses designed for MBA students to deepen their ability to lead and make decisions in complex global business environments. Combining rigorous on campus preparation with international field experience, GIXs challenge students to apply classroom frameworks in real time. Through structured reflection and direct engagement with executives, entrepreneurs, policymakers, community leaders, and local stakeholders, students build cultural intelligence, strategic perspective, and the adaptability required to operate across markets. Each course begins at Tuck, then transitions to travel with one or two faculty members, offering firsthand insight into how leadership, organizations, and markets function around the world.

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  • Implementing Strategy (IMPST)

    Strategy

    Faculty: Vijay Govindarajan

    Subject Areas: Strategy

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    The central focus of this course is strategy implementation. The importance of the subject matter covered in this course is captured in the widely accepted “truism” that over 90 percent of businesses founder on the rocks of implementation. However laudable strategic intentions may be, if they do not become a reality, they usually are not worth the paper on which they are written. Conversely, high-performing companies excel at execution. This course is about “contemporary execution models”: How to innovate in areas such as organization structure, incentive systems, decision-making autonomy, talent acquisition, and so on. We’ll especially focus on the management models that are pre-requisite for success in the digital era.

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  • Introduction to B2B Marketing / Customer Growth Strategies and Tactics (SP020)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Mark B Hosbein

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Sprint Course

    Over three sessions the course will provide foundational knowledge of B2B marketing, both as a standalone practice and relative to consumer marketing. The material will be drawn from academics, thought leadership organizations, global consultancies, industry think tanks, and case studies. The course will provide the frameworks, tools and levers used by B2B marketers. We will bring all of that to life via case studies. And the instructor will draw on 25+ of B2B experience to support the insights and provide context. The class is ideal for aspiring marketers as well as students who will go into finance, consulting or product leadership in an enterprise. Students planning on entering consumer marketing should know the basics (and differences) between consumer and enterprise marketing. The course will also serve the needs of future leaders in consulting, banking, private equity and technology by showcasing innovative growth strategies, internal team management and alignment, and M&A strategies to support growth. The ability to build and orchestrate customer driven growth is a core skill in all fields. Assignments will simulate real life issues and be based on actual tasks required in leadership roles.

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  • Leadership in the Global Economy: Contemporary Economics and Business (LGE)

    Economics

    Faculty: Matthew J Slaughter

    Subject Areas: Economics

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    The global economy in 2026 has been a mix of strengths and weaknesses, the net direction of which hinge around a handful of key questions. Will generative AI lead to a surge in productivity and innovation, or will its promise fade under unproven returns—or under the strain of a backlash against its job destruction? What will the ongoing global trade war do to jobs, prices, and national competitiveness? Can central banks successfully guide inflation down to target levels without derailing growth? The fusion of technological, global, and social forces continues to create immense business and economic opportunities—and yet serious pressures and anxieties as well. Perhaps most prominent among these anxieties is the fading belief among many people in many countries in the dynamic forces of globalization and innovation. Much of this ambivalence and related anxiety stems from workers and their families not seeing sufficient growth in their income, wealth, and sense of opportunity: sufficient relative to earlier decades, relative to those at the top, and relative to their hopes and expectations. We live in a time where many nations are fractious and less trusting, with far less consensus about the proper balance among for-profit businesses, sovereign governments, and civil society. Several business-policy questions await the rest of 2026 and beyond. LGE provides us a chance to engage with some of the contemporary business and policy questions that are top of mind in C-suites, boardrooms, and halls of government power—for aspiring unicorns and for generations-old companies alike.

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  • Leading Diverse Organizations (LDO)

    Organizational Behavior

    Faculty: Sonya Mishra

    Subject Areas: Organizational Behavior, Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    Using insights from cutting-edge behavioral science and psychological research, this course provides students with skills to identify and address issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within organizations. In the first half of the course, students will develop an understanding of the barriers to DEI, such as systems of inequality, denial of privilege, biases that hinder support for DEI, and the many biases facing marginalized groups. Through lectures, in-class role-play exercises, and case discussions, students will also learn about how organizational characteristics (e.g., power and status hierarchies, workplace cultures) impact the efficacy of DEI interventions. In the second half of the course, students will learn how to improve organizational DEI at the individual level (e.g., addressing bias, recruiting allies, creating psychological safety, advocating for oneself in the face of bias) and at the organizational level (e.g., hiring practices and workplace policies that measurably improve DEI). By the end of this course, students will be adept at identifying and addressing sources of inequity, having difficult conversations, mitigating problems associated with stereotypes, and managing diverse, equitable, and inclusive environments. Importantly, this class teaches students how to advocate for DEI issues in organizational settings, equipping them with the necessary research, persuasion tactics, and analytical skills needed to be advocates, even in the face of resistance. This course fulfills the Ethics and Social Responsibility (ESR) requirement.

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  • Marketing Strategy in the Digital Economy (MSDE)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Tami Kim

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This course is grounded in the idea that acquiring and retaining customers through superior experiences is central to business success—and that digital technologies provide powerful new ways to achieve this. Building on core marketing frameworks, we will examine how foundational marketing principles must be rethought and adapted in digital contexts. You will explore how firms leverage digital tools to design business models, set pricing strategies, and execute promotional approaches, drawing on examples of both successful and unsuccessful implementations. We will also examine how firms navigate strategic trade-offs when managing digital platforms, which often bring together multiple stakeholders with competing objectives. Throughout the course, the focus will be on developing a strategic lens for understanding how digital transformation reshapes marketing decisions.

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  • Medical Care & the Corporation (MCC)

    Health Care

    Faculty: Paul B Gardent, Michael Zubkoff

    Subject Areas: Health Care

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    Employer-sponsored healthcare is one of the largest—and least understood—drivers of corporate cost, workforce strategy, and competitive advantage in the United States. For many firms, healthcare spending is the second largest cost and significantly impacts margins, talent acquisition, and employee productivity. In this course, students examine healthcare not as a policy issue, but as a core strategic business challenge. MCC equips future leaders to evaluate how companies design, finance, and manage healthcare benefits in a rapidly evolving ecosystem shaped by rising costs, regulatory shifts, and disruptive innovation. Students will develop a practical understanding of: • The structure and economics of the employer-sponsored healthcare system • How leading companies make strategic decisions about health benefits, vendors, and risk • The role of insurers, consultants, and emerging market entrants • How digital health, AI, and new care models are reshaping employer strategies Through case discussions and guest speakers from industry, consulting, and startups, students will analyze real-world decisions faced by executives and advisors. The course emphasizes actionable frameworks and market insight relevant to careers in consulting, corporate strategy, healthcare, private equity, and entrepreneurship. By the end of the course, students will be able to assess healthcare strategies as a source of both cost control and competitive advantage—and engage confidently in one of the most complex and consequential issues facing modern organizations.

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  • Multichannel Route-to-Market Strategy Mini (MRTMM)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Kusum L Ailawadi

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    The distribution channel is the route through which suppliers’ products reach end-customers in the market. Channel members provide many essential services to end-customers without which the supplier would fail, and which the supplier often cannot efficiently provide itself. But channel members are customers in their own right and have their own needs. Further, they usually market not only the supplier’s products but also competitors’ products and their own private labels. Their motivations and objectives are typically not aligned with those of the supplier, hence the challenge of “coordinating the channel”. Managing the distribution channel or route-to-market was never easy but it has never been more challenging than it is today. At the same time as suppliers of products ranging from packaged goods and sporting goods to hotels and cars are bypassing retailers to go directly to end customers, other middlemen are inserting themselves to perform narrow functions and take slices from an-often shrinking profit pie. The objective of this course is to help students appreciate the complexities involved in being a part of today’s route-to-market and internalize the frameworks, metrics, and tools needed to manage the complexities. We will take the perspective of suppliers, retailers, and other intermediaries because an effective channel partnership can be sustained only if one understands the value added by each channel member, as well as the constraints and alternatives they face. Course materials include the book titled Getting Multi-Channel Distribution Right, cases, and some related articles/notes. In-depth classroom discussion of these materials and their application to graded individual assignments and a team project will be the primary vehicles for learning. The frameworks presented in the readings and in class sessions will serve as a bridge between the specifics in each case we analyze and the situations you will encounter in your careers. I expect you to explicitly draw on them as we discuss full-length cases and other examples in class and also in your individual assignments and project. Students who intend to work in marketing, product management, start-ups, or consulting should take this course. The relevance of this subject to the first three career paths is obvious, but the last is worth noting. The internet and mobile technology, the availability of extensive customer data, the growth of digital intermediaries and of large retailers in multiple formats, and now AI search, have put issues of distribution front and center in business. Several consulting companies now have special practices in this field, so a good understanding of route-to-market is important for students interested in marketing or strategy consulting.

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  • NLP, Machine Learning, and AI in Finance (RTPNL)

    Finance

    Faculty: Gordon M Phillips

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Research to Practice Seminar

    We will study finance applications of new big data textual methods, including Natural Language Processing (NLP)/ Machine Learning (ML), and Textual Artificial Intelligence (AI). We will examine how this broad area has applications in finance with tools that include simple text processing to more advanced tools such as machine learning and predictive AI. Areas that we will study that are using NLP include merger prediction and performance, profitability prediction, stock return prediction, evaluation of venture capital business plans, innovation and patenting, banking, and other finance topics. Our study materials will be academic articles in finance and economics, not computer science. Students will be responsible for reading and presenting the materials in these articles, as well as doing a final research project that would involve analysis of textual data using some of the methods covered in this course. There will be active learning in this course as students will help lead the discussion of various topic areas, and we will have some Python exercises that have been developed with accompanying videos. Knowledge of Python is not required as we will guide students through some basic exercises in textual analysis applied to financial documents, including 10-Ks and earnings calls.

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  • Negotiations (NEGO)

    Organizational Behavior

    Faculty: Aram Mourad Donigian

    Subject Areas: Organizational Behavior

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    Negotiation is the art and science of securing agreements between two or more interdependent parties. This course focuses on the theory and processes of negotiation as it is practiced in a variety of settings. It is designed to complement the technical and diagnostic skills learned in other Tuck courses. A basic premise of the course is that while wise, decisive leaders need strong analytical skills to better the world through business, negotiation skills are essential for today’s business leader to ensure adoption and implementation of proposals. This course will highlight the components of an effective negotiation and teach you to analyze your own behavior in negotiations. The course will be largely experiential, providing you with an opportunity to develop your skills by participating in role-play simulations and integrating your experiences with the principles presented in the lectures, course discussions, and assigned readings. Students may not take both Negotiations and the Negotiations Accelerated (NEGOX) minicourse course for credit.

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  • Niche Strategies in Culture Industries: The Case of Wine (SP026)

    Strategy

    Faculty: Danielle Callegari, Sydney Finkelstein

    Subject Areas: Strategy

    Course Type: Sprint Course

    Wine connoisseurship—knowing about, enjoying, and collecting wine—has long been seen as a marker of good taste and a sound investment practice. But the qualities that make wine valuable culturally and those that make it a valuable asset are rarely the same. More than this, they are often in contradiction: wine’s scarcity, longevity, and brand equity are often seen as the three key strategic drivers of financial performance, yet it is the ephemerality, variability, and conviviality derived from its consumption that make wine culturally compelling. This Sprint will examine what accounts for this unique product's deep cultural significance in communities around the world against the means by which it is appraised commercially, and interrogate how those two systems intersect in an effort to identify the contours of an asset class whose performance is profoundly influenced by the intangible. There are three key elements to this Sprint that are both interesting and unique. First, most coursework on strategy focuses on fundamental strategic frameworks – core competencies, resource management, competitive positioning, strategic leadership, M&A, and others. These tools are learned and employed in many contexts, though much less often in culture industries where the rules of engagement differ in important ways. For example, for every LVMH and Gallo, there are tens of thousands of small wineries operating around the world. Surviving, let alone thriving, in such a global business environment often means developing sustainable niche strategies. Students will be challenged to use more traditional strategy frameworks to inform their thinking on competition in the wine industry, and to develop a deeper understanding of the niche strategies that enable survival, and even growth, for the preponderance of smaller players in the industry. Along with this strategic framing of the Sprint, the second interesting and unique element is the wine industry itself, a global industry with cultural resonance and with roots that go back literally thousands of years. The market was valued at over $330 billion in 2023 and is projected to double by 2033, but it is wine’s ability to forge deep ties to individual identity and to set the boundaries of communities that give it an intangible and often incalculable value to its consumers. Even if some lovers of cars and watches consider their attention to those products quasi-religious, few would argue that they can wield the same celebrated power as wine, nor is it possible to imagine another agricultural product raised to the exalted heights of wine, not despite but because of its connection to nature. Finally, from a pedagogical point of view, students will have a chance to engage in a mini “CEO Challenge” in each of the three sessions. Like the CEO Challenge in Tuck Launch, we will have a wine industry CEO present a real-time challenge he or she is working on right now and challenge students to tackle that challenge during each class session. The Sprint will examine specific questions like: ● What niche strategies are more effective under which circumstances in the wine industry? ● What are the primary sources of value creation in the wine business? ● How is the wine industry similar, or different, to other cultural industries, like fashion, art, and entertainment? ● How is the market for wine changing and how are producers responding given that their product cannot quickly respond to market shifts in real time?

