This course presents real-world examples in which quantitative methods provide a significant competitive edge that has led to a first order impact on some of today's most important companies. We outline the competitive landscape and present the key quantitative methods that created the edge (data-mining, dynamic optimization, simulation), and discuss their impact.

By Jake P. Moskowitz and Paul K. Piff, University of California, Irvine. Humans are social animals. This means we work together in groups to achieve goals that benefit everyone. From building skyscrapers to delivering packages to remote island nations, modern life requires that people cooperate with one another. However, people are also motivated by self-interest, which often stands as an obstacle to effective cooperation. This module explores the concept of cooperation and the processes that both help and hinder it.

This seminar will focus on three sports: swimming, cycling and running. There will be two components to the seminar: classroom sessions and a "laboratory" in the form of a structured training program. The classroom component will introduce the students to the chemistry of their own biological system. With swimming, running and cycling as sample sports, students are encouraged to apply their knowledge to complete a triathlon shortly after the term.

This course provides an introduction to the technology and policy context of public communications networks, through critical discussion of current issues in communications policy and their historical roots. The course focuses on underlying rationales and models for government involvement and the complex dynamics introduced by co-evolving technologies, industry structure, and public policy objectives. Cases drawn from cellular, fixed-line, and Internet applications include evolution of spectrum policy and current proposals for reform; the migration to broadband and implications for universal service policies; and property rights associated with digital content. The course lays a foundation for thesis research in this domain.

Competition in Telecommunications provides an introduction to the economics, business strategies, and technology of telecommunications markets, including markets for wireless communications, local and long-distance services, and customer equipment. The convergence of computers, cable TV and telecommunications and the competitive emergence of the Internet are covered in depth. A number of speakers from leading companies in the industry will give course lectures.

" We will cover fundamentals of ecology, considering Earth as an integrated dynamic system. Topics include coevolution of the biosphere, geosphere, atmosphere and oceans; photosynthesis and respiration; the hydrologic, carbon and nitrogen cycles. We will examine the flow of energy and materials through ecosystems; regulation of the distribution and abundance of organisms; structure and function of ecosystems, including evolution and natural selection; metabolic diversity; productivity; trophic dynamics; models of population growth, competition, mutualism and predation. This course is designated as Communication-Intensive; instruction and practice in oral and written communication provided. Biology is a recommended prerequisite."

This course provides practical instruction in the design and analysis of non-digital games. Students cover the texts, tools, references and historical context to analyze and compare game designs across a variety of genres, including sports, game shows, games of chance, card games, schoolyard games, board games, and role–playing games. In teams, students design, develop, and thoroughly test their original games to understand the interaction and evolution of game rules. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.

" An historical examination and analysis of the evolution and development of games and game mechanics. Topics include a large breadth of genres and types of games, including sports, game shows, games of chance, schoolyard games, board games, roleplaying games, and digital games. Students submit essays documenting research and analysis of a variety of traditional and eclectic games. Project teams required to design, develop, and thoroughly test their original games."

The 3-Circle model was developed over the past several years, initially in strategic planning for a university graduate program and in an executive MBA course designed to integrate the concepts ofmarketing and competitive strategy. Over the course of time, the 3-Circle model has beensuccessfully used by hundreds of organizations throughout the world in establishing and growing their market positions. Many of the case examples in this book demonstrating applications of the 3-Circle model applications are from executives who have attended executive education training at the University of Notre Dame.

Covers theoretical and empirical work dealing with the structure, behavior, and performance of firms and markets and core issues in antitrust. Topics include: the organization of the firm, monopoly, price discrimination, oligopoly, and auctions. Theoretical and empirical work are integrated in each area.

Provides an introduction to legal and institutional arrangements for the establishment, transfer, and control over property under US and selected comparative systems including India and South Africa. Situates the debate about property in the context of international development and planning. Examines the relationship to the use of land by individuals, entities, communities, and the State through "private" and "public" regulation. Emphasis on efficient resource use, institutional, entitlement, and cultural approaches to property, distribution, and other social aspects, and the relationship between property, culture, and democracy. This course is designed to offer an advanced introduction to key legal issues that arise in the area of property and land-use in American law, with a comparative focus on the laws of India and South Africa. The focus of the course is not on law itself, but on the policy implications of various rules, doctrines and practices which are covered in great detail. Legal rules regulating property are among the most fundamental to American, and most other, economies and societies. The main focus is on American property and land use law due to its prominence in international development policy and practice as a model, though substantial comparative legal materials are also introduced from selected non-western countries such as India and South Africa.

