Course Schedule: Fall 2003

Three hours of lecture per week. The impact of information and information systems, technology, practices, and artifacts on how people organize their work, interact, and understand experience. Social issues in information systems design and management: assessing user needs, involving users in system design, and understanding human-computer interaction and computer-mediated work and communication. Use of law and other policies to mediate the tension between free flow and constriction of information.

Designing and managing effective information systems requires an understanding of the circumstances of their use: real people use them for specific purposes under specific circumstances. Information systems (computer-based and traditional) both shape and are shaped by their users and their context. In the first half of this course, we consider the social nature of information and information systems, and their design and use as part of how people make sense out of their worlds, interact with one another, and coordinate action across time and space. We consider such issues as the social construction of information; knowledge communities (including organizations) and the collaborative nature of knowledge; the self and community in an electronic world; assessing user needs; involving users in system design; and issues in human-computer interaction, and computer-supported cooperative work.

Designing and managing effective information systems also requires having a larger understanding of law and policy issues arising from the uses of information. Sometimes these laws, especially intellectual property laws, provide important sources of protection against unauthorized uses or appropriations of information. Sometimes, as with state privacy and federal encryption regulations, the law places limits on what uses can be made of information or what kinds of security systems can be used to protect information. Sometimes, codes of conduct within an industry also constrain the freedom of firms to do whatever they want with information. Because information law and policy is evolving at a fairly rapid pace in response to new technologies, it is important to have a sense of some of the larger information policy debates going on at national and international levels, such as those requiring libraries to filter content and those concerning privacy, because what is a policy debate now may turn out to be a regulation or a broader rule at a later time. As information becomes the principal commodity of the information economy, traditional "freedom of information" policies need to be adjusted.

This course is required of all entering SIMS students and serves as an introduction to other courses in the curriculum treating these issues in greater depth.

(1) Past. This part is concerned with the history and theory of digital multimedia processing and production. Brief excursions into semiotics, film and media theory, the history and theory of computation, and computational media theory will provide the underlying basis for the discussion and evaluation of state-of-the-art systems and concepts, while introductions to video and audio production practice will give insight into theoretical concepts as well as current production processes. Students will apply their theoretical knowledge in two hands-on assignments and an in-class design workshop.

(2) Present. This part surveys current commercial and academic research systems for media production, editing, annotation, retrieval, and reuse. Among other things, we will investigate social media, user-generated content, automated media analysis and processing, and media asset management as well as current media standards. Students will write an analysis and critique of an existing multimedia information system.

(3) Future. We will look into the future of digital multimedia information systems including systems that automate and integrate many aspects of digital media production and reuse. We will discuss and design new concepts as well as next-generation multimedia information systems and prototypes. Students will work on and present final projects improving an existing system or designing a new component for a digital multimedia information system.

No midterm or final.

The primary goal of this course is to develop in the student the marketing skills needed to compete aggressively as an entrepreneur in technology fields. Upon completion of this course, the student should have developed the following skills:

• The ability to assess and predict customer needs in markets that may not yet exist;
• The ability to create and execute marketing plans that necessarily integrate sophisticated technological development with rapidly evolving customer requirements;
• The ability to create and grow a focused marketing organization rapidly and efficiently;
• The ability to create and use marketing communications to reach prospects, customers, OEMs and sales channels efficiently and inexpensively.

See the MOT site for details.

The “traditional” approach to strategic planning doesn’t work for industries in the midst of revolutionary change brought about by disruptive technologies—and every industry is in the midst (or soon will be) of such a change.

This course will define a pragmatic approach to strategic planning for companies facing major transformations of their industries and those of their suppliers and customers.

We will begin with a review of the basic theories of strategic planning and its limitations. We will then focus on a few key industries and disruptive technologies that are remaking them, and ask how winning companies recognize the change and know what to do with it.