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  • Social Entrepreneurship (SESHP)

    Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Faculty: Mark R DesJardine

    Subject Areas: Entrepreneurship, Ethics and Social Responsibility, Strategy

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Business is the most powerful tool we have for improving the state of the world. It moves faster than policy, scales further than philanthropy, and reaches deeper than protest. And yet most businesses focus almost entirely on profit. That’s not a flaw in business, but a failure of imagination. The world is filled with problems for which business is the answer. Not business as usual, but business redesigned so that social change is part of the equation from the start. Ventures that prove doing good and building something financially sustainable are not in tension. In this course, you’ll identify a real social or environmental problem, design a venture around it, and develop a plan that holds up in front of investors, customers, and the communities you aim to serve. The work is hands-on and experiential. You’ll learn to build impact models, stress-test your mission against market realities, and articulate a value proposition that makes both financial and moral sense. Whether or not you plan to launch your own venture or work in an adjacent field (e.g., impact investing, philanthropy, or consulting), this course will reshape how you think about what business can do and what you can do with it. This course meets the Ethics & Social Responsibility (ESR) requirement.

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  • Solving Problems of Aging and Saving (SP036)

    Other

    Faculty:

    Subject Areas: Other

    Course Type: Sprint Course

    Many advanced economies face declining fertility, aging populations, and stagnant or shrinking working-age populations, as well as inadequate household savings to pay for the post-employment needs of large portions of aging populations. This sprint will explore both the national and the personal challenges we face because of demographic change and their consequences for late-in-life income, seeking to integrate analysis of economic growth, national savings, and capital market development of future claims on income, with the challenge of personal household savings and investing, given uncertain life expectancies and uncertain future returns. Students will also explore what they expect will be the impact of aging societies on their own careers and financial prospects and their own plans to save and invest for their post-employment income.

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  • Strategic Sales Management (SSM)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Jon W Kerbs

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This is a strategic sales management course set in a business-to-business (B2B) context. In B2B firms (technology, healthcare, investment banking, industrials, manufacturing, management consulting, retail, private equity, to name a few), direct personal selling is the predominant go-to-market channel. This course will provide the fundamental tools to 1) apply personal selling tactics in pursuit of selling the firm’s products and/or services, 2) manage effectively key drivers in the firm's sales strategy and 3) execute sales plans aligned to the firm’s business strategies. It will benefit those who will work in Business Development (either in direct sales or managing salespeople roles), Product Management, Brand Management, Product Marketing, and roles in the Professional Services sector (management consulting and most finance-related positions). Next, the course will be beneficial to students who see themselves running a business or managing an organization at some point in their career (General Manager). Finally, in a broad sense, being able to “sell your idea” is a critical skill component of all successful leaders.

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  • Sustainable Business Dynamics (SBD)

    Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Faculty: Ken P Pucker

    Subject Areas: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Other

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Advances in technology, emergent social issues and pressing environment challenges are elevating the importance of corporate sustainability. Independent of the chosen designation (CSR, corporate responsibility, ESG…) an array of stakeholders (including NGOs, employees, consumers, communities, investors, and the planet) are pushing the boundaries of responsibility and elevating expectations for corporations. This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the nomenclature, frameworks, and analytical tools needed to effectively integrate sustainability and responsibility into the management of a corporation.

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  • Taxes and Business Strategy (TBS)

    Accounting

    Faculty: Pete Lisowsky

    Subject Areas: Accounting

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    This course has two objectives: First, you will gain exposure to key areas where taxes play a role in implementing business strategy. Business strategy broadly refers to a firm’s working plan for achieving its vision, prioritizing objectives, competing successfully, and optimizing financial performance. Taxes affect many strategic business decisions such as forming a new business and raising capital, investment strategies, financing projects, compensating employees, making shareholder distributions, expanding through acquisition, divesting lines of business, or expanding internationally. There are trade-offs in meeting organizational objectives at the lowest tax cost. Second, this course will introduce you to a framework for thinking about tax strategy. A tax code is a living set of regulations that are constantly changing and adapting in response to politics, perceived abuse, and business innovation. It is this ebb and flow that creates both challenges and opportunities for taxpayers, advisors, and governments. The details of tax law are quite nuanced (and will often require advice from a tax lawyer). However, there is a thematic approach to effective tax planning that can guide decision-making even as specific laws and governments change.

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  • The Art Market (SP023)

    Other

    Faculty: Chad Elias

    Subject Areas: Other

    Course Type: Sprint Course

    This Sprint course analyzes the commercial, social, and legal mechanisms of the global art market, encompassing auction houses, private galleries, art fairs, and art advisors. We study how commercial value is produced and negotiated in these spheres, exploring the processes through which artworks are priced, authenticated, and marketed. Through case studies, critical readings, and guest speakers, the course examines key factors influencing the art market, including historical precedents, cultural trends, and the role of collectors, institutions, and investors. Special attention is given to the intersections of art, law, and business, addressing issues such as provenance, copyright, contracts, tax considerations, and the regulation of cross-border transactions.

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  • The Future of Capitalism (FOC)

    Economics

    Faculty: Russell Muirhead, Charles J Wheelan

    Subject Areas: Economics

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down and Communism in Eastern Europe imploded from within, followed two years later by the collapse of the Soviet Union. These events made liberalism – democracy and free markets – look triumphant. Francis Fukuyama called it “the end of history,” since history seemed to have reached its goal. The debate over political and economic systems was over: we had figured out the best way to organize a society’s politics and the economy. Things look different now. Many today look at growing inequality, environmental catastrophes, and political polarization, and are more likely to say they do not endorse democracy or free markets. For many, the promise of socialism is more satisfying than the reality of capitalism. Even capitalism’s strongest proponents often feel that it is due for an overhaul. Meanwhile, the world is experiencing the most significant backlash against trade and globalization since the 1930s. This course aims to give you a sense for the current debate over capitalism and its alternatives, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches. This course will examine the following core questions: 1. What is capitalism? 2. What are the alternatives (and how have they worked)? 3. How do markets work and when do they fail? 4. Should businesses be run solely to maximize profit? 5. Are tariffs good for American workers? 6. Is capitalism exploitative? 7. Do markets promote freedom or oppression? 8. Is capitalism fair? Does it reward merit? 9. Does capitalism make us happy? 10. How can we make capitalism work better?

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  • The Lions of Africa: Where Are the Next Emerging Markets (SP028)

    Other

    Faculty: Erica J. Barks Ruggles

    Subject Areas: Other

    Course Type: Sprint Course

    Sub-Saharan Africa is extraordinarily wealthy in terms of natural resources, power potential and labor. Five of the top oil producing countries in the world are in Africa, five of the top seven diamond producers are in Africa accounting for 45% of total global production, and Africa holds 48% of global cobalt reserves, 47% of manganese reserves, and 21% of graphite reserves. With 70% of Africans under 30 and a median age of 19, Africa will account for half of global population growth in the next 25 years. Understanding the risks, challenges, and opportunities in emerging markets can be one of the most rewarding and confusing aspects of investment for American businesses. What is the regulatory and legal environment? Who are the key players in a particular industry and in the government? What logistic and infrastructure hurdles need to be taken into account? Is the country stable and are there political security issues that need to be taken into account? How does an investor evaluate and mitigate risks? What skill sets are available in the workforce, and which will have to be taught? All of these issues can make or break an investment. Managing development and investments in sub-Saharan Africa requires leaders to understand the opportunities, the risks, and the competition as they analyze and make decisions. This sprint class will acquaint students with an overview of the opportunities, risks and great power competition surrounding economic development and investments in sub-Saharan Africa. It will assist students in understanding policies that may increase or decrease risk and opportunities and provide students the opportunity to explore how global challenges such as shifting demographics, growing inequality, climate change, and emerging technology will affect Africa and its investment environment in the decade to come.

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  • Tools for Improving Operations (TFIO)

    Operations and Management Science

    Faculty: Joseph M Hall, Brian T Tomlin

    Subject Areas: Operations and Management Science

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This minicourse covers frameworks and tools designed to enhance operations performance. (The definition of operations used in this course is very broad: operations is fundamentally about execution in all types of contexts, from launching a new product to managing an evolving emergency situation.) The objectives are to equip future general managers, consultants, and operations managers with the perspectives and skills to effectively use operations as a competitive weapon and to develop facility with simple technical tools and frameworks which apply directly to operational decisions and can be useful in adding value to manufacturing and service organizations.

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  • Tuck Integrative Experiential Learning (INTEL)

    Experiential

    Faculty: Praveen K Kopalle

    Subject Areas: Experiential

    Course Type: Intensive Mini

    Tuck-INTEL (Integrative Experiential Learning) is Tuck’s signature, fast-paced capstone experience—an immersive experience designed to bring your entire first-year MBA toolkit to life. In this intensive four-day minicourse, you won’t just revisit core concepts—you’ll apply them in real time, making complex, high-impact decisions under pressure in a fully integrated business environment. Working in teams, you will take the helm of a startup competing in the next-generation wind turbine industry. Over multiple decision periods, your team will navigate a dynamic, competitive marketplace where every decision matters. From strategy and operations to finance, marketing, analytics, communications, and leadership, you will be responsible for running your company end-to-end—balancing growth, managing risk, securing funding, and presenting to a board of directors. Each decision cycle challenges you to think holistically: how do marketing decisions affect capacity? How do financing choices shape strategy? How do competitors respond? Success depends not only on your team’s decisions, but also on how effectively you anticipate and react to others in a rapidly evolving environment. Tuck-INTEL is more than a course—it’s a live-fire test of your first year MBA training, pushing you to connect the dots, lead under pressure, and perform as an integrated management team.

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  • Venture Capital and Private Equity Advanced (VCPEA)

    Finance

    Faculty: Gordon M Phillips

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    In-depth study of venture capital and private equity for those with either investment banking, consulting (including summer internship experience), or previous finance and PE experience, and those first-year students who have placed out of the finance core fall class. The course will explore topics in the VC/PE landscape through the lens of general partners, limited partners, and portfolio companies. Specific topics will include portfolio management, deal origination, in-depth due diligence and financial modeling, transaction structuring and financing, value creation, and performance measurement. As compared to a forthcoming Spring overview course, we will go over more detailed models used in private equity and have several more in-depth cases. Guest speakers will be an integral part of the course when we have cases. Students may take only Basics or Advanced - these courses cannot both be taken for credit.

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  • AI-Driven Analytics and Society (RTPAS)

    Operations and Management Science

    Faculty: James Siderius

    Subject Areas: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Operations and Management Science

    Course Type: Research to Practice Seminar

    The past decade has seen extraordinary advances in AI and data-driven decision-making. These tools now shape, and often govern, nearly every dimension of how businesses and individuals operate. Yet alongside their promise, they have revealed themselves to be a mixed blessing, at best: algorithms interact with society in subtle ways that generate feedback loops, amplify bias, and create unintended consequences. This seminar dives headfirst into these challenges. We’ll grapple with how firms can make sense of machine-learning predictions and act on them responsibly, what it really takes to keep data fair and unbiased, and how generative AI and large language models are transforming how organizations create value and compete. We’ll unpack why misinformation races ahead of truth on social media, driven by algorithms built to maximize engagement and amplify outrage. We’ll also examine the societal tradeoffs of automation, the human-technology interface, the emerging governance challenges around compute regulation and global AI supply chains, and the use of AI in the public sphere (policing, courts, and government services), where algorithms can shape civic life as powerfully as they shape markets. The course is designed as an interactive forum: students will lead discussions, analyze case studies, and connect academic research to real-world practice. Like all Research-to-Practice seminars, the emphasis is on developing analytical rigor and critical perspective managers need to navigate the increasingly complex intersection of AI and society. This course meets the Ethics and Social Responsibility (ESR) requirement.

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  • Advanced Management Communication (AMC)

    Communication

    Faculty: Amy E Florentino, Courtney H Pierson

    Subject Areas: Communication

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    As part of the Core at Tuck, Management Communication (ManComm) was designed to provide Tuck students with immediately applicable skills for professional communication. For students seeking to deepen their communication skills, Advanced Management Communication (AMC) expands beyond ManComm, shifting from a passive audience to an active one. In this minicourse, we’ll ask you to not only anticipate audience needs, but to actively manage questions from them. You’ll practice leading a dynamic discussion to reach a common set of objectives: soliciting audience input, asking for and answering questions and managing dissent. Similar to ManComm, we’ll follow the same prepare – present – reflect pedagogy and in-class time will be dedicated to presentations and feedback. Our learning environment will be in-person, although we will incorporate remote discussions into the term. You’ll have a chance to practice leading stand-up, around-the-table, remote, and hybrid discussions. Overall, best practices for giving in-person presentations hold in a remote world. The skills you practice in this class will help you navigate a variety of work situations. Post-Tuck, you’ll regularly be engaged in discussions rather than pure presentations. AMC is designed to give you more agility in working with each unique situation you face.

