The Analytical Consulting Lab is a practicum for students interested in developing deep skills in analytics. In this course, students apply classroom concepts and techniques to a real-world analytical task in which they use data to recommend a managerial decision. Students apply techniques and theories such as applied statistics, multivariate regression, optimization, stochastic simulation, decision tree analysis, time series analysis, forecasting, real options, risk analysis, data mining, and discrete event simulation. Students present their analytical findings through a consulting approach.
This is an experiential learning course that pairs Kellogg MBA project teams with analytical and strategy consulting projects, sponsored by firms. The lab provides students with experience in working in teams to develop consulting, strategy, analytical, and presentation skills.
Participating firms have included: IBM, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman Aerospace, Deloitte, United Airlines, Groupon, Pfizer, Nielsen, Chicago Bears, Minnesota Vikings, Chicago Bulls, Chicago White Sox, Morton Salt, Hyatt Hotels, Carnival Cruise Lines, CDW, Turkish Airlines, William Blair and Co., the CME Group, Social Compact, ShopperTrak, Element Bars, IM Trust, Triad Broadcasting, Chateau Coutet (first growth Bordeaux), Northshore University Hospital, Dulce Vida Tequila, Interactive Health, Penn Gaming, US Army, Press Ganey, Few Spirits, Zest Health, Jacksonville Jaguars, Soccerly.com, LinkedIn, Monterey Aquarium, Northwestern University Big Ten Sports, Qantas Airways, Zest Health, Paydunk, and Wal-Mart among others.
I founded this course. This course is regularly over subscribed, resulting in multiple units per year. It is now the most popular lab class at Kellogg. I have been nominated for various teaching awards for this class. I have individually sourced 200+ projects with firms to provide the class the needed learning opportunities. McKinsey & Co. and Deloitte consistently recruit the graduates of this course for their proven analytical consulting skills.
The Risk Lab
The Risk Lab is an experiential learning course, focused on evaluation of risks faced by a sponsoring company or business venture for the purpose of investment consideration. The goal of the class is to develop skills in identifying risks, evaluating the nature and impact of risks, and communicating the risk impact in the context of an investment decision. The course focuses on using analytical techniques (such as forecasting, regression analysis, simulation, sensitivity analysis, and scenario analysis) in the risk evaluation. Teams develop risk models in a spreadsheet environment and may also be required to research industry trends to provide measures of risk indicators.
This is an experiential learning course focused on risk in markets and within firms. This class pairs Kellogg MBA project teams with firms that are sponsoring risk-focused, consulting projects. Teaching includes developing a risk framework, performing risk measurement, and making risk-based decisions.
Participating firms have included: Microsoft, IBM, Land O' Lakes, Levi Strauss, Menus of Change, MarkITX, CF Industries, the CME Group, Discover Financial, Edelman, Western Union, Gordon Rees, Mars Petcare, Review Trackers, Lockton, and Cuba Study Group.
I founded this course. Our projects in agribusiness have helped the student-led agribusiness club and have led to my selection (by the MBA students) as the faculty advisor to the food industry and agribusiness club
Analyzing and Operating Digital Platforms (Digital Lab)
In Analyzing and Operating Digital Platforms, we examine the operation of digital platforms made possible by mobile phones, Internet portals, and distributed sensor networks. The examination of these digital platforms focuses on how Big Data in these platforms can be analyzed and converted into meaningful data products for various constituents in order to monetize the data.
This is an experiential learning course focuses on analyzing digital platforms. This class pairs Kellogg MBA project teams with firms that are sponsoring digital platform-focused, consulting projects. Teaching includes developing a data monetization framework, performing digital platform evaluations, and identifying analytically based recommendations.
Participating firms: Google, Uber, Microsoft, IBM, T-Mobile, Groupon, Review Trackers, eBay, PayPal, Skimble, Uptake Technologies, and multiple peer-lending and personal finance firms.
