Turn your IT skills into business-building skills. Whether you want to expand your opportunities inside a corporation or build your own company, this course will teach you what you need. This course is geared towards individuals whose future ambitions lie in the spheres of creating business opportunity and corporate innovation management. The course objectives set out to equip candidates with not only the tools and skills necessary for the development of ideas, but to instill a ‘can do’ entrepreneurial attitude for new business enterprises. Participants will learn the core essentials of entrepreneurial management and explore the areas of opportunity evaluation and conceptual business models.
 
The course will prepare candidates to drive and manage innovation in existing companies and establish new entrepreneurial ventures. People with or without work experience, who wish to design, develop and run their own innovation driven globally orientated businesses. This practically oriented course covers the process from generating new business ideas, developing and refining them, designing the infrastructure and launching the business. The course focuses on:

• The knowledge to apply best practice approaches onto new business proposals to maximize their chances of success.
  
• The opportunity to develop and practice skills for making appropriate judgments, regarding the choices in your business development.
  
• Opportunities to develop your product and service concepts to a launch level
  

This course introduces candidates to theories, concepts, and techniques useful for making sound financial IT decisions in a corporate context. These decisions can be divided into strategic decisions, which focus on the choice of assets that best help to meet a firm’s risk and return objectives, and tactical decisions, which aim at minimizing the carrying costs of a firm’s assets. The principal techniques studied in this course are discounted cash flow, capital budgeting, and the use of pro-forma statements in financial planning. The relevant theories are the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), the Gordon model of stock pricing, and the theory of optimal capital structure. The course also devotes time to understanding the institutional environment that modern corporations operate in, with particular emphasis on the organization and structure of the financial markets and how they relate to IT.

This course provides candidates with in-depth and advanced knowledge and understanding of specific tools for managerial decision-making based on financial data, focusing on IT considerations. The course aims to improve candidates’ analytical abilities of evaluating different types of financing and selecting the appropriate ways of funding. The course also explores how managers interact with accounting and finance people helping them to develop a critical awareness of how firms meet their financial objectives utilizing financial decision-making. This course will also focus on financial tools and techniques, which can be used to help firms maximize value by improving decisions relating to capital budgeting, capital structure, and working capital management.

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge
On completion of this course the successful candidate will:

1. Display a critical awareness of current issues and developments in financing and management.

2. Demonstrate in-depth and advanced knowledge and understanding of the tools that are used to value investment projects and companies (valuation).

3. Show a critical awareness of issues involved in how firms should raise funds for their investments (financing).

4. Demonstrate a conceptual grasp of and critically evaluate how investment and financing decisions are related.

Skills
At the end of this course the successful candidate will be able to:

1. Critique key aspects of finance and investment theory

2. Critically appraise financial management decisions and evaluate their impact on the organization

3. Expertly apply and critically evaluate financing tools to support managerial decisions in general and for specific purposes (NPOs, start-ups, SMEs, large enterprises)

Course Topics

• Rationale and function of financial management

• Methods of financing

• Decision criteria for covering capital demand

• Financial practice in international comparison

• Internal financing

• External finance, mezzanine capital

• Equity capital

• Basel II and III

• Start-up companies

• Characteristics of financing of NPOs, for-profit SMEs and large enterprises including e-businesses

This course exposes candidates to the macro and micro aspects of organizational behavior and theory that are essential to information technology management. The macro aspects will focus on structural contingency theory as an approach to effective organizational design. The micro aspects will focus on leadership, teams, and individual behavior (e.g., motivation, job attitudes). Specific issues and problems which are covered include: the relationship of the IT organization with the external environment, the influence of the IT organization's strategies, culture, size, and production technology on the organization's design, and strategies for managing organizational processes such as teams, conflict, power/politics and organizational change.

This course is designed to provide candidates with the opportunity to gain an in-depth theoretical knowledge and critical understanding of cutting edge management thinking. They will develop advanced management and leadership skills through critical analysis of business issues, focusing on IT considerations.

