This course introduces students to the nascent area of decentralized finance, the provision of financial services in decentralized networks, without the default involvement of financial institutions. Blockchain technology allows organizational changes that will change and replace the core operations and infrastructure of the financial industry. We will study how and which financial services that have traditionally been provided by "siloed" institutions can be provided on "decentralized platforms." We will study the functions of these platforms both in terms of the basic technological functionality and the economic mechanisms that drive the interactions on platforms. As part of the content, students will learn about blockchain technology, cryptography, smart contracts, tokens, digital money, oracles, yield farming, decentralized exchanges, blockchain-based borrowing and lending, crypto trading, corporate finance with tokens, decentralized autonomous organizations and their governance, non-fungible tokens, crypto-regulations, stablecoins, and central-bank-issued digital currencies.

Experimental course.

Experimental course.

This course is for those that want to gain the foundational skills of working with data. 80% of business analysis efforts are spent on finding, extracting, cleaning, and visualizing data prior to performing the actual data analysis. Whether or not you are considering a career in data sciences, this course introduces the essential skills for working with data that can apply to careers in; information technology, business, finance, marketing analysis, or data sciences. This is a hands on course focused on developing practical skills across a broad range of the most common data management and analysis concepts, such as relational database design and its implementation with SQL and Python, programming fundamentals, data manipulation and data cleaning and preparation, and data analysis and visualization techniques using Python.

The course is intended for students interested in general management or careers in consulting, operations, or marketing. Understanding how supply chain management impacts business performance is also of value for those aspiring to accounting and finance careers. Supply chains are networks of organizations that supply and transform materials, and distribute final products to customers. This course views the supply chain from a general manager's perspective. Supply chain management represents a great challenge as well as a tremendous opportunity for most firms. If designed and managed properly, supply chains are a crucial source of competitive advantage for both manufacturing and service enterprises. There is a realization that no company can do any better than its supply chain. This becomes even more important as product life cycles are shrinking, product and service variety is growing, and competition is intensifying. The course emphasizes the use of qualitative and quantitative analysis in making supply chain management decisions.

Operations Management Strategy (Ops Strat) is a multidisciplinary course for students aspiring to leadership positions where thinking strategically, making sound decisions with limited data and devising and executing solid implementation plans spells the difference between average and outstanding executive ability. Ops Strat integrates the concepts, tools and practices of operations with competitive strategy, customer focus, innovation, change management and other goals such as sustainability — linchpins of firms' competitiveness. Specifically, students will learn how an effective operations strategy creates an integrated set of operational capabilities that, as evidenced by diverse firms across multiple industries become a formidable source of competitive advantage that competitors must try to emulate (but will be unable to achieve). During the pandemic, we have witnessed how organizations with high levels of agility and operational flexibility have been able to sustain and even build value during times of extreme stress, and we will examine this in our discussions. Furthermore, students will examine the role and measurement plays in successfully executing strategy in light of changing circumstances.

This course examines approaches for achieving operational competitiveness in service organizations. The class is intended for students interested in developing their management and leadership skills for service firms. We consider applications in various industries such as healthcare, travel/leisure, retail, consulting, and personal service. Students interested in taking leadership roles within service firms or management consulting positions addressing service operations would benefit from the course.

The course is intended for students interested in learning how to support decision making using business analytics. Specifically, we will focus on formulating models to enhance analytic decision making in applications such as finance, marketing, and operations. We will learn how to formulate, solve, and analyze models based upon optimization, decision trees, and simulation. These models and language will be required by any effective member of the C-suite in the future. In this course, we will learn how to structure, analyze, and solve business decision problems using business analytics tools. We will focus on problems involving decision-making and risk analysis. The emphasis of the course will be on systematic, critical and logical thinking, and problem solving and their implementation.

The Special Topics in Operations Management and Statistics course is a placeholder course for experimental courses that can be proposed by faculty members.

Quality Management with Lean Six Sigma — this is for students interested in learning about lean six sigma and how best to employ the framework and tools in organizations to achieve excellence in operational quality. This quality management course will provide students with the foundational elements of the Lean Six Sigma methodology and tools to analyze and solve business process problems. The course offers a combination of theoretical concepts and practical experience.