I founded this course based on collaboration with leading and start-up digital platforms. Students on projects in this class report to me that this class experience has directly resulted in multiple job offers for Kellogg students with leading technology firms and has advanced the positioning of Kellogg students with leading technology firms.
Enterprise Risk Management
This course provides frameworks for identifying, quantifying, and managing risks to the overall enterprise and offers direction on the creation of a successful risk office and its integration with corporate strategy. Recognized forms of risk, such as Operational Risk, Credit Risk and Market Risk are explored in detail. The impact of shocks to enterprises, the role of liquidity risk, and the importance of protecting against these are reviewed. The course examines the measurement and consideration of political and global risk factors impacting a corporate strategy. The governance of risk management and the role of the board of directors in overseeing risk management are examined.
This course examines risk holistically and provides students frameworks in ERM. Special emphasis is given to evaluating risk in financial services, international supply chains, and macro global trends. Students apply risk frameworks to company decisions and personal decisions.
Awarded 2011 Kellogg Teaching Impact Award, one of five issued at Kellogg for excellence and impact in teaching, as offered by the Kellogg Student Association.
I founded this course, drawing on corporate experiences from my career in retail banking.
Operational Risk Management
This course explores the topic of operational risk at is it observed and manifested in various industries. A framework for identifying, assessing and managing operational risk is presented.
This course focuses on risk in operations-focused firms. Emphasis is given to firms in B2C services and to those relying on international supply chains. The function of risk management in non-financial services firms is also examined. Students apply risk frameworks to companies.
I founded this course. It is part of the Operations major at Kellogg
Strategic Data-Driven Marketing
This course in the Executive MBA program (EMBA) is designed to help marketers quantify the strategic value of marketing initiatives and maximize marketing campaign performance by leveraging data to make more informed marketing decisions. The course covers marketing performance management, customer relationship management (CRM) strategy and execution, Internet search engine marketing, data mining segmentation, analytic marketing and value driven segmentation. Content covered is especially applicable to those managing broad customer connection initiatives and those leveraging the use of a CRM infrastructure and Recency, Frequency, and Monetary (RFM) measurements for firm action.
The course provides students a hands-on approach to data-driven marketing. Data sets and case studies examine the role and value of customer measurement in marketing
I launched this course in the Executive MBA program. It was ranked the top marketing class by EMBA students in 2009 and 2010 and was consistently oversubscribed.
Enterprise Technology Management
This course is designed to give managers essential skills for executive oversight of enterprise technology. Topics covered include return on investment (ROI) for e-business projects, enterprise resource planning (ERP) deployment best practices, ERP ROI, strategic outsourcing, project management, and strategic alignment of technology. Class lectures are complemented by 'real life' case discussions of strategic and management issues for enterprise technology.
Students examine critical technologies and how these transform and enable new business models. Special emphasis is given to the deployment of analytics in the enterprise and how complexity in operations can be managed with technology. Students apply lessons to firms in project students and must build business cases for new technology adoption
Global Lab
This experiential learning course provides students with an opportunity to complete an international consulting project for a sponsoring firm during the winter quarter, and concludes with two weeks of in-country research and a presentation to the sponsoring firm's senior management. The sponsoring firm and the student team work together to determine the project's scope and parameters, under the guidance of a faculty adviser.
Students develop skills and experience in consulting in an international setting. Special emphasis is given to dealing with project ambiguity and conducting measurement for strategy formation.
Participating firms have included: HP, Northrop Grumman Aerospace, Turkish Airlines, Hyatt Hotels and Resorts International, Aspire Systems, Next Media, Promon, Refinancia, Astra International, The Mexican Secretary of Tourism, Pivot Point, Capital SAFI, Baxter, Kartuku, and Citrofrut.
Countries Studied: This class has featured projects in China, Bolivia, Brazil, India, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Thailand, Indonesia, Kenya, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, and Turkey.