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  • Advancing Entrepreneurship Collaboration Practicum (PRAEC)

    Entrepreneurship

    Faculty: Caroline C. Cannon, Daniella L Reichstetter

    Subject Areas: Entrepreneurship

    Course Type: Practicum

    This practicum allows Tuck students to deeply understand the intersection of diversity, entrepreneurship, and company growth. This practicum partners with Tuck’s Executive Education’s 40-year-old program for advancing entrepreneurs from a wide variety of backgrounds. Students will: 1. Be matched with an entrepreneur from Exec. Ed. to work on a discrete business challenge or opportunity. 2. Participate in weekly class discussions with the following objectives: To engage in conversation around the assigned readings with the following learning goals: To understand the complexity, complications, and hurdles specific to small business owners and underrepresented entrepreneurs. To learn about the levers that can be pulled to address the aforementioned. To understand how said levers can be applied for action-based outcomes with tangible impact. To apply the learnings from the readings and class discussions to the matched entrepreneurs and articulate recommendations to address their business challenge/opportunity. To build understanding and empathy for people with different backgrounds, needs, experiences, and approaches, particularly as they relate to conducting business.

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  • Business and Climate Change (BCC)

    Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Faculty: Charlie Donovan

    Subject Areas: Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This mini-course aims to help prepare aspiring leaders to navigate the business implications of climate change. Given the need to mobilize trillions of dollars of new investment from the private sector to avoid the most severe consequences of man-made global warming, we will seek to understand corporate climate action through the lens of investing. Tuck students will gain grounding in emerging tools for identifying, quantifying, and managing climate-related financial risks. Over the term, we will critically examine notable examples of firms seeking to capitalize on new investment opportunities and analyze how global capital markets are adapting to associated shifts in technology, government policy, and consumer preferences. The overall objective of the course is to provide managers with a solid grounding in the expected future consequences of climate change and help them get ahead of the curve in spotting strategic and financial implications in critical countries, sectors, and industries. This course meets the Ethics & Social Responsibility (ESR) requirement.

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  • Client Project Management (CPM)

    Other

    Faculty: Andy Kaestle, Amy E Florentino

    Subject Areas: Other

    Course Type: Full-Term Mini

    Client Project Management is a minicourse designed to provide Tuck students with immediately applicable tools for team problem solving situations. The course is designed for students considering a career in a project-oriented field including consulting, strategy, general management, marketing, M&A, business development. The course is also highly recommended for first year students who are interested in leading their team's First Year Project during the Spring term. The frameworks and tools learned in the course will enable you to: 1. Define a problem clearly 2. Structure the problem-solving process 3. Collect and synthesize relevant quantitative and qualitative data 4. Design valuable recommendations and an implementation plan 5. Present effectively Course methodology will include discussions, in-class exercises, outside guests, and a single case (based on an actual client engagement) that spans the length of the course. All homework and the final client discussion will be completed in self-selected pairs. This course draws on frameworks and skills that have been developed by top-tier firms in the business of delivering practical solutions to complex issues. Developing these skills to analyze and resolve business problems is a valuable leadership capability.

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  • Comparative Models of Leadership (CLDSH)

    Organizational Behavior

    Faculty: Elizabeth J Winslow

    Subject Areas: Organizational Behavior

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Tuck strives to teach students to become better leaders; yet leadership is a multi-facet and often controversial topic. The purpose of this minicourse is to give students a better understanding of leadership from multiple angles and perspectives. We will examine proven leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Orit Gadiesh, Coach Bobby Knight, Charlotte Beers, and the famed artic explorer Ernest Shackleton. The course will explore the different ways leadership has been studied and defined over the last century, the similarities and differences between the most common leadership theories, and the way leadership has been demonstrated in business, military and, athletic sectors. Students will read about leadership theory, read cases portraying leaders who exemplify these theories, benefit from visitors who are proven leaders, and explore through case studies, class discussions, written assignments, and role-plays the relevance of leadership theory to the work they will do as business leaders The first three class sessions will be devoted to a review of the history of leadership theory. Through case studies examining actual leaders, students will learn about the progression from Trait, Skill and Style Theories to Situational and Contingency Theory, to the more current theories that define leadership as a relationship. Two classes will be devoted to the study and discussion of leaders in the military and athletic arena. By reading about and discussing such leaders, students will gain an appreciation for the lessons they can learn that can be applied to leadership in a business or professional organization. Three classes will then cover a set of leadership tasks frequently encountered by all leaders. We will examine and discuss cases where individuals have to lead change efforts, manage employee performance, and deal with conflict. Students will analyze the actions of leaders in these situations, and pose and defend possible solutions. The last class will be devoted to a discussion of the leadership accomplishments of Earnest Shackleton. We will examine the ways in which Shackleton did (or did not) lead effectively using the theories developed throughout the course.

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  • Competition and Market Power (COMP)

    Economics

    Faculty: Felipe Barbieri

    Subject Areas: Economics

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    In this class, we will use tools from the economics of industrial organization in order to prepare students to manage firms in a variety of market structures, including concentrated oligopolies, differentiated product markets, multi-sided platforms, and algorithmic marketplaces, with the goal of understanding how firms compete in these markets. To ensure managers and firms do not leave money on the table when making decisions, we provide the quantitative tools to rigorously derive economic fundamentals from market data, such as measuring true marginal costs on the supply side, estimating demand elasticities on the demand side, and accounting for the interactions of substitution and complementarity across a firm’s multi-product portfolio. The course is split into two sections. The first section (Foundations of Market Power) takes a price-theoretical approach to managerial decisions, where we hold competitors actions fixed to focus on the main tradeoffs managers face when exercising market power in order to maximize profits. Core topics include demand and supply fundamentals, equilibrium and market power, optimal pricing, demand estimation, differentiation, multi-product pricing, price discrimination, and merger analysis. The second section (Game Theory) extends these tools to a game-theoretical approach, where managers' actions depend on their competitors' actions, and vice versa. Topics include collusion, algorithmic pricing, entry deterrence, killer/serial acquisitions, and platform competition.

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  • Corporate Communication (CC)

    Communication

    Faculty: Paul A Argenti

    Subject Areas: Communication

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This minicourse focuses on the changing environment for business and using corporate communication to execute strategy. Building on the first-year curriculum, it covers, in greater detail, the changing environment for business, media relations, financial communications, corporate advertising, reputation management, social media and crisis communication. Students also work on further developing their communications skills through case analyses, experiential exercises, and presentations.

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  • Corporate Takeovers (CT)

    Finance

    Faculty: Bjorn Espen Eckbo

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    This course is relevant for students expecting to work with M&As – some of the largest transactions in the corporate lifecycle. It shows how takeover transactions are structured both legally and economically, how target deal resistance affects bid outcomes, and how public policy plays a role in affecting takeover activity. Deal structuring includes deal initiation by strategic v. financial (PE) buyers, target toehold acquisition, deal financing (cash v. bidder shares), and optimal bidding (markup pricing, bid jumps). We discuss examples where target resistance strategies are 'disproportional’ and violate director fiduciary duties. Discussions of public policy debates of relevance for aggregate takeover activity include antitrust and the U.S. 'international listing gap’ controversy. Class discussions typically open with a brief presentation of a 'M&A of the day’ brought to class by a student team.

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  • Creating Winning New Products and Services (CWNPS)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Peter N Golder

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    New products and services are vital to companies’ success. In fact, creativity and innovation are the key drivers of market success and shareholder value for most of today’s leading companies. Indeed, a culture of creativity, innovation, and design is commonly recognized as the only persistent competitive advantage. To win (and hopefully dominate) markets, companies must often create entire new markets and move beyond a product’s functional capabilities to connect with customers on an emotional and relational basis. However, innovation is risky and most new products fail. This course teaches a process for identifying market opportunities, creating new product/service ideas, and turning those ideas into valuable new products and services. We focus on the tools and techniques for analyzing market opportunities, creative thinking for generating new ideas, and then designing, testing, and launching new products and services. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are covered. More specifically, this course covers the new product development process, including idea generation, concept testing, product design and development, mapping customer perceptions, product positioning, market sizing, and market entry strategies. The course emphasizes how to incorporate customers and competitors into all aspects of new product development. Students will solidify their learning by putting these tools and techniques into practice by forming teams to conceive and develop a new market offering and then present their idea to classmates and external judges. The goal of each presentation is to convince others that your idea satisfies criteria for winning in the marketplace. For your individual project, you will select a creative genius who you admire, research their creative process, and prepare a brief write-up reflecting on their process, your own creative process, and the creativity processes discussed during the course. The course is intended for students who are interested in creating and developing innovations, both in entrepreneurial firms and in established companies; and for students interested in enhancing their creativity more broadly. The course structure is flexible in terms of choosing case write-ups and selecting group and individual projects, so you can tailor the course to meet your personal goals.

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  • Current Issues in the Global Food System (CIGFS)

    Other

    Faculty: Jose B Alvarez

    Subject Areas: Other

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    The global food system consists of a multitude of players connected through local and global networks. The ability of these networks to feed the planet are under threat from a variety of challenges. The population of the planet will likely reach 10 billion by 2050, an increase of almost 30% from current numbers. Agriculture contributes at least 15% of all global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) annually at a time when the catastrophic impacts of climate change are starting to be realized in agricultural production. Drought, water scarcity, and war in key growing areas are exacerbating the problems at hand. These are enormous challenges that require innovative management practices, new technologies, and visionary public policies. This course will provide insight into the challenges faced by the food system globally and argue the merits of some potential solutions. Students will be exposed to the language, concepts, and tools industry players use to deal with these issues.

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  • Customer Analytics (CA)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Bryan K Bollinger

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    This course introduces students to the concepts and methods of customer analytics – leveraging customer data to increase marketing productivity. Methods covered include lifetime value of the customer (CLV), predictive modeling (using regression, logistic regression, matching, neural nets, and random forests), and experimentation/testing. Students will work on real applications and databases. Applications include customer acquisition, acquisition and retention management, cross-selling, up-selling, churn management, targeting online advertising, loyalty program evaluation, marketing attribution, and multichannel customer management. We will also discuss current related topics such as the use of AI agents, healthcare analytics, privacy regulations, etc. This will require spreadsheet analyses and using R programs to estimate predictive models using real company data. We will use the Radiant browser-based interface for RStudio, which is now being used in Analytics II.

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  • Digital Operations (DOP)

    Operations and Management Science

    Faculty: Lauren Xiaoyuan Lu

    Subject Areas: Operations and Management Science

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This course explores the transformative impact of digital technologies on operations management across various industries. Students will delve into the strategies, tools, and frameworks essential for implementing and managing digital operations. Key topics include digital operating model frameworks, digital platforms, automation and digital manufacturing, digital twin, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence and machine learning in operations. Through real-world case studies and practical applications, students will gain insights into how digital technologies and digital transformation can enhance operational efficiency, improve customer experience, and drive competitive advantage. The course will culminate in project presentations, allowing students to apply their knowledge to real-world scenarios and receive feedback from peers and the instructor. The course is roughly 70% qualitative and 30% quantitative. Simple linear regressions are needed for completing some assignments and can be implemented in Excel. Note: This course was formerly titled “Data-Driven Analytics for Innovative Operating Models (DDA).” Students who have already completed that course should not enroll in Digital Operations, as there is considerable overlap in content.

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  • Early Stage Venture Capital Workshop Practicum (PRVC2)

    Finance

    Faculty: James M P Feuille

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Practicum

    The goal of the Early Stage Venture Capital Workshop Practicum is to engage students in an in-depth, hands-on, team-oriented exploration of real-world early stage venture capital (VC) deal making, first by giving students an intensive grounding in the core elements of early stage venture capital—venture capital fund portfolio construction, deal sourcing, deal screening and selection, due diligence, valuation of early stage companies, convertible notes, capitalization tables, term sheets, the elements of an investment memorandum and negotiations with entrepreneurs—then by engaging students in a series of “deal workshops” whereby students will work on analyzing and conducting “due diligence” on nine “live” venture capital deals, three at a time, meeting with the founders or CEOs of companies that are then active in the marketplace raising Seed, Series A and Series B rounds of venture capital to hear their pitches and ask due diligence questions, and selecting three of those deals (one per set of three) to recommend to their “partnership”, consisting of practicing venture capitalists from around the US, by writing a full investment memorandum for each of the three deals and presenting and defending the investment thesis for the deal in a meeting with the venture capital partners. Unlike interns or associates in venture capital firms, who support the partners in their work, in this workshop, students will take on the role of the partners in a venture capital firm who are leading deals for their firms. In the final week, the deals phase of the workshop concludes with mock negotiation sessions where the teams will negotiate an investment term sheet with three of the nine entrepreneurs, one per team.