Topics include:

• Lessons of the Industrial Revolution: Rules for Revolutionaries
• The Information Revolution: The Next Phase
• The Three Stages of Industry Transformation: Efficiency to Exchange to Emergence
• The Information Supply Chain: Turning Data into Products and Services
• Information Assets: The Physics of Invisible Capital
• Perpetual Strategy: The Portfolio Approach to Planning
• Eight Execution Problems: From Obstacles to Catalysts

Readings will include a mix of theoretical and practical, with some Harvard cases and some non-traditional texts.

This course aims to develop the interdisciplinary skills required for successful product development in today's competitive marketplace. Engineering and business students, along with design students from the California College of the Arts, join forces on small product development teams to step through the new product development process in detail, learning about the available tools and techniques to execute each process step along the way. Each student brings his or her own disciplinary perspective to the team effort, and must learn to synthesize that perspective with those of the other students in the group to develop a sound, marketable product. The project is the primary focus of the course, and is an intensive cross-disciplinary effort to design and develop a product or service that fulfills a target set of customer needs. Students can expect to depart the semester understanding new product development processes as well as useful tools, techniques and organizational structures that support new product development practice. This section of the course is fully team-taught with faculty from the Haas School of Business, the College of Engineering and the California College of the Arts.

See the MOT site for details.

This class is designed to introduce the principles of successful project management to both MBA and graduate level engineering students. The emphasis is on the practical rather than the theoretical, stressing decision-making in situations that confront project managers on a daily basis. The course concentrates on the PROCESS and the ORGANIZATIONAL PRINCIPLES required by project managers in all disciplines. The cases presented are from a variety of disciplines, and the concepts are universally applicable. This course is not a survey of current methodologies and theories, but rather provides the student with examples of actual projects and how the organizational and methodological decisions impacted the outcomes. During the final weeks of the semester teams of students will refine interview questions that they will use to analyze ongoing projects at several consulting firms. Interviews will be conducted with participants in ongoing or recently completed projects. The students will then prepare recommendations for management.

This course is designed to examine the strategic issues that confront the management of the development stage biotech company, i.e., after its start-up via an initial venture capital infusion, but before it might be deemed successful (e.g., by virtue of a product launch), or otherwise has achieved “first-tier” status. Thus, the intention is to study the biotech organization during the process of its growth and maturation from an early stage existence through "adolescence" into an "adult" company.

The key point is how does one research and develop a life science technology or product to the point where it is ready for the marketplace and how does one finance that relatively protracted process? Almost inevitably, at least a part of the answer to this question, and thus an element in the business and financial history of most biotech companies, has involved partnering with others, both as a means to perform aspects of the R&D process, as well as generate funding for that work. Hence, the focus of the class will be on business development, i.e., the deal making that must occur to accomplish these corporate objectives – both to bring in new technologies and especially, to facilitate getting the initial product(s) to market (and pay for the R&D required to make that happen). We will explore the critical deal issues from both the perspective of the development stage company and the viewpoint of the larger, more mature biotech or big pharma company with which it seeks to partner. Emphasis will be on biotech companies in the healthcare sector (primarily therapeutics, but also vaccines and diagnostics) with some (comparative) discussion of other industry areas, e.g., agriculture (veterinary and crop plant science).

Specific topics to be addressed will include: a brief review of the underlying biological science and its potential commercial application(s); the process of drug discovery and pharmaceutical research and (preclincical and clinical) development; the role of intellectual property and elements of the patent process; various partnering strategies and deal structures and examples of same (options, licenses, technology transfer, collaborations, supply contracts, joint ventures, M&A etc.); a description of the deal process, that is, the steps from identification and initial contact with the prospective partner, through the negotiation, to consummation and agreement execution, plus relationship management thereafter, including, as appropriate, a review of the outcome of certain partnerships to determine whether or not the relationship was successful from the perspective of each party and the deal factors that contributed to, or interfered with, achieving such success (or failure).

See the MOT site for details.