This course is one of the most popular at Kellogg based on student bidding. It has also been nominated for the Kellogg Impact award in nearly every year it was offered. I have sourced over 50 projects for this class; all firms pay a fee and agree to host the students.
Global Initiatives in Management: Latin America
This course offers students an opportunity to learn about Latin American business opportunities within an innovative and flexible framework that combines traditional classroom-based learning with structured in-country field research.
This class provides students an-depth examination of Latin America. Through an examination of the economy, history, culture, politics, and business climate of Latin America countries, students undertake research on industries and present their findings to leading international firms. This class has examined Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. As a special bonus, I provide the students an introduction to the business of wine in South America and an introduction to the appreciation of wine.
Global Initiatives in Management: Gulf States and Middle East
This course offers students an opportunity to learn about Middle Eastern business within an innovative and flexible framework that combines traditional classroom-based learning with structured in-country field research.
This class provides students an-depth examination of the Middle East, with emphasis on the Gulf States. Through an examination of the economy, history, culture, politics, and business climate of Middle Eastern countries, students undertake research on industries and present their findings to leading international firms. This class has examined The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, and Turkey.
I launched this course, which was our first examination of the Middle East for the Executive MBA (EMBA) program. In-country visits included meetings with governmental officials and sovereign-wealth funds.
Statistical Methods for Management Decisions
This course explores the statistical relationships between variables and techniques for exploiting such relationships in business. Topics include one- and two-population hypothesis testing, correlation, simple and multiple regression analysis, and qualitative variables.
This class provides students a case-based approach to examining the value and use of multivariate regression in various business settings.
Recognized by Dean's Office for Excellence and Rigor in teaching this course.
Analytical Decision Modeling with Spreadsheets
This course teaches students how to structure, analyze, and solve business decision problems on Excel spreadsheets using tools such as simulation, sensitivity analysis, risk analysis, forecasting, and optimization. Underlying concepts, models, and methods are presented through Excel spreadsheets, using Excel functions and add-ins, etc. The course provides a disciplined approach to problem solving on spreadsheets, by building and analyzing models for a variety of problems in operations, finance, and marketing. In this sense, this course also serves to integrate various functional areas of management on a common spreadsheet platform.
This class uses a "hands-on," case-based approach to developing complex models in spreadsheets. In each class, three or four spreadsheet models are built from start to finish. Special emphasis is given to using simulation, optimization via Excel Solver (LP, IP, NLP), decision trees, and time series analysis. Attention is given to providing students confidence and skills in Excel, including short cuts, spreadsheet documentation, presentation, and overall model development best practices.
Authored and co-authored 30+ novel cases for the execution of this course, rejuvenating the course and resulting in increased enrollments. My sections have consistently been oversubscribed
Introduction to the Quantitative Environment and Introduction to Excel
This specialized course was developed to provide first-year MBA students an introduction to quantitative concepts with special emphasis given to the use of Excel in MBA programs
Students review statistical concepts and mathematical concepts in preparation for MBA courses. Introductions to probability, statistics, finance, and economics are presented. Excel functions are presented.
I founded this course. It is offered in the pre-term session. This optional class attracts nearly 60% of the enrolled MBA class and has extremely high course ratings.
Executive Education
Strategic Data-Driven Marketing: Leveraging Big Data and Analytics
This course in the Executive MBA program is designed to help marketers quantify the strategic value of marketing initiatives and maximize marketing campaign performance by leveraging data to make more informed marketing decisions. Special emphasis is given to the analytical techniques for leveraging Big Data. The course covers marketing performance management, customer relationship management (CRM) strategy and execution, Internet search engine marketing, data mining segmentation, analytic marketing and value driven segmentation.