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  • Early Stage Venture Capital Workshop Practicum (PRVCW)

    Finance

    Faculty: James M P Feuille

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Practicum

    The goal of the Early Stage Venture Capital Workshop Practicum is to engage students in an in-depth, hands-on, team-oriented exploration of real-world early stage venture capital (VC) deal making, first by giving students an intensive grounding in the core elements of early stage venture capital—venture capital fund portfolio construction, deal sourcing, deal screening and selection, due diligence, valuation of early stage companies, convertible notes, capitalization tables, term sheets, the elements of an investment memorandum and negotiations with entrepreneurs—then by engaging students in a series of “deal workshops” whereby students will work on analyzing and conducting “due diligence” on nine “live” venture capital deals, three at a time, meeting with the founders or CEOs of companies that are then active in the marketplace raising Seed, Series A and Series B rounds of venture capital to hear their pitches and ask due diligence questions, and selecting three of those deals (one per set of three) to recommend to their “partnership”, consisting of practicing venture capitalists from around the US, by writing a full investment memorandum for each of the three deals and presenting and defending the investment thesis for the deal in a meeting with the venture capital partners. Unlike interns or associates in venture capital firms, who support the partners in their work, in this workshop, students will take on the role of the partners in a venture capital firm who are leading deals for their firms. In the final week, the deals phase of the workshop concludes with mock negotiation sessions where the teams will negotiate an investment term sheet with three of the nine entrepreneurs, one per team. Field Studies in Venture Capital (FSVC) is a prerequisite for this Practicum. No exceptions.

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  • Entrepreneurial Finance (ENTFN)

    Finance

    Faculty: Morten Sorensen

    Subject Areas: Entrepreneurship, Finance

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    This course is about the corporate finance of private companies, starting out with a focus on the financing issues and decisions that arise in an entrepreneurial context. We first cover the three fundamental topics in entrepreneurial finance: (1) start-up valuation, (2) deal terms and term sheets, and (3) staged investing, growth options, and potential scale of ventures. We then apply those tools to questions about how to structure an investment in a start-up and determine an appropriate valuation, how much capital to raise and from whom, the mechanics of term sheets and capitalization tables, economics of milestones, subsequent financing rounds and exits. Finally, as time permits, we may also cover more advanced topics in the corporate finance of private companies, such as exits through SPACs, regulatory issues, structure of levered buyouts, and the organization of venture capital, private equity, and private debt funds and firms. The course is taught through a combination of lectures and case studies.

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  • Entrepreneurial Thinking (ETHNK)

    Entrepreneurship

    Faculty: Lindsay N Hyde, Daniella L Reichstetter

    Subject Areas: Entrepreneurship

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This first-half winter mini course is an introduction to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking. Taught by two experienced entrepreneurs, this course exposes students to proven entrepreneurial approaches and methodologies including: Hypothesis-Driven Entrepreneurship, Stakeholder Discovery, Design Thinking, Rapid Protoyping, and Lean Startup Methodology. This course takes the perspective of undertaking a new startup project, but provides a foundation for students interested in launching, joining, or investing in startups and early-stage ventures after graduation. The primary deliverable is a new venture idea created by student teams. The course prepares students to launch their own startup, qualify for an entrepreneurial First-Year Project (eFYP), apply to the Tuck Venture Learning Lab, and/or prepare for an early-stage company career.

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  • Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA)

    Entrepreneurship

    Faculty: Mark Anderegg

    Subject Areas: Entrepreneurship

    Course Type: Full-Term Mini

    Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (“ETA”) is an increasingly popular career path to general management via small business ownership. The discipline is distinct from customary interpretations of entrepreneurship insofar as the company is not started from the ground up. Rather, in ETA the entrepreneur purchases a business as a going concern – typically at a stage in its evolution when consistent positive cash flow is already being generated – and assumes the CEO role immediately after the acquisition is consummated. The most common manifestation of ETA is a search fund, although many variants of that model are becoming similarly prominent. This course provides an introduction to the various pathways to ETA, as well as a detailed exploration of the various phases of an entrepreneur’s journey. The first half of the course covers background about different ETA models, raising investor capital, conducting a search for a suitable company and closing a private equity buyout transaction. The second half addresses relevant topics pertinent to being a first-time CEO and considerations related to operating a microcap company. Industry participants will join the majority of sessions to bolster the content and add unique personal perspective to the discussion. Background reading will often include case studies wherein these practitioners are the case protagonists.

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  • Financial Reporting and Statement Analysis (FRSA)

    Accounting

    Faculty: Phillip C Stocken

    Subject Areas: Accounting

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Financial Reporting and Statement Analysis (FRSA) is designed to prepare you to analyze, interpret and use financial statements effectively, both from a general manager and investor perspective. The primary focus will be on developing your ability to engage in accounting analysis, which is the process of assessing how the financial metrics reflect the firm’s underlying economic constructs, as well as your ability to use financial data to gain insight into a firm’s business strategy, economic performance, and outlook.

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  • Global Structure and Conduct of Firms (RTPGS)

    Economics

    Faculty: Teresa C Fort

    Subject Areas: Economics

    Course Type: Research to Practice Seminar

    Firms operate in a global market. The rise of multinational production, the greater ease of transmitting knowledge, and the growing importance of global value chains have all contributed to deeper economic integration across countries. Recent events, such as the US trade wars and impending (as of Jan 17) new tariffs, threaten this globalization. In this RTP, we will study how firms contribute and respond to increased globalization, and how they may adapt to current and future challenges to it. We will use an economic framework to guide managerial decisions on where to locate production, whether to outsource or integrate fragmented production, and when to adopt new technologies. We will also analyze how firm-level responses to globalization affect industry and country-level outcomes, such as employment, wages, productivity, and innovation. The focus will be on recent empirical approaches and evidence so that students can: a) evaluate an empirical analysis and its credibility, and b) develop a data-driven approach to making managerial decisions.

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  • Health Care Analytics & Society (HCAS)

    Health Care

    Faculty: Lindsey J Leininger

    Subject Areas: Health Care

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This course is about health analytics in action. With epidemiology as our key tour guide, we will introduce and apply timeless scientific concepts to timely case studies. Examples include the commercialization of patient data; the unintended consequences of tying physician payments to statistical algorithms; and the promise and perils of digital disease detection. Students will be provided with a series of practical data diligence tools speaking to descriptive, predictive, and evaluative applications of health analytics. By the end of the course students will be able to recognize and apply key frameworks critical for wise, data-driven leadership across the health sector.

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  • Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Elizabeth A Keenan

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Integrated marketing communications (IMC), or marcom, is a strategic process that involves the use of coordinated, persuasive and measurable communications with the goal of generating short-term financial returns and long-term shareholder value. This course will provide an overview of IMC, its role in the marketing process, and the channels and tools through which companies communicate with a market, including traditional advertising, sales promotions, digital media, social media, and public relations. The course will simultaneously address consumer response to these coordinated communications and the ever-evolving landscape through which marketers must compete to reach their target market. Course content, classes and assignments will be guided by a framework that mimics the broad steps involved in marketing communications planning: 1) Identifying Your Customer, 2) Setting Clear Objectives, 3) Crafting Your Campaign, 4) Measuring Your Success, and 5) Refining and Repeating. In addition to readings and individual assignments, the course will culminate with a small group project in which students will apply course concepts by auditing and suggesting improvements to an existing company’s IMC program.

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  • Investments (INV)

    Finance

    Faculty: Juhani T Linnainmaa

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    The goal of this course is to help students develop a framework for thinking about investment problems. The course examines financial theory and empirical evidence that is useful when making both professional (e.g., mutual funds and hedge funds) and personal investment decisions. The topics covered include portfolio theory, performance evaluation, analysis of trading strategies, and the role of taxes in investment decisions. In addition, the course will cover recent developments in the industry, such as the emergence of zero-commission brokers and payment for order flow; meme stocks and the mechanics of securities lending; and the rise of “0dtes”.

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  • Leading Disruptive Change (LDC)

    Strategy

    Faculty: Scott D Anthony

    Subject Areas: Strategy

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Leading Disruptive Change describes a set of lenses, tools, and mindsets to navigate through today’s world of predictable unpredictability. Technologies are advancing exponentially, lines between industries are blurring, expectations of consumers, employees, and stakeholders are shifting, and global shocks are happening with increased frequency. The forever normal of constant change places leaders in a thick fog. Data to justify making a decision comes in when it is too late to make a decision. Yesterday’s strengths become tomorrow’s weaknesses. In the fog, leaders must confront adaptive issues that are complicated, interdependent, and require multidisciplinary approaches. Conflicting demands feel paralyzing. Pursue purpose by embracing sustainability and maximize profits by extracting and exploiting resources. Protect the present and create the future. Enable empowerment and autonomy and decisively lead in new directions. Build a high-performance meritocracy and provide equitable opportunities and outcomes. Resting at the unique intersection of the disciplines of strategy, innovation, leadership, behavioral psychology, and systems psychodynamics, Leading Disruptive Change integrates academic research and practitioner-oriented tools and frameworks to give students practical ways to act wisely and decisively through the fog of disruptive change. We will go through seven core tenets: 1. You need to lead through fog 2. You need to understand the particular nature of adaptive challenges 3. Technical solutions are necessary but not sufficient to solve adaptive challenges 4. Solving adaptive challenges requires intentionally inducing and managing discomfort. 5. Go deep to find the real problem. 6. Both/and it with a paradox mindset.

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  • Management of Service Operations (SOPS)

    Operations and Management Science

    Faculty: Michelle A Kinch

    Subject Areas: Operations and Management Science

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    In today's dynamic business landscape, the effective management of service operations is crucial for sustainable success. Building upon foundational knowledge from the first-year MBA operations management course, this elective explores some of the unique challenges inherent to service-based industries which connects operational performance to marketing and human resource frameworks. We will use an operational lens to understand how companies achieve and sustain service excellence discussing key topics such as customer behavior, change management, employee engagement, and cultivating a learning culture. We will use the case method to examine real-world challenges, discuss current events and directly observe local service businesses to enhance learning. Students will develop critical skills to improve delivery processes, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive operational excellence in service-driven environments.

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  • Marketing Research and Analytics for Data Driven Growth (MRA)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Sharmistha Sikdar

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    This course was previously titled Marketing Research (MR). Students who have taken MR may not enroll in MRA. Most decisions in marketing are characterized by significant levels of uncertainty. Some of these decision-making instances are new market entry, new product or service development, product pricing etc. Marketers can control for the uncertainty around a decision making with appropriate research and data analysis. Market research and analysis enables marketers to understand and predict evolving customer trends and anticipate competitor response. This course provides a managerial introduction to market research and analysis methods that can help managers with the following: i) Translate marketing decision problems into questions amenable to research and analysis. ii) Scope out the problem and determine the research design. iii) Identify sources of data and appraise these on cost and quality considerations. iv) Identify and utilize the right methodology and analysis toolkit for the research question at hand. v) Interpret results from the analysis and develop recommendations for marketing action. This course encompasses the traditional market research methods intended for short-term decision making (e.g., new product design or addressing a service complaint) and introduces predictive analytics that provide insights for long term decision making (e.g., lead generation, post-marketing campaign tracking). The course is intended for those who want to pursue a career in marketing research, product marketing, marketing analytics, and data science. This is primarily a methods class with emphasis on hands-on training through in-class workshops. The course will use R as the main programming software, Sawtooth Software for conjoint analysis, PERMAP for perceptual maps. The course covers the following methods: • Survey and questionnaire methods • Data cleaning and preliminary analysis with crosstabs and chi-squared tests of association • Understanding customer sentiment with textual analysis • Understanding customer’s choices with binomial and multinomial logit models • Translating customer choices to product design with choice based conjoint analysis • Segmenting the market with cluster analysis and identifying appropriate target segment • Understanding product positioning with multidimensional scaling and perceptual maps • Lead generation and post-launch campaign tracking with predictive models (overview): logit, random forests, gradient boosted trees.

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  • Moral Reasoning: From Machiavelli to The Bomb to AI (MORE)

    Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Faculty: Joshua Lewis

    Subject Areas: Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Course Type: Full-Term Mini

    How did President Harry Truman decide to drop The Bomb and did he get it right? Machiavelli’s The Prince is among the most influential leadership tracts ever written, but is it a handbook for leaders or a rationalization of thuggery? How did Katharine Graham, Publisher of the Washington Post, think about the business risks and ethical dilemmas involved in defying a lawless President? Do AI deployment decisions have moral elements? This course introduces students to the tools required to grapple with complex dilemmas with moral dimensions, and to lead an organization through them. It is both abstract, in that it explores complex questions and philosophical frameworks, and quite practical, in that it deals with the types of challenges that business leaders actually face. MORE’s objective is to enable students to better navigate the challenges of the business world and the complexities of life as it is actually lived. Course content includes renowned fiction, autobiography, journalism, moral philosophy, history, and film. MORE is a humanities course designed for a business school. In addition to the business-oriented objectives noted above it is designed to provide tools for critical thinking, for finding the right questions, and for challenging assumptions and conventional wisdom – all required to grapple with complex problems. It is not a course in what to know – more an exercise in ways to think. While success in business requires both hard skills and soft skills, over a 30+ year career in venture capital and private equity I found that this third type of skills, which the study of humanities can provide so effectively, was often more valuable. Students wishing to know more are encouraged to review this long-form course description or to listen to this podcast.