Experimental course.

Experimental course.

This course is for students who want to sharpen their strategic thinking and enjoy case study discussion and active class participation. We learn the core elements of the strategic planning process to develop and execute strategy. This course examines the processes by which businesses decide how to compete in the markets they choose to serve. The emphasis is on the analysis of market opportunities and sources of competitive advantage. The course also looks at the strategic implications of market evolution and methods of allocating resources to new and established products.

This is for students interested in investigating social and psychological foundations of consumer thought and behaviour. Course content is oriented toward basic principles of psychology and other social sciences and their application to a wide range of consumer activities. The primary goal of this course is to enhance understanding of consumer behaviour, from determining consumer needs to building customer relationships. Behavioural concepts from various social science disciplines are used to examine cultural and social influences, individual differences, motivation, learning, perception, memory, attitudes, decisions, and actions. The emphasis is on using this knowledge to capitalize on marketing opportunities.

This is a must-take for everyone remotely interested in marketing as it covers grounded events, discussions, and frameworks that are crucial in building a toolkit that’s useful for marketing professionals as we will cover current and emerging technologies (A/R, V/R, A/I, Machine Learning, and Digital Technologies). If students seek a career in marketing, they should take this course. If students plan to work with Marcomm (Marketing Communications) as a general manager, consultant or communication expert, they should take this course. If students are interested in transforming marketing through digital disruption, they should take this course.

This course is for students interested in issues regarding data-driven marketing and marketing analytics. Marketing research serves as a central basis for marketing decision making; therefore, it is critical for a manager to understand marketing research and be able to specify what needs to be studied, how to study it, and how to interpret the results. The goal is to familiarize students with the fundamentals of marketing research and enhance their abilities to define and solve marketing problems and formulate appropriate data-driven marketing strategy.

This is a must-take for everyone interested in a career in sales and sales management who understands that the role of a sales manager will continue to evolve and adapt to market dynamics and global competition. It is also valuable to anyone in a marketing or consulting role who wants a successful sales career. This course aims to help students prepare for a successful, exciting, prosperous career in sales or sales management.

This course is for students who plan to work in financial services, consulting, venture capital or strategy roles, as well as those generally interested in the startup space, digital disruption and innovation. Fintech Marketing explores the number one issue for CEOs of every successful player in financial services: the onslaught from a wave of well-funded, disruptive startups looking to carve out their most profitable lines of business. The course addresses this from the perspective of disruptors, established financial institutions and venture capital firms, looking at issues of customer segmentation, positioning, product development (including minimum viable products), pricing, distribution, customer acquisition, scaling of offerings and competitive insulation.

Students interested in a career in marketing will find the material essential. Students interested in financial careers should feel at home with the idea that products become brands through marketing investments. Brands are financial assets that can be leveraged, bought, and sold, just like any other asset. Students interested in management consulting should appreciate that brand strategy is an important sub-practice at most strategy-oriented consulting firms. Students interested in legal careers will find the material on brand equity relevant to cases involving trademark infringement/deceptive advertising.

This course is appropriate for anyone who expects to be involved in the determination, execution and communication of a price. This includes students who plan careers in general management, marketing, sales, strategy, and customer services. The course is not restricted to any particular industry, and is appropriate for both B-2-B and B-2-C, and for both products and services applications.

Price setting is one of the most important marketing mix decisions. It involves an understanding of both supply side factors (e.g., costs) and demand side factors (e.g., consumer willingness to pay). While traditional approaches to pricing theory have revolved around an economic and financial framework, a broader and more pragmatic view entails a comprehensive understanding of the demand side, both at the level of individual customer values, and the more aggregate level of price sensitivities of the market.

Using product categories as diverse as hardware/software, healthcare, industrial products, and consumer packaged goods, we will study economic and behavioural approaches to pricing, value pricing, price customization, bundling, and retail pricing strategies, amongst other topics.