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge
On completion of this course the successful candidate will:

1. Demonstrate a critical understanding of the historical development of organizations and its impact on senior managerial activities and leadership

2. Show in-depth and advanced knowledge and understanding of change management approaches and strategies

3. Display a systematic understanding of how to appraise the strengths and weaknesses of organizations against the backdrop of changing markets

4. Show a sophisticated grasp of how organizational change can be managed successfully through appropriate leadership

5. Demonstrate an in-depth knowledge and critical understanding of quality management principles and issues

Skills
At the end of this course the successful candidate will be able to:

1. Critically evaluate the validity of theories and approaches pertaining to change management and apply them to practical organizational contexts

2. Critically analyze and assess organizational development and recommend new organizational/management models to support and lead an organization

3. Critically investigate quality management issues and put forward effective solutions

Course Topics

•    Historic rise of organizations and their linkage to managerial aspects

•    Structural and process-oriented forms of organization

•    Organizational theories

•    Leadership and management

•    Change management

•    Quality management – TQM, Lean Six Sigma, EFQM

•    Managerial theories

•    Industry 4.0

This course focuses on developing accounting analysis useful for IT managerial decision making purposes. Topics will include an introduction to elements of financial accounting, cost-profit-volume analysis, manufacturing costs and elements of cost accounting, special decision analysis, budgeting, variances and controllability, and responsibility accounting.

This course is designed for candidates with a background in information technology that have not taken a class in statistics or need a refresher class. In this class we will apply probability and statistics throughout a system’s life cycle. Topics include the roles of probability and statistics in IT, the nature of uncertainty, axioms and properties of probability models and statistics, hypothesis testing, design of experiments, basic performance requirements, quality assurance specification, functional decomposition, technical performance measurements, statistical verification, and simulation.

This course introduces participants to the essence of business economics – the theories, concepts and ideas that form the economist’s tool kit encompassing both the microeconomic and macroeconomic environments. Microeconomic topics include demand and supply, elasticity, consumer choice, production, cost, profit maximization, market structure, and game theory while the Macroeconomic topics will be GDP, inflation, unemployment, aggregate demand, aggregate supply, fiscal and monetary policies. In addition the basic concepts in international trade and finance will be discussed.

This course covers the key micro- and macro-economic theories and their application for forecasting, production and budgeting in managerial decision-making, focusing on the IT considerations of these important topics. The course integrates different relevant theories so that they can be applied to real life situations in both national and international contexts.

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge
On completion of this course the successful candidate/student will demonstrate:

1. In-depth knowledge and understanding of the key micro-economic theories in business economics

2. A conceptual grasp of the key macro-economic theories in business economics

3. A critical awareness of the importance of the different functions of business organizations from a leadership prospective

4. An advanced knowledge and understanding of the processes of how organizations take business decisions

Skills
At the end of this course the successful candidate/student will be able to:

1. Critically evaluate the role of business organizations in society

2. Critically analyze the impact of government regulations on business organizations

3. Critically evaluate in detail the impact of monetary and fiscal policies on business organizations

4. Independently gather, synthesize and critically analyze complex sets of data and information in order to make business decisions in a global economy

Course Topics

•    Introduction to economics

•    Economic systems and policies

•    Market demand, supply and pricing issues

•    Managerial decision making

•    Competition and globalization

•    Corporate and strategic management

With the rapid expansion of global markets, managers are struggling to balance the paradoxical demand to think globally and act locally. They must be more literate in the ways of international customers, employees, service providers, commerce, and competition than ever before.

Rooted in the economic drivers and cultural aspects of global business and management, this course focuses on the importance of trade for economic development as well as the potential impact of business on host countries. The course also recognizes the deep connection between global trade, information technology, and innovation. Managing IT and innovation on a global basis is an intriguing and increasingly important challenge.

Combining studies in global business and its responsible management with the specialized knowledge of IT and global innovation management, whether employed by an international firm doing business in the U.S. or by a firm expanding globally, this course will prepare you for the challenges ahead.

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