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  • Negotiations (NEGO)

    Organizational Behavior

    Faculty: Daniel C Feiler

    Subject Areas: Organizational Behavior

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    Negotiation is the art and science of securing agreements between two or more interdependent parties. This course focuses on the theory and processes of negotiation as it is practiced in a variety of settings. It is designed to complement the technical and diagnostic skills learned in other Tuck courses. A basic premise of the course is that while wise, decisive leaders need strong analytical skills to better the world through business, negotiation skills are essential for today’s business leader to ensure adoption and implementation of proposals. This course will highlight the components of an effective negotiation and teach you to analyze your own behavior in negotiations. The course will be largely experiential, providing you with an opportunity to develop your skills by participating in role-play simulations and integrating your experiences with the principles presented in the lectures, course discussions, and assigned readings. Students may not take both Negotiations and the Negotiations Accelerated (NEGOX) minicourse course for credit.

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  • Optimization Modeling for Prescriptive Analytics (OMPA)

    Operations and Management Science

    Faculty: James Siderius

    Subject Areas: Operations and Management Science

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This mini course expands on the core Analytics sequence through a deeper dive into the art of modeling, centered around essential tools in optimization. The goal of course is to move beyond predictive analytics and build richer prescriptive models for optimizing business operations in a wide range of contexts. We will focus on modeling decision problems so they can be stated simply, solved efficiently, and, most importantly, translated into clear managerial insights. Every class will be entirely “hands on,” with an emphasis on active problem solving and case-based learning. Each of the first three weeks will center on a core optimization technique, with the first session devoted to modeling skills and the second applying those skills to a data-driven case. We begin with linear programming, expanding from the types of problems introduced in core Analytics to richer models of strategic planning and control. From there, we turn to optimization with logical and binary constraints, emphasizing applications like investment planning, ride-hailing services, and compute scheduling. We then conclude with non-linear models and heuristic solution methods, which allow us to analyze problems in revenue management, election analytics, and system design. Throughout, we will balance classical management settings with contemporary challenges. Cases and examples will draw from diverse areas such as cloud resource allocation, prescriptive policing, data mining, personalized advertising, and product design in consumer markets. The final three sessions shift from theory to practice, bringing optimization to life through real-world cases led by industry experts and the instructor. Each class will feature a guest speaker who shares their perspective on designing and implementing optimization in high-stakes settings, highlighting both the opportunities and pitfalls of operationalizing these methods. Students will be expected to actively engage, applying the modeling tools and analytical skills developed in the first three weeks to interpret, challenge, and extend the insights raised in these practitioner-led discussions. By the end of the course, students will not only have deepened their command of optimization modeling, but will also have built the skill to communicate the insights of their models in ways that influence managerial action.

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  • Policy, Politics, and Business (PPB)

    Economics

    Faculty: Charles J Wheelan

    Subject Areas: Economics

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    This course will probe the boundaries between the public and private sectors and serve as an anchor class for students involved in the Center for Business, Government, and Society. The goal is to deepen students’ understanding of markets and explore how and why public policy creates institutions that support a robust private sector. The class will explain why many contemporary public policy problems cannot be addressed by the private sector alone. At the same time, we will discuss how private firms can play a more creative and robust role in addressing social challenges. One throughline of the course will be an exploration of the interplay between business, policy, and politics. Much of the focus will be on the American system, though the concepts are broadly applicable and students will be urged to apply lessons to other countries. All policy discussions in the class will be filtered through a political economy lens: Why does our political system produce the outcomes that it does? And what factors make a substantively attractive policy more or less politically viable. A handful of guests will share their experiences at the intersection of policy and politics.

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  • Predictive Analytics with Generative AI (PAGA)

    Operations and Management Science

    Faculty: Robert A Shumsky

    Subject Areas: Operations and Management Science

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This course builds on the core Analytics I & II courses and will primarily focus on predictive analytics methods. This is a short survey course and is best suited for those who want a general understanding of the data analytics process and familiarity with several common algorithms for predictive analytics. We will deepen our knowledge and skills in data analysis and will “get our hands dirty” by preparing data, exploring and then experimenting with a variety of predictive models. We will prepare data by combining data sets, dealing with missing data and detecting outliers. Exploration will include tabular output and data visualization. For predictive modeling we will learn tools such as classification trees and logistic regression, among others. The default tool for data analysis in this course will be the Python programming language. We will assume no prior coding experience and will use Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to write the Python code. Therefore, this course will also explore the potential and limitations of GenAI for data analytics. We will discover how GenAI may embed certain assumptions about the data into the code and will make other assumptions – often not obvious to the user – about how to assess the performance of statistical models. This course was formerly titled Data Mining for Business Analytics (DMBA).

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  • Product Management in Technology (PM)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Jamie M Alders

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Full-Term Mini

    A Product Manager is obsessed with the problem their product tries to solve and works to both define the product’s functional requirements and lead cross-functional teams to develop, launch, and improve their product over time. Taught by a product executive with experience in both hardware and software Product Management at Bose and a venture-backed technology startup, this minicourse aims to provide an introduction to Product Management in Tech and exposes students to key product development and growth strategies so they can build, optimize, and scale products following graduation.

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  • Quantitative Investing with Python (QIP)

    Finance

    Faculty: Juhani T Linnainmaa

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to quantitative investing using Python. Although no prior knowledge of Python is required, some familiarity (or comfort) with coding may be useful. We will work with Jupyter notebooks that you can run and edit. Even if you have never coded in Python, you can execute the code, see what happens, and modify the code to understand what the code does. The assignments are modifications and extensions of the code used in lectures, that is, they do not require you to code up from scratch anything you do not see in the classroom notebooks. Quantitative investing in the context of this course means making systematic investment decisions informed by data. That is, there is little or no room for subjective judgments. We will introduce the basic Python libraries (e.g., NumPy, Pandas, scikit-learn, and statsmodels) that we need for acquiring and analyzing data and for completing financial computations such as creating trading strategies and evaluating returns. We start from constructing academic factors (such as value and momentum) and briefly discuss the principles of machine learning and the use (and the associated caveats) of ML techniques for predicting returns. The objective of the course is to give an overview of the methods used in quantitative investing.

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  • Quantitative Investing: Cryptocurrencies, Futures, and Options (QICFO)

    Finance

    Faculty: Juhani T Linnainmaa

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Derivatives markets are some of the largest in the world and an essential feature of the modern global financial system. The goal of this course is to understand how these markets function, what opportunities and risks they afford, and how derivatives and other instruments are used for risk management. The core material will cover how and why firms and investors trade derivatives, the pricing of derivatives using the concept of no-arbitrage The applications part of the course focuses on cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies have emerged as a new asset class, with many large asset managers now recommending 1-5% allocations for diversification. Importantly, most institutional investors do not hold the assets directly, but rather gain exposure through ETFs, futures, or perpetual futures. This makes derivatives central to understanding how crypto markets function in practice. Stablecoins, which aim to maintain a fixed value, provide a clear, real-world example of the no-arbitrage principles that also underpin futures and options pricing. This course significantly expands upon the futures and options material covered in the Capital Markets class. It gives the tools necessary to price a broad range of derivatives and understanding of the measurement of risks and hedging.

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  • Quantitative Private Equity (RTPQP)

    Finance

    Faculty: Morten Sorensen

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Research to Practice Seminar

    The seminar covers recent academic studies of private equity investments, although the material applies broadly to other alternative assets organized in similar fund structures (e.g., venture capital, growth equity, mezzanine, infrastructure, private debt and real estate funds). The material is divided into two parts: The first part covers the relationship between private equity funds and their portfolio companies. This part covers topics such as the impact of private equity on corporate governance and operations as well as the consequences for employees and other stakeholders in the portfolio companies. The second part takes the perspective of the limited partners (LPs) that provide capital to private equity funds. Topics include the organization and economics of the private equity partnership, risk and return and performance evaluation of private equity funds, and portfolio considerations when allocating capital to private equity funds. The course is technical. The material consists primarily of recent research papers, with a focus on the empirical and statistical analysis in these papers. There will not be much discussion of private equity deal structures and specific transactions. The material is mostly presented in student led presentations, which require substantial preparation and insight into the technical aspects of the papers. A substantial part of the course is two empirical projects where the students will do a statistical analysis of actual private equity data and present their findings to the class. Some familiarity with statistical software, such as R or Stata, is recommended, although it is also possible to do the analysis in Excel.

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  • Real Estate (RE)

    Finance

    Faculty: Brian T Melzer

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    This course provides an overview of the real estate industry and the basic analytic techniques used for investing in this $20 trillion asset class. Students will take a hands-on approach, building a practical knowledge of real estate through case studies, and class discussions. The study of multi-faceted real estate projects allows students to: 1) enhance their understanding of valuation, financing and portfolio management; and 2) analyze a broader set of management problems, such as how to recognize and describe value creation opportunities, how to evaluate and manage risk, how to structure partnerships and business contracts, and how to use real estate optimally within an operating business. A highlight of the course is the opportunity to interact with industry leaders and learn about the latest techniques and trends in the industry.

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  • Small Buyouts - Private Equity Practicum (PRPEP)

    Finance

    Faculty: Nicholas S Russell

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Practicum

    Small Buyouts Private Equity Practicum (“PEP”) will engage Tuck students in a hands-on learning experience to develop their private markets investment fluency, pattern recognition and investment judgement applied in the real-world context of small and middle market buyout acquisitions and investment thesis development. The learning objective of the class is to enhance the students’ effectiveness in the private investment industry, whether that future involvement comes through becoming an investor, becoming a manager of a private institutionally owned business, buying a small business as an investor or operator, or as one of the many other participants (consultants, bankers, lenders, etc.) in the industry, through relevant, actionable, “real-world” exposure to the small company buyout underwriting process. The class is delivered through two curricular elements: a) the Deal Review Lab: the review, preparation, presentation and group discussion/evaluation of a series of current and/or recent, real small market buyout opportunity “cases” led by students and facilitated by the instructor to simulate a private equity buyout investment committee setting and b) the Investment Thesis: individual student research into an industry sub-segment or other theme to develop and deliver components of a potentially actionable private equity investment targeting thesis.

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  • Strategy in Emerging Markets (SEM)

    Strategy

    Faculty: Jose R Lecuona Torras

    Subject Areas: Strategy

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Why take a course on strategy in emerging markets if you’ve already taken core strategy? Consider Rodrigo and Ramon: identical twins who took the same core strategy course at a top U.S. business school. Rodrigo went on to found a company in a highly developed market and still praises the course as brilliant. Ramon became an entrepreneur in an emerging market and is convinced his strategy course was written for a different planet. We will travel the world, studying companies in large emerging markets such as Brazil and India, as well as in countries that are currently drawing significant attention, like Venezuela. We will also examine emerging markets that serve as regional beachheads, such as Kenya, Uruguay, and the UAE. We will spend time on China, an economy that has clearly emerged in many ways, yet remains emerging in others. Finally, you will see that emerging markets are not confined to national borders: they also exist within highly developed economies like the U.S., as illustrated by our case on Miami, Florida. Emerging markets break many of the assumptions embedded in core strategy frameworks. Institutions and the rule of law are often weak, so contracts between firms, buyers, and suppliers cannot always be taken for granted. Macroeconomic conditions are more volatile, turning prices and costs into moving targets. And a large share of economic activity takes place in the informal sector, where transactions are shaped more by relationships than market-based bargaining. In short, the relatively frictionless world assumed by core strategy often does not exist in emerging markets. Strategists in emerging markets also face a distinct set of problems when it comes to creating value. They must contend with income constraints: what can you do when customers are willing to pay but lack the capacity to do so? They must navigate productivity constraints: what happens when suppliers are willing to sell but are not productive enough? And they must address missing complements: how do you move forward when essential partners want to work with you but face severe capability limitations? The first part of the course is theoretical: it extends core strategy frameworks to account for the defining features of emerging markets. The second part is applied, using real-world cases to introduce you to the strategists who are pushing the frontier and creating real impact in these contexts. In that sense, this course is for the Ramons of Tuck, those operating in worlds that the core strategy class barely acknowledges, and who are interested in the space where theory meets practice.

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  • Strategy in Innovation Ecosystems (RTPSE)

    Strategy

    Faculty: Ron Adner

    Subject Areas: Strategy

    Course Type: Research to Practice Seminar

    Entrepreneurship and Innovation Strategy (EIS) or Ecosystem Strategy (ES) is a prerequisite for this RTP. No exceptions. In this seminar we will continue to develop the theme of ecosystems that we covered in ES, and explore whether and how strategy making needs to change when value creation requires multiple participants to interact. The course itself will be an exercise in joint value creation (with all the risks that that entails). The session formats will vary. Some sessions will be devoted to discussing academic articles. Others will focus on deep-dive analyses of selected topics and contexts. Depending on student interest and speaker availability, we may also engage with external visitors (think of these more as interviews than presentations). A subset of topics to be covered includes: • Changes in industry structure • Changes in the competitive landscape • Approaches to technological change • Managing internal and external collaborations • Implications for corporate leadership The course structure is subject to real time adaptation and will respond to opportunities and interests that arise. Student deep dive projects will be the focus of the closing session.