Design Research and Data Storytelling — in this course, you will learn how design research helps to uncover patterns, develop insights, and inform strategies. Design research is a sub-set of qualitative research methods that focuses on studying people through rigorous observation, in-depth interviewing and collaborative co-design. Design research methodologies help us uncover deep actionable insights that de-risk the launch of new products, services and technologies. You will learn and practice ethnographic techniques to develop compelling insights, co-design solutions and apply visual analytics to tell data-rich stories. Design research and data storytelling are used extensively in management consulting, product and service design, marketing strategy, sustainability, communications, organizational development, etc., as deep insight into people’s real-world behaviour is fundamental to business success.

Students will learn the fundamentals, methods and application of Futures Thinking (when, why, and how it is practiced), and build an in-depth understanding about the practice of Futures Thinking in the context of business design, including real-world cases and in-class presentations by practitioners. After being introduced to the basic principles and process of Futures Thinking, students will engage in an applied, futures-focused project. This 'transformative recommendations' project will be facilitated through a series of hands-on exercises that provide students with several practical approaches for the application of Futures Thinking to business planning and innovation.

Service Design: Innovating Service-Based Organizations — in this course, you will learn how service designers take a human-centered approach to researching and designing solutions. Service Design is a subset of design disciplines that takes an action-oriented approach to co-design solutions with customers, citizens, or end-users. Service Design methodologies help us understand key pain points and preferences and prototype solutions based on the needs of actual consumers. You will learn and practice service design techniques on an applied team project, developing compelling insights, co-designing and implementing an omni-channel solution. Service Design methods are being rapidly adopted by technology start-ups, management consultancies, governments, software developers, AI/ML, marketing, sustainability, communications, organizational development specialists, as designing desirable and usable services is fundamental to business success.

This course is designed for students who enjoyed the core marketing course, Managing Customer Value in the fall and want to take their strategic marketing abilities to the next level. Managing Customer Value 2.0 provides you with the opportunity to put marketing ideas and elements into practice in a simulated competitive environment. The course is structured around a competitive simulation called Markstrat. The courses consists of a series of lectures designed to introduce students to the key decisions and challenges that brand managers make in the real world. These lectures alternate with actual decision periods where students put their ideas and theory to work in a simulated market in which teams of students compete against each other.

One to One Marketing — this course is for students who want to improve their networking and written and verbal communication skills. In this course, you'll learn about leading edge research on building relationships and the principles of effective persuasion.

This course is for students interested in the impact of technology on business, including digital marketing and technology entrepreneurship. Social media, search engines, mobile commerce, digital advertising, and online marketplaces are impacting competition for all firms, large and small. Drawing on some common themes across digital marketing platforms, we examine (i) how companies find and serve customers using digital tools, (ii) the kinds of digital products that companies offer, (iii) the role of distance in the customer-company relationship when information is digital, (iv) the locus of control of brand-related messages, (v) the concept of privacy, and (vi) the digital targeting of marketing tactics. Broadly, for each technological innovation, we will emphasize what is different, and what is not, for consumers, and for the production, distribution, and communication of goods and services.

This unique Business Design Fundamentals course introduces students to the most prolific design practices and methods used in business decision-making today. Through a combination of lectures and experiential learning activities, students will gain an understanding of design's growing impact on business — particularly on customer-centred innovation development and management. This foundational course is a prerequisite for RSM2524H Business Design Practicum (Corporate Consulting Challenge) and is strongly recommended as preparation for RSM2516H Design Research and Data Storytelling, and for those intending to graduate with a Business Design Major. This course will challenge you to navigate uncertainty, sample qualitative research methods, design techniques and collaborate in solving real, yet case-based business challenges over an intensive six weeks.

This practicum course is aimed at students who are interested in understanding design's role in business innovation and applying design principles and methods as marketers, strategists, and consultants. The course focuses on using human-centred design (a.k.a. stakeholder-centred design) methods and developing a strategic and creative mindset to navigate the uncertainties of business innovation. This class offers an in-person studio experience and field-based research activities and discussions with a real business challenge sponsor. It involves a combination of instructor-led, peer-to-peer and team-based learning and knowledge exchange. This course will expose you to uncertainty, while encouraging you to creatively and collaboratively solve business problems.