Operational Risk Master Class: Measurement, Management, and Leadership
Operational risk has grown in importance. Today, operational risk trumps market risk in terms of economic capital in many leading financial institutions. New regulation, increased business complexity, and emerging technology all suggest that operational risk is a force that will be with us for some time and will continue to increase in size and importance. In this Master Class on Operational Risk, we will explore the features that make operational risk challenging not just in measure and management, but also in team leadership. Through real-world cases examples, we will examine how operational risk challenges firms unexpectedly and how through contagion it dangerously breads regulation and brand harm. We will examine operational risk in detail in financial services and how it is manifested differently in banking and insurance. Specific attention will be given to the development of Key Risk Indicators, and communication best practices in operational risk. We will examine in detail the Basel methodologies, stress testing and scenario analysis, and present best practices for getting started with Operational Risk. Special emphasis will be given to customer-facing functions and the role of consumer rights in the new regulatory environment. The course will focus considerably on how operational risk teams can best work within an enterprise, work within a risk culture, and contribute to the risk-taking and strategy of the firm.
Leadership in Risk Management: Moving from Measurement to Influence and Impact
Leading and developing risk management teams involve working across the enterprise, managing regulatory and external reporting requirement, while also working with the senior management and board of directors in developing a risk strategy for the firm. Most if not all risk managers do this without formally controlling profit and loss decision for the business. This requires a special approach to influencing within the enterprise and in forming partnerships within the enterprise to meet common risk management goals. The Risk Office is also responsible for some of the most complex analysis in the enterprise, and communication to the board of directors, suggesting an immense need to translate the most technical to the most strategic. Financial service firms have seen risk grow beyond that of credit and market, and operational risk is not a major focus for many firms. New regulation, increased business complexity, and emerging technology contribute to a firm's operational risk and suggest that this type of risk is a force that will continue to increase in size and significance. It also suggests that risk leaders will need to oversee audit, compliance, and governance functions to meet these goals. In this Leadership Program, we will explore the features necessary in successfully running a risk team, with a special focus on measurement and management, and leadership. Through real-world case studies, we will examine how the properties of risk contagion now bring risk leaders into the management of regulation and reputational harm. Special emphasis will be given to customer-facing functions and the role of consumer rights in the new regulatory environment. The communication of advanced tools for risk management, including, stress testing and scenario analysis will be examined. The course will focus considerably on how risk teams can effectively work within an enterprise risk management framework, develop a risk culture, and contribute to the risk decisions and strategy of the firm.
Risk Management - A Comprehensive Program: Theory, Practice and Success
This intensive program is designed to develop the knowledge and understanding of risk management practices for anyone working or interested in the area of risk management. Practical cases and exercises will be used throughout the program to illustrate what is successful, and what challenges organizations still face today in risk management.
Effectively practicing risk management requires a comprehensive foundation of knowledge. Being a successful risk management professional also requires understanding how organizations perform in making risk-taking decisions, how information and key risk indicators can be focused to improve the organization, and how teams can best execute the important functions of measuring and managing risk.
By completing this program, participants will be able to successfully:
Evaluate risk management situations in a real-world setting
Critically assess risk management metrics and findings
Identify the limitations of risk management in real-world situations
Understand best practices on how to lead and organize risk management teams
Analyze the mechanism of corporate governance and risk management leadership and its critical relationship to the overall corporate strategy and management of the enterprise
Managing regulatory and reputational risk is essential for commercial success. The issues of dwindling public trust in corporations, increased scrutiny of business practices, and the near-instantaneous speed of global communications compounds the fact that most corporations struggle to respond cross-functionally to emerging issues and contain incidents concerning corporate reputation. That which is perceived as real has real consequences and once a belief is formed about the corporation its products or leaders, it is difficult to change. Yet many businesses lack the capabilities to discover, analyze, predict, and manage the regulatory and reputational risks that surround their corporate reputation. In this program we discuss new approaches to managing regulatory and reputational risk and how to turn it into opportunities.