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  • Structure, Organization and Economics of the Healthcare Industry (SOE)

    Health Care

    Faculty: Paul B Gardent

    Subject Areas: Health Care

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    At almost 20% of the US economy health care represents the largest and most dynamic industry in the US. It plays a key role in many sectors of the economy. By introducing the structure, organization, and financing of health care in relationship to business and the economy, this course provides students with a fundamental understanding of the health care industry and critical issues in health care today. SOE will provide an industry-wide view from the differing perspectives within the health care value chain, including providers, suppliers, payers, and consumers, and examine the market dynamics among these players. It will include an international health comparison. The course will be presented through cases, lectures, invited presentations, and in-session discussion. This course is appropriate for students who are contemplating careers in companies serving the health care industry such as consulting, private equity, or banking, or who have an interest in careers in health care (pharma, medical devices, biotech, or health delivery), or who just have an interest in understanding the health care industry.

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  • Women, Gender and Leadership in the New Workplace (WGLNW)

    Organizational Behavior

    Faculty: Stacy D Blake-Beard

    Subject Areas: Organizational Behavior, Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Over the past decades, women have steadily moved into higher levels of management and leadership where they now occupy key positions in the public and private sectors and have established themselves as a force in most workplaces. However, there are still challenges that they are facing. The work place experiences of women are informed by societal expectations that are deeply ingrained in how we show up – gender norms. In this course, we will focus on how gender norms have impacted women’s careers, as well as the ways that gender norms affect work, leadership, and professional success in general. We will delve into issues that are commonly included in discussions on women, gender, and leadership (i.e. work-life balance, networking, and bias). We will expand to more recent dimensions of the new workplace (i.e. the influence of technology, the different career experiences of women across the globe). Through the course, we will have a forum to identify, at interpersonal and organizational levels, the challenges that women have faced—and the strategies they have utilized—on their career path. We will also diagnose gender and power dynamics in the workplace and evaluate alterative reactions/responses to enhance individual and group effectiveness. With each of the topics, you will be encouraged to think of your role as leaders and how you can use those competencies to create and/or contribute to workplaces that are sensitive to the importance of gender equity. This course meets the Ethics & Social Responsibility (ESR) requirement.

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  • AI for Managers (AIM)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Dean P Alderucci

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    In this minicourse, students will learn about a wide range of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Model (LLM) techniques and how they can be applied to the challenges and opportunities that firms face. AI is delivering impressive results across a growing number of industries and business functions, including marketing, strategy, operations, and finance. A firm’s competitive advantages increasingly rely on its ability to make superior decisions using AI technologies. This in turn requires managers to become conversant with a growing number of AI capabilities in order to assess and oversee the opportunities that AI provides. This course provides broad exposure to how AI is used for different business tasks: marketing, product strategy, revenue management, operations, etc. We take the viewpoint of a manager or consultant who must understand and offer advice on a wide range of AI topics relevant to a variety of business needs. The course also describes the pitfalls and challenges firms face when attempting to introduce or scale AI technologies. Basic programming experience is required. You should be able to understand simple programs and you should be comfortable writing simple programs in a language such as R or Python. If you have taken the Quantitative Digital Marketing course, you will have the comfort level needed.

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  • AI for the C-Suite: AI Adoption and Utilization (AIC)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Dean P Alderucci

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    CEOs and their consultants are confronting the critical moment of how best to adopt and utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. The correct approach to firm-wide AI utilization can offer significant competitive advantages and substantial returns. However, missteps in strategy or implementation can expose the firm to wasted opportunities, resource misallocation, reputational damage, and legal liabilities. Firms globally face the challenge of navigating this complex new AI landscape without the benefit of extensive experience and best practices. Many CEOs are hesitant to embrace a firm-wide AI strategy; their firms have not yet developed a consistent approach to AI adoption or decided how to integrate AI into the firm’s business model. This course will provide a framework and guidance for making these decisions. Firms of the future are anticipated to have AI embedded throughout their divisions and functions, rather than isolated to the IT function. This mini course introduces students to the key issues and frameworks involved in enabling a firm to fully utilize AI’s potential. Most course content will take the perspective of top decision makers and their strategic consultants who must establish organization-wide processes. This perspective arms students with the insights and solutions that executives and consultants need to guide firms through their AI transformation. This course is informed by the work performed by the heads of artificial intelligence at top consulting firms and by the instructor’s work on AI adoption in firms and government. AI experts will provide guest lectures to discuss with students the strategies that enable firms to thrive in the AI-powered workplace of the future. Specific course objectives include:
    • Understanding the latest academic theory and practice on AI adoption in firms, particularly on executive decisions and the development of firm-wide policies and strategies.
    • Understanding what distinguishes AI transformation from other technology transformations.
    • Learning how to identify and overcome the common organizational impediments to adopting AI, scaling AI across the firm, and harnessing AI as an element of the firm’s business strategy.
    • Understanding and managing firm-wide AI issues such as workforce adjustments, AI governance, legal and ethical concerns, product development, and performance metrics.

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  • Advanced Management Communication (AMC)

    Communication

    Faculty: Julie B Lang, Courtney H Pierson

    Subject Areas: Communication

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    As part of the Core at Tuck, Management Communication (ManComm) was designed to provide Tuck students with immediately applicable skills for professional communication. For students seeking to deepen their communication skills, Advanced Management Communication (AMC) expands beyond ManComm, shifting from a passive audience to an active one. In this minicourse, we’ll ask you to not only anticipate audience needs, but to actively manage questions from them. You’ll practice leading a dynamic discussion to reach a common set of objectives: soliciting audience input, asking for and answering questions and managing dissent. Similar to ManComm, we’ll follow the same prepare – present – reflect pedagogy and in-class time will be dedicated to presentations and feedback. Our learning environment will be in-person, although we will incorporate remote discussions into the term. You’ll have a chance to practice leading stand-up, around-the-table, remote, and hybrid discussions. Overall, best practices for giving in-person presentations hold in a remote world. The skills you practice in this class will help you navigate a variety of work situations. Post-Tuck, you’ll regularly be engaged in discussions rather than pure presentations. AMC is designed to give you more agility in working with each unique situation you face.

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  • Brand Strategy (BSTRT)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Andres Cuneo Zuniga

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Developing and managing intangible assets has become one of the main sources of differentiation that firms use to compete. Among all intangible assets, the brand is considered one of the most important ones. Specifically, for companies, the brand represents a way to build differentiation, drive loyalty, and leverage growth. For consumers, the brand is a link with which to establish relationships and, more interestingly, to express their identity. However, creating, developing, and managing brands to reach their full potential is more difficult than ever. Firms are facing a complex environment where differentiation is hard to build, products and services tend to be commoditized, product lifecycles are getting shorter every day, and consumers are not only more heterogenous, mobile, and well connected, but also skeptical about brands, and even about some marketing practices. Digital technologies have opened a world of opportunities for brands, especially start-ups, but also have empowered consumers when evaluating, choosing, and recommending brands. Interestingly, consumers are being actively involved in co-creating brand meaning. Brand Managers today are not only required to design branding concepts and interact with consumers in significantly new ways, but also to deliver promises that are relevant, credible, and consistent across geographies. During this 5 week- mini elective we will discuss the core elements of brand strategy. We will pay special attention to the role of brands and brand managers in the new competitive and social context. Core learnings will focus on how brand strategy can be defined, crafted, developed, and managed in ways that create value for today’s consumers and firms. While the main focus of the course is strategic, we will also discuss how brand strategy speaks to execution.

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  • Business Applications of Natural Language Processing (NLP)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Dean P Alderucci

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Natural language processing (NLP) is the field of artificial intelligence that allows computers to understand human languages such as English. NLP has made astonishing strides in the past decade, and is increasingly used by businesses to extract and understand useful information from large amounts of unstructured text, found in sources such as customer correspondence, online product reviews, Twitter feeds, social media posts, press releases, SEC filings, news feeds, contract repositories, web pages, and organization document caches. NLP techniques allow businesses to gain insights into customers, competitors, and industries. In this minicourse, students will gain knowledge of state-of-the-art NLP techniques, including large language models and associated tools. The course also describes how to apply those techniques to a range of marketing and other business problems. Students will become able to critically read the NLP literature, converse with NLP experts, and understand what new NLP capabilities are expected in the future. Students will also develop custom NLP software tools to solve concrete business problems, and will retain these tools to use after the course ends. Basic programming experience is required. You should be able to understand simple programs and you should be comfortable writing simple programs in a language such as R or Python. If you have taken the Quantitative Digital Marketing course in the Winter term, you will have the comfort level needed. If not, resources will be made available for you to get to that comfort level.

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  • Communicating with Presence (CWP)

    Communication

    Faculty: James G Rice

    Subject Areas: Communication

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Theater is heightened communication. Since the beginning of human culture, theater as an art form has been a crucial element in intellectual, emotional, and spiritual cultures worldwide. Theater communicates great ideas and inspires action. The actor is the instrument through which the message of the play is communicated. Therefore, it is the actor’s communication skills—developed through arduous training in use of the voice, body and expressive language—that determine whether the message of the play actually reaches and affects the audience. The task of the actor is to be present, and with that unique ability, to capture the heart, mind, ears and eyes of the audience through galvanizing communication. The leader whose responsibility it is to persuade, inspire and motivate must possess similar abilities. The difference between the two pursuits is that actors dedicate themselves to the acquisition of those skills; leaders all too often do not have that opportunity. This minicourse will be an active examination of what it is that comprises “presence” in communication. It will utilize a practice of certain actor-skills and behaviors to facilitate an ability to walk on the “stage” of everyday academic or business life with a strong communication capacity that projects energy, confidence, clarity of thought, and physical and vocal expressiveness. Each session will build on a progression of physical and vocal techniques incorporated in weekly spoken exercises intended to establish and reinforce the qualities of the leader as an energetic, active communicator.

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  • Consumer Insights (CI)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Elizabeth A Keenan

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Consumer Insights (CI) focuses on developing a deep understanding of consumers. Understanding consumers, from what choices they will make in given situations to how to influence those choices, is a key component of business success. It is not enough to just develop great products or services. Marketers must also incorporate strategies that account for the biases and tendencies that affect consumers’ decision making. Acquiring CI allows companies to more deeply understand how and why consumers purchase the goods and services that they do so they can tailor their business approaches. This course will expand upon some of the concepts covered in the core Marketing course, however, it will do so by taking a deep and decidedly psychological look at consumers and their behavior. Class sessions will be guided by following three questions to provide a comprehensive structure for learning about consumer insights: 1) Who are consumers? 2) How do consumers make decisions? 3) How do we influence consumers? Within this structure, we will focus on both the internal (i.e., psychological) and external (i.e., social, cultural, environmental, situational) factors that influence consumer behavior and will examine consumer behavior insights generated by behavioral economics, cognitive science and social psychology. By using consumer psychology as a foundation and increasing familiarity with analytical and research tools used by marketers, students in this course will be able to predict what consumers might be expected to do versus what they will do in a variety of marketing settings. This course will involve a combination of case discussions, in-class exercises and assignments that will move students beyond using personal intuition about consumer behavior and equip them with concepts and tools to uncover, interpret, and apply consumer insights to drive strategic decision-making.

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  • Contemporary Issues in Biotechnology (CIB)

    Health Care

    Faculty: Kirsten H Detrick

    Subject Areas: Health Care

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    In this course, students will explore biotechnology fundamentals, examining the strategic, operational, legal, scientific, and ethical drivers of this complex industry. We'll discuss how biotech leaders' decisions, influenced by science, market dynamics, governments, and global health challenges impact patient care and business strategy. This course emphasizes commercialization, manufacturing, marketing, and finance challenges in both start-up and corporate biotech contexts.

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  • Corporate Responsibility (CRSP)

    Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Faculty: Paul A Argenti

    Subject Areas: Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This minicourse starts with the premise that corporate social responsibility is good for business and focuses on how leaders can balance the needs of their organizations with responsibilities to key constituencies. Through cases focusing on the social, reputational, and environmental consequences of corporate activities, students will learn how to make difficult choices, promote responsible behavior within their organizations, and understand the role personal values play in developing effective leadership skills. This course meets the Ethics & Social Responsibility (ESR) requirement.

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  • Corporate Valuation (CV)

    Finance

    Faculty: Anant K Sundaram

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    The goal of this course is to enable you to answer the question, "what is a real asset worth"? You will define, derive, and estimate cash flows, cost of capital, and continuing values to establish intrinsic values for projects, divisions, and firms domestically and across borders using well-known and widely-used valuation methods. In addition to discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis, you will examine alternative approaches such as real options valuation and relative valuation. The course will explore valuation approaches in such career-relevant settings as mature cash flow businesses, IPOs of rapidly-growing businesses, subscription revenue-based business models, LBOs, mergers & acquisitions (M&A), and project financing. We will also explore the links between corporate valuation and corporate financial decisions regarding capital structure, corporate performance evaluation, exchange rates, and country risk. The course will use a mixture of lectures, cases, projects, and guest speakers.