This course discusses the basics every manager needs to organize successful technology-driven innovation in both entrepreneurial and established firms. We start by examining innovation-based strategies as a source of competitive advantage and then examine how to build organizations that excel at identifying, building and commercializing technological innovations. Major topics include how the innovation process works; creating an organizational environment that rewards innovation and entrepreneurship; designing appropriate innovation processes (e.g. stage-gate, portfolio management); organizing to take advantage of internal and external sources of innovation; and structuring entrepreneurial and established organizations for effective innovation. The course examines how entrepreneurs can shape their firms so that they continuously build and commercialize valuable innovations. Many of the examples also focus on how established firms can become more entrepreneurial in their approach to innovation.

Microeconomics will ground you in - surprise - basic microeconomics-how markets function, how to think about allocating scarce resources among competing uses, what profit maximizing behavior means in industries with different numbers of competitors, how technology and trade reshapes the opportunities people face, and so on. We will apply economic ideas to understand current economic problems, including the housing bubble, the current unemployment situation (particularly for high school gradutes), how Google makes its money and why healthcare costs are rising so fast.

MASLab (Mobile Autonomous System Laboratory) is a robotics contest. The contest takes place during MIT's Independent Activities Period and participants earn 6 units of P/F credit and 6 Engineering Design Points. Teams of three to four students have less than a month to build and program sophisticated robots which must explore an unknown playing field and perform a series of tasks. MASLab provides a significantly more difficult robotics problem than many other university-level robotics contests. Although students know the general size, shape, and color of the floors and walls, the students do not know the exact layout of the playing field. In addition, MASLab robots are completely autonomous, or in other words, the robots operate, calculate, and plan without human intervention. Finally, MASLab is one of the few robotics contests in the country to use a vision based robotics problem.

Modal logic is the logic of necessity and possibility, and by extension of analogously paired notions like validity and consistency, obligation and permission, the known and the not-ruled-out. This a first course in the area. A solid background in first-order logic is essential. Topics to be covered include (some or all of) the main systems of propositional modal logic, Kripkean "possible world" semantics, strict implication, contingent identity, intensional objects, counterpart theory, the logic of actuality, and deontic and / or epistemic logic. The emphasis will be more on technical methods and results than philosophical applications.

Negotiation and Conflict Management presents negotiation theory -- strategies and styles -- within an employment context. 15.667 meets only eleven times, with a different topic each week, which is why students should commit to attending all classes. In addition to the theory and exercises presented in class, students practice negotiating with role-playing simulations that cover a range of topics. Students also learn how to negotiate in difficult situations, which include abrasiveness, racism, sexism, whistle-blowing, and emergencies. The course covers conflict management as a first party and as a third party: third-party skills include helping others deal directly with their conflicts, mediation, investigation, arbitration, and helping the system change as a result of a dispute.

Operations Strategy provides a unifying framework for analyzing strategic issues in manufacturing and service operations. Students analyze the relationships between manufacturing and service companies and their suppliers, customers, and competitors. The course covers strategic decisions in technology, facilities, vertical integration, human resources, and other areas, and also explores means of competition such as cost, quality, and innovativeness.

This seminar provides an introduction to scholarship in a growing research community: the sociologists and sociologically-inclined organization theorists who study issues that relate, at least in a broad sense, to the interdisciplinary field of inquiry that is known as "strategy" or "strategic management" research. The course is not designed to survey the field of strategy. Rather, the focus is on getting a closer understanding of the recent work by sociologists and sociologically-oriented organization theorists that investigates central questions in strategic management. In particular, we will be concerned with identifying and assessing sociological work that aims to shed light on: (a) relative firm performance; (b) the nature of competition and market interaction; (c) organizational capabilities; (d) the beginnings of industries and firms; (e) the diffusion of transfer of ideas and practices across firms; and (f) strategic change.

Outlines tools for formulating and evaluating technology strategy, including an introduction to the economics of technical change, models of technological evolution, and models of organizational dynamics and innovation. Topics covered include: making money from innovation; competition between technologies and the selection of standards; optimal licensing policies; joint ventures; organization of R&D; and theories of diffusion and adoption. Taught using a combination of readings and case studies.

What is economics and why should you spend your time learning it? After all, there are other disciplines you could be studying, and other ways you could be spending your time. As the Bring it Home feature just mentioned, making choices is at the heart of what economists study, and your decision to take this course is as much an economic decision as anything else.

Economics is probably not what you think it is. It is not primarily about money or finance. It is not primarily about business. It is not mathematics. What is it then? It is both a subject area and a way of viewing the world.