Enterprise Agility: Leveraging Your Big Data and Putting Analytics to Work
The pace of the information age continues to advance, with customer, market, and operational data increasing in volume and precision. This has provided some firms new data assets and opportunities. Leading analytical companies have finally tackled the task of monetizing customer data and leveraging digital interfaces for growth. Such growth required adaptation in business models and agility in decision-making. For many industries, growth will come from this transformation enabled by using data. Adapting business models to focus on data and to take analytical approaches will require agility and innovation. The reward for agile and analytically focused enterprises has been rising. "Big Data" has developed in many industries and has already challenged the customer and revenue models in industries such as newspapers, music, and media, and will likely due the same very soon in a host of other industries.
In the post-information age, the firms that are able to first and best leverage Big Data will have great advantage. Specifically, leveraging analytics, monetizing customer data and "Big Data" will be part of the success. This will require the enterprise to flex to adjust to new data. So, stimulating innovation with data to produce an agile enterprise will require looking at internal "Big Data" and its impact to internal operations and knowledge management. The classical business hierarchy and lines of business structure can impede how innovation occurs in an enterprise, and real investment in analytics ultimately requires deep investments and a change in how firms approach business opportunities by deploying test and learn approaches. External "Big Data" involves looking outside the enterprise at markets and customers. The use of customer data has many pitfalls and creating value streams from customer data requires careful consideration. It can also lead to great competitive advantages in pricing and marketing. Developing revenue strategies in customer interfaces like social networks, marketing campaigns, and even operational data will require careful identification of revenue streams and attention to customer expectations.
This program will examine how firms can best approach opportunities with internal and external "Big Data." Frameworks for deploying and developing analytical processes will be presented. Enterprise agility and its role in data-focused innovation will be examined along with best practices for corporate cultural changes and hiring decisions for an analytically minded company.
Developing Enterprise Agility: Leveraging Internal and External Big Data
Leveraging Analytics in Marketing and Supply Chain Operations
Monetizing Customer Data
Impact of Analytics and Big Data to Corporate Culture and Hiring
Stimulating Innovation through Big Data
Disrupting business models with new data
Developing, leveraging, and protecting new data assets
From Big Data to Big Profits: Strategic Use of Big Data
Following the successes of Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Google and the others that have developed rich customer data sets, there is an emerging trend that companies that invest in data and create new data, will be positioned to dominate whole markets. The discussion revolves around the strategic use of customer data in marketing, managing customer expectations, deciding on when and how to sell/share/give away customer data, and avoiding the mismanagement of customer data and the risks it poses. Examples from many industries are considered and students are provided a framework for identifying and cultivating the use of customer data in their business. The learning objectives include identifying the issues in managing a complex company asset like customer data and the implications of key strategies in the use of such data.
Enterprise Risk Management
Corporations have adopted multiple approaches to dealing with risk. In many ways, Enterprise Risk Management still means many things to different organizations. In this, frameworks for incorporating and relating disparate risks such as reputational risk, market risk, credit risk and operational risk are considered. Increased complexity posed by globalization, outsourcing, disruptive technology, and general increase in business scale pose unique and potentially large risks to nearly all major corporations. Managing risk to the enterprise requires investment in learning about those unknowns that challenge decision-making and corporate success. Enterprise Risk Management fulfills on the Board's role in vetting corporate strategy. This section examines the role that senior executives and the board play in directing the risk learning processes across the enterprise and how it impacts the setting of corporate strategy.
The Risk Office and the CRO
In response to regulations, risk complexity, and the need for the Board to understanding risks, many organizations have developed Risk Offices, headed by Chief Risk Officers that advise the board and other c-level executives on risks. The role of the CRO, how it has evolved, it authority, and its responsibility is discussed. This program provides guidance on organizing a Risk Office.
Operational Risk Management
For many organizations, operational risk has emerged as a great source of concern. The financial services and insurance industries, along with corporations closely tied to these industries, are all aware of regulation that governs the capital reserves for operational risk. Recent developments suggest that credit rating agencies will look to operational risk information in rating corporate debt. This imposes new responsibilities on executives and board members. In this program, we will discuss the board's role in operational risk management and enterprise strategies for managing operational risk.