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  • Cost and Control (CNC)

    Accounting

    Faculty: Joseph J Gerakos

    Subject Areas: Accounting

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    This course focuses on the internal use of accounting information as opposed to the preparation and evaluation of financial statements for outside users. Internal uses of accounting information include decision making and the design and implementation of management control systems. The course framework is based on the concept of opportunity cost. The course's targeted audience includes students intending to become management consultants, financial analysts, entrepreneurs, brand managers, line managers, and non-profit managers. Topics covered include breakeven analysis, keep versus replace decisions, inventory accounting, overhead allocation, activity based costing, the opportunity cost of excess capacity, working capital management, performance evaluation, and internal controls. Students cannot take both Cost and Control (CNC) and Managerial Accounting (MA), or Cost and Control (CNC) and Managerial Accounting Mini (MAM) for credit.

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  • Countries and Companies in the International Economy (CACIE)

    Economics

    Faculty: Andrew B Bernard

    Subject Areas: Economics

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This minicourse focuses on the interaction between countries and firms in the arenas of international trade, investment, and finance by applying and extending the tools acquired in the Global Economics for Managers core course. The ultimate objective is to help you and your organization make decisions in today’s global economy. Two broad themes recur throughout the term. One emphasizes the analysis of decision-making at the country level with emphasis on the constraints implied for individual enterprises. We visit a number of countries around the world that are at various stages of economic and market development and thus that face issues of monetary union, currency crisis, trade liberalization, and economic integration. In each case we consider how these events provide opportunities and constraints for companies. The second main theme of the course concentrates on the decisions faced by companies themselves as they participate in the international economy. Across a range of countries we look at issues surrounding production location, market entry, cross-border pricing, exchange-rate risk, hedging, and integrating the supply chain.

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  • Data, Models, and Decisions (DMD)

    Operations and Management Science

    Faculty: Raghav Singal

    Subject Areas: Operations and Management Science

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    DMD builds on the core Analytics courses and explores a mix of advanced analytics topics. Each class is centered around a practical data-driven case. In addition to discussing a new application, each case introduces one or two new analytics tools. The overall course philosophy is “data, models, and decisions,” where models cover both predictive and prescriptive aspects of analytics. The primary software is Excel, and our focus is to build data-driven models for the purposes of (1) extracting business insights and (2) developing some fundamental understanding behind such models. Analytics tools used in the course include logistic regression, optimization, Monte Carlo simulation, and data visualization. Applications include revenue management of an auto lender's portfolio, managing readmissions to a hospital, workforce scheduling for a ride-hailing service, insurance management in aviation, and portfolio optimization for fantasy sports. The intended audience focuses on MBA students who wish to deepen their knowledge of analytics tools and their applications in business contexts, with a particular emphasis on data-driven decision-making to address complex business challenges. While Excel is the main platform for implementation, we will optionally explore how to build these models using tools such as R and ChatGPT, particularly for students interested in extending their skills beyond spreadsheets.

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  • Digital and Social Media Marketing (DSMM)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Lauren Sheila Grewal

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    Digital platforms, particularly various forms of social media, continue to dramatically change how business is done. These changes are pervasive and extend beyond changing how companies communicate with customers and how employees communicate with each other. For example, digital/social platforms have a role to play in how marketers generate demand for products, how product development teams create new innovations, how customer service is carried out, how risks are assessed, and how companies learn about competitors and market trends. Digital/social platforms present firms with enormous opportunities for creating and enhancing value for both themselves and customers. How these technologies can – and should – be used for strategic value-generating purposes, however, is not straightforward. This course grapples with this challenge, with the primary aim being to help students understand how to unlock the value in digital/social platforms across a variety of business contexts and for several markedly different marketing-related purposes. Thus, students should leave the course knowing the basics of digital marketing jargon and with the underlying knowledge to become proficient in digital marketing. Within this course, students will learn how to developing appropriate digital marketing strategies, additionally understanding the tools necessary to analyze and guide strategy (e.g., current and future AI). An ancillary goal of this course is to gain practical experience in fielding digital marketing campaigns.

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  • Financing the Clean Energy Economy (FCEE)

    Economics

    Faculty: Charlie Donovan

    Subject Areas: Economics

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This minicourse explores the critical role of finance in accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy. With demand for energy rising, technologies that enable mass electrification, decarbonized fuels, and improved energy efficiency have become essential for sustaining the global economy. The course examines how financial markets, investment flows, and innovative business models can either enable or hinder the widespread adoption of clean energy solutions. By the end of the course, students will be able to:
    • Map key investment flows shaping the clean energy economy.
    • Evaluate leading business models and strategies for scaling renewable energy and efficiency technologies.
    • Build and apply models to assess clean energy opportunities and guide investment decisions.
    • Understand the financial mechanisms that support the development, deployment, and long-term viability of clean energy initiatives across a range of countries and regions.

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  • Growth Economics (GE)

    Economics

    Faculty: Han Ping Davin Chor

    Subject Areas: Economics

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    In this elective course, we study the phenomenon of economic growth. In the past half-century, the world has witnessed remarkable shifts in the economic fortunes (and misfortunes) of countries. While Western Europe and North America have maintained high standards of living, their pace of growth has slowed and even stalled. On the other hand, we have witnessed the growth miracles of the East Asian tigers and the rise to prominence of the BRICS emerging economies. Even still, many developing countries remain seemingly stuck at low levels of income per capita. We will take a deep dive in this class to explore the fundamental drivers of countries’ growth performance over the medium- to long-term. A solid understanding of these drivers of growth is invaluable. For policy makers and the consultants they hire, this will inform the recommendations that they make over strategies to promote growth. For the managers of firms, a keen appreciation of these forces can be vital for identifying opportunities and navigating business decisions. The course will adopt a two-pronged approach. On one level, we will pursue the economic theories that seek to explain differences in growth outcomes across countries, and explore the empirical evidence marshaled for or against these theories. At the same time, we will ground our discussion in the real world through selected country case studies. These will draw out the relevance of the theories and speak to their more practical implications.

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  • Health Care Economics and Policy (HCEP)

    Economics

    Faculty: Charles J Wheelan, Lindsey J Leininger

    Subject Areas: Health Care, Economics

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Health Care Economics and Policy is meant to be a foundational course that introduces the key economic concepts necessary to understand why health care is different than other goods and services in the economy: asymmetry of information; consumption shocks; risk pooling; moral hazard; behavioral economics; and so on. The course will explore how different health systems, in the U.S. and around the world, attempt to manage these unique challenges. It will probe the tradeoffs associated with different systems and explore innovations in health care delivery. The class will enumerate the various stakeholders involved in American health care and explore options for reform.

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  • Housing (HOUSE)

    Finance

    Faculty: Brian T Melzer

    Subject Areas: Finance

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Households allocate nearly one-quarter of their assets to owner-occupied housing and spend more on housing services than on any other expenditure category. Over the last decade, housing transactions have been the focus of many innovative firms that use technology to transform old ways of doing business. This course examines the housing market from occupants’, investors’, entrepreneurs’ and policymakers’ perspectives. The course is divided into four modules. The first module explores the economics of owning vs. renting, asset valuation and supply-demand dynamics. The second module focuses on the housing search process, with a particular emphasis on fintech innovations that disintermediate real estate brokerage. The third module delves into home financing decisions. The fourth and final module studies investments in rental housing, including vacation and other short-term rentals facilitated by person-to-person rental platforms.

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  • Human Behavior in Operations Management (RTPHB)

    Operations and Management Science

    Faculty: Michelle A Kinch

    Subject Areas: Operations and Management Science

    Course Type: Research to Practice Seminar

    Operations management is an academic discipline that studies the design, management and improvement of the business processes governing both the transformation of raw materials into finished goods and services - and the delivery of those goods and services to customers. In OM, we aim for both efficiency (minimal waste of resources) and effectiveness (meeting customer requirements). Although people have always been a critical component of any operating system, historically, the field has focused on manufacturing environments. Like other traditionally quantitative, model-driven fields that have come to adopt behavioral perspectives, such as economics and finance, the study of behavioral operations has developed in the last 20 years. Today, with the service sector accounting for 76% of GDP and 85% of employment, understanding the myriad ways that human psychology and behavior affects the efficiency and effectiveness of operating systems is more important than ever before. In this course, we will review papers that use experimental methods to investigate a topic in operations management. We will discuss the operational challenge, why understanding human behaviors are important to the efficiency or effectiveness goals, how the researchers approached the study and how business leaders might incorporate the research findings into managerial practice. In addition, students will have the opportunity to consider ways that they might design and test their own theories through experimentation in their future managerial practice.

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  • International Strategy (INTST)

    Strategy

    Faculty: Thomas C Lawton

    Subject Areas: Strategy

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    International strategy shares many of the same principles and practices as corporate strategy. But we need to recognize that there are fundamental points of divergence. When a company’s activities and interests’ cross national borders, disruption, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, and diversity (D-VUCAD) increase exponentially. Managers and leaders can struggle to make balanced and informed strategic choices as they encounter new stakeholders and multifarious issues and influences. As companies internationalize, management encounter factors that introduce new strategic tradeoffs and fresh strategic choices. The three overarching factors[1] are heterogeneity across markets (countries are fundamentally different), the scale and complexity of global operations (you need to comprehend and manage a lot more), and the unpredictability of economic and political conditions between countries (the volatility of geopolitics and exogenous global events). Each factor has profound implications, both for the type of competitive advantage or scope economy that justifies geographical expansion, and for critical decisions concerning how the company is configured and positioned to compete internationally. The crux of this elective is to understand how to proactively develop and deliver foreign market entry strategies that effectively anticipate and respond to these overarching influences.

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  • Management of Healthcare Organizations (MHCO)

    Health Care

    Faculty: Paul B Gardent

    Subject Areas: Health Care

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This minicourse provides students with knowledge and understanding of key leadership and strategic challenges within health services organizations. It covers important functions of health services management, including strategy, finance, and operations and introduces students to leadership issues in performance improvement, change management, organizational leadership and strategic alliances. Class sessions will include health executives who will share their leadership experiences and learnings. This course is focused on the health services sector of the health industry. It will be relevant to those interested in health services leadership and management, and will be particularly valuable to anyone who will be working in companies serving health care service organizations including consulting, banking, and medical products. Some basic knowledge of the healthcare industry will be helpful. Contact Professor Gardent with questions relating to the course and course topics.

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  • Managers and the Law (ML)

    Other

    Faculty: Jeffrey R Howard

    Subject Areas: Other

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    This course is designed to help students manage legal risk and take advantage of the business opportunities that law provides. The course will introduce students to areas of law that directly affect business operations such as contract, agency, torts, employment, intellectual property, corporate governance, and securities. Students will undertake in-depth analysis of select legal problems that regularly challenge business leaders such as trade secret protection, insider trading, and compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The class has a hands-on, interactive atmosphere, and several topics are led by distinguished speakers who have attained top positions in their fields and acquired extensive specialized knowledge and experience.

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  • Managing for Social Impact (MSI)

    Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Faculty: Robert A Searle

    Subject Areas: Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    Twenty years ago, few people except social scientists evaluating the results of large-scale development programs talked about social impact. Google the term now, and millions of hits pop up—an explosion of interest that is both promising and problematic. On the one hand, its currency attests to the growing number of organizations and individuals who recognize—and want to help remedy—the enormous social, economic, and environmental problems facing our planet. On the other hand, it’s hard to know what the term actually means other than doing something good for society. If social impact were simply a buzzword this sort of broad generalization wouldn’t matter. But social impact is a real phenomenon. And while there are undoubtedly people who’ve seized on the term simply because it’s the new-new thing, most of those who are talking about it do so with genuinely good intentions. The problem, in the words of inventor Thomas A. Edison, is that “a good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to poor results.” MSI’s overarching goal is to help you appreciate what it takes to turn good intentions into good results for society. To this end, the class will require you to consider a number of fundamental questions, including:
    • What is social impact?
    • Who defines it?
    • What role do various sectors – private, public, nonprofit – play in delivering social impact?
    • What are the challenges and tradeoffs of managing for it?
    • How can it be measured and assessed?
    • What behaviors promote impact, and which subvert it?
    • What are the implications for how I/my organization operate in the world?

      These questions are particularly pointed for the charitable nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and philanthropic foundations that constitute the nonprofit (or social) sector. Why? Because these are the only organizations that exist solely for the purpose of bettering society. If they are unable to deliver on the statement of purpose (or mission) that is their reason for being, it doesn’t matter how big, or well-known, or well-intentioned they are: they have failed. So, using them as a primary lens for discussing these questions allows us to explore the challenges of managing for social impact in their most demanding form. That said, every organization has a social impact (as does every individual), even if its decision makers choose not to acknowledge that, let alone manage for it. This is why we will also use our time together to consider where questions of social impact might appear in the context of business decisions or government policies, and what some of the key trade-offs in these contexts might involve. You will also have time and space to develop your own perspective on social impact and to reflect on how it might affect your decisions and choices going forward. Guests who have wrestled with these issues themselves will share their experiences and lessons learned, as will your professor. As MBAs. your skills will be in high demand. MSI will be useful whether you decide to apply them professionally or privately. This course will be particularly relevant if you are currently serving on the board of a nonprofit or NGO or plan on joining one hereafter. This course meets the Ethics & Social Responsibility (ESR) requirement.

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  • Negotiations (NEGO)

    Organizational Behavior

    Faculty: Erica J Boothby, Aram Mourad Donigian

    Subject Areas: Organizational Behavior

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    Negotiation is the art and science of securing agreements between two or more interdependent parties. This course focuses on the theory and processes of negotiation as it is practiced in a variety of settings. It is designed to complement the technical and diagnostic skills learned in other Tuck courses. A basic premise of the course is that while wise, decisive leaders need strong analytical skills to better the world through business, negotiation skills are essential for today’s business leader to ensure adoption and implementation of proposals. This course will highlight the components of an effective negotiation and teach you to analyze your own behavior in negotiations. The course will be largely experiential, providing you with an opportunity to develop your skills by participating in role-play simulations and integrating your experiences with the principles presented in the lectures, course discussions, and assigned readings. Students may not take both Negotiations and the Negotiations Accelerated (NEGOX) minicourse course for credit.

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  • People Analytics (RTPPA)

    Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Faculty: Julia L Melin

    Subject Areas: Organizational Behavior, Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Course Type: Research to Practice Seminar

    To have a competitive advantage in business, organizations must leverage data to improve workforce practices and outcomes. Yet, many managers lack the analytical skills to identify whether their business practices create disparities in opportunity and/or outcomes for their workers. This seminar introduces students to data-driven approaches for understanding and addressing key organizational challenges around hiring, compensation, performance evaluation, retention, workforce diversity, and organizational culture. Students will also learn how to design and evaluate organizational interventions that can be used to help address such challenges. Throughout the course, students will engage with real-world examples and learn methodological strategies (e.g., longitudinal studies, randomized field experiments) for solving people-related problems in diverse organizational contexts, including investment banking, high-tech, biotech, and law firms. Course materials will include academic articles from management, sociology, social psychology, and economics to develop the analytical rigor required for making data-driven decisions in organizations. The papers we read will leverage data to develop theory and offer empirical evidence to address questions such as: • How can managers use data to improve recruitment and retention practices? • How can organizations assess the impact of work-family conflict on employee well-being and productivity? • What interventions can reduce bias in performance evaluations and foster inclusive workplaces? • In what ways might artificial intelligence reduce (or exacerbate) bias in hiring decisions? • How can employers use data to evaluate the impact of remote work on different employee groups? By the end of this course, students will have mastered analytical techniques to (a) identify key workforce challenges that affect workers using organizational data (e.g., hiring evaluations, employee performance metrics, salary data); (b) infer plausible causes contributing to observed workplace challenges; and (c) design and test data-informed solutions to improve strategic people-related practices and outcomes. Students will engage in active learning by co-leading class discussions of the papers each week and completing both a mid-term and final project that apply course concepts to real-world datasets. This course meets both the Management Science and Quantitative Methods (MSQM) and Ethics & Social Responsibility (ESR) requirements. Note: This course was formerly titled Equity Analytics in Organizations (RTPEA). Students who took RTPEA cannot take RTPPA.

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  • Retail Pricing Analytics (RPA)

    Marketing

    Faculty: Praveen K Kopalle

    Subject Areas: Marketing

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    In this course, we will study key pricing strategies and important approaches for implementing the pricing strategies, particularly for retail products and services. In this regard, we will cover the “how to” of pricing new and existing products (or services) as well as static and dynamic prices. This course is quantitative in nature, qualifies for Tuck’s STEM track, and takes into consideration the role of analytics, economics, and marketing in determining pricing policies. In class, we will use real-world retail data to estimate different classes of demand models and conduct price optimization to arrive at pricing strategies and tactics. In the final examination, students will set weekday and weekend prices, monthly for twelve months, in an engaging retail pricing exercise in a competitive, car rental market. This course is applicable to anyone who will be directly or indirectly involved in pricing decisions and will be particularly valuable to those who intend to work in general management, marketing, and consulting. We will also link pricing theory to the practice of retail pricing via the consulting engagements of the professor across many companies in the retailing, pharmaceutical, and automobile industries. The course deals with different levels of competition and product differentiation and focuses on pricing structure through time, across product lines, and over customer segments.

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  • Social Networks in Organizations (RTPSN)

    Organizational Behavior

    Faculty: Adam M Kleinbaum

    Subject Areas: Organizational Behavior

    Course Type: Research to Practice Seminar

    “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” This old adage may be hyperbole, but few people who have worked in organizations need to be convinced that social relations are important for getting things done in firms. And yet, beyond the basic intuition that networks matter, most of us give little thought to exactly how, why or for what networks matter for our work and professional advancement. This seminar examines scholarly research about social networks in organizations. The research papers develop theory and empirical evidence to address questions such as: How and why do social networks matter? How do networks take shape and evolve in organizations and careers? What can managers to do influence the formation and evolution of networks? How and why do different people network (or benefit from their networks) differently? How does hybrid/remote work affect network dynamics? How do personality and, even more fundamentally, brain structure and function, affect our networking behaviors? How and why does networking differ across cultures? And how can we use this knowledge to maximize network advantage? Intense student involvement in both the presentation and the class discussion of the scientific papers is required. Like all RTP seminars, there will be a focus on using academic research to help you learn the analytical rigor to be an effective manager in an increasingly complex world.

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  • Startup Strategizing (START)

    Strategy

    Faculty: Hart E Posen

    Subject Areas: Entrepreneurship, Strategy

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    Do you want to be an entrepreneur—now or later in your career? Are you planning to work at a startup, interested in venture capital, or simply aiming to become a better strategist? If any of these apply, this course is for you. It picks up where Core Strategy leaves off by developing an approach to strategy tailored to startups, a setting defined by extreme uncertainty and tight resource constraints. When most people think about startups, they focus on the market opportunity, the customer, and the product. But a product is not a strategy, and a great opportunity is necessary but not sufficient. Startups fail when founders misdiagnose the core obstacle that prevents a promising idea from becoming a viable business. The course is organized around a single unifying idea—the Problem of Value (PoV)—which focuses attention on that core obstacle. It pushes beyond “getting the product right” to examine how startups create a meaningful wedge between revenues and costs, become profitable, and endure competition. In each class, you step into the role of an entrepreneur and confront a central strategic question: What is the most important solvable problem I must address right now to make this venture succeed? Cases span multiple industries and stages of development, highlighting strategic challenges that apply well beyond startup contexts.

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  • Strategic Leadership (SLEAD)

    Strategy

    Faculty: Sydney Finkelstein

    Subject Areas: Strategy

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This minicourse focuses on senior executives and how they choose to run their organizations. That means the good stuff they do, and the not so good. How CEOs, boards, and other top managers make decisions, guide strategy, and even get their jobs in the first place are all core topics in the minicourse. Course topics include: executive selection and succession, executive leadership, top management team composition and dynamics, and board-management relations. Though the course will be helpful for students who wish to strengthen their managerial talents, it is more focused on improving students’ ability to diagnose, critically evaluate, and enhance executive capabilities in organizations.

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  • Supply Chain Management (SCHM)

    Operations and Management Science

    Faculty: Lauren Xiaoyuan Lu

    Subject Areas: Operations and Management Science

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    A supply chain is comprised of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in fulfilling a customer demand. The integrated management of this network is a critical determinant of success in today’s competitive environment. Companies like Amazon, Inditex, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Lenovo, and Walmart are proof that excellence in supply chain management is a must for financial strength and industry leadership. With increasing competition around the globe, supply chain management is both a challenge and an opportunity for companies. Hence a strong understanding of supply chain management concepts and the ability to recommend improvements should be in the toolbox of all managers. The objective of this course is to introduce you to the key concepts and techniques that will allow you to analyze, manage and improve supply chain processes for different industries and markets. At completion of this course, you will have the skills to assess supply chain performance and make recommendations to increase supply chain competitiveness. The course covers a wide range of supply chain topics including supply chain network design, inventory management, strategic sourcing, supply chain contracting, and supply chain disruptions. Each topic will be discussed using a combination of models, case discussions, and readings. We will use a data-driven approach where tools and analysis start with realistic data.

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  • Sustainability and Marketing (SUSMK)

    Ethics and Social Responsibility

    Faculty: Bryan K Bollinger

    Subject Areas: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Marketing

    Course Type: Full-Term Elective

    The global economic system in 20th century had operated on a throughput take-make-waste model. As economic growth stretches global resources, however, consumers are becoming more and more conscious of the importance of sustainability practices.” Marketing has a vital and unique role to play in creating a more sustainable society as most of consumers’ material needs and many of our psychological needs are met through marketing systems. Sustainable Marketing is the process of creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers in such a way that both environment and human capital are preserved or enhanced throughout. This course aims to provide a broad range of tools and frameworks for understanding how business can interact with issues related to sustainability, taking a marketing perspective. In particular, we examine how traditional marketing strategies can be incorporated into and/or modified in domains in which sustainability is critical. We will also examine how sustainability can serve to augment, but not replace, the firm’s value proposition. By necessity, it will be essential to not only account for the role of firms and customers, but of government, non-profit organizations, employees, and other stakeholders. This course will draw upon cases, guest speakers, academic and industry research, and recent articles and events. The final course deliverable will be a marketing plan focused on a firm strategy that can increase the sustainability of the firm’s actions while also creating stakeholder value.

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  • Transforming Public Interest Organizations (TPIO)

    Strategy

    Faculty: D Grant Freeland

    Subject Areas: Strategy

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    The course introduces the theory and practice of transforming public interest organizations. Public interest organizations are defined where profit is not the primary objective of the organization and where other factors such as public good are key. This can include: large government departments; not-for-profits; foundations; and academic institutions. Some appropriate learning will also come from private sector organizations. Prepares students for advising leaders, and those leading organizational transformations. As a by-product, students will explore how consultants frame and analyze problems. Organizations need to adopt new strategies and policies as their environment changes. This minicourse focuses less on developing those strategies and policies, but more on how to drive change through the organization, in order to more successfully implement that strategy. The course will be structured around a set of integrated levers and tools that are used to transform organizations, and supplemented with case studies that exhibit various combinations of levers. These will be explored in the context of changing public interest organizations, and how they differ from for profit organizations. These differences include: making tradeoffs when profit is not the primary objective; managing highly complex and powerful stakeholders and; and where there are often greater restrictions in people management practices such as incentives and ability to terminate or significantly change roles. The levers that will be focused on include: organizational design and governance; leadership and talent; culture; capabilities; HR practices and work and technology. And the tools include developing a Transformation plan and performing effective change and implementation management. Requirements: active engagement on pre-read material and class engagement; preparation of case study transformation plan that could be shared in class; and student preparation and presentation of small group assignment on transforming an organization. The instructor will meet with individuals and groups outside of class to help structure projects and provide coaching. Grades based 1/3 on class participation, 1/3 on a mid-course case assignment and a 1/3 on a course long group assignment. Students will be asked to submit three very short paragraphs before each class on pre-assigned questions. These submissions will not be graded but used to help steer the class.

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  • VBA Programming (VBAP)

    Operations and Management Science

    Faculty: Robert A Burnham

    Subject Areas: Operations and Management Science

    Course Type: Half-Term Mini

    This minicourse teaches the fundamentals of computer programming using MS Excel's macro language, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), as the language of instruction. The course starts by teaching students to simplify and extend code generated by Excel's macro recorder, and then builds on that base toward developing applications that analyze information and enhance decision making. Special attention will be given to mastering good programming style and building a solid base to continue learning.

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  • Field Study in Business (FSB)

    Experiential

    Faculty: Hanne P Larsen, William C Martin

    Subject Areas: Experiential

    The purpose of this course is to provide students with an opportunity to integrate key learnings from Tuck’s core curriculum and their own personal experiences off campus. FSB trains students to reflect upon their time working with and observing others in order to continuously improve their personal leadership toolkit. As an experiential course, FSB requires students to spend time outside the classroom, engaging multiple senses, experiencing new environments, and reflecting deeply on those experiences. Your success as a future leader will depend on your ability to continually improve and refine your leadership skills as you work with others to solve problems and achieve goals. This course is designed to help position you for that success.

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Independent Study

Independent studies give second-year Tuck students the opportunity to research an established field of management.

Research to Practice Seminars

In these small-scale seminars, Tuck students hone their critical-thinking skills and learn how new knowledge is created.

Global Insight Expeditions

Learn to navigate diverse business environments on an immersive faculty-led Global Insight Expedition.

Term Exchange

Second-year students spend a term abroad studying at a partner institution.

Required Curriculum

Core courses providing coverage of key functional areas and disciplines.