Electives

Innovation is a critical priority for most organisations. Innovation is an enabler for startups and established organisations, yet it is not limited to the private sector; innovation is necessary in the public sector as well. Whereas many recognise the critical role of innovation, many organisations still grapple with how to execute innovation.

The execution of systematic innovation is not a trivial undertaking. Despite multitudes of popular press articles and blogs and podcasts on how to innovate, somehow the management of innovation still eludes many organisations and many managers. This course seeks to dig beneath the surface and buzzwords of innovation and reveal the core trade-offs and challenges, and how they fit together to (eventually) establish a systematic process of innovation.

To accomplish our learning objectives, we use a selection of readings, case studies, and in-class exercises. This elective challenges your debate and critique skills.

Ultimately, the course provides you with comprehension of the managerial and operational challenges associated with each stage of the product and service development process; proficiency with a set of managerial tools and methods for effective product and service development; and competence to manage interdisciplinary tasks in order to achieve a common goal.

A circular economy model requires firms in different sectors across the value chain to integrate disruptive technology and design business and financial models that are based on longevity, renewability, reuse, repair, upgrade, refurbishment, serviceability, capacity sharing, and dematerialisation. Organisations still have to take into consideration cost management and control, but they have to think about the financial impact – rethinking products and services and designing end user value propositions that offer increased efficiency, effectiveness, and performance. Despite the importance and potential benefits of the circular economy, the private sector is yet to adopt this new approach at either the strategic or operational level for many different reasons. The circular economy model applies to innovation and entrepreneurship, and governments need to create the policy conditions to make it develop, thrive and contribute to economic growth and development.

The course links circular economy concepts to entrepreneurship, finance, innovation and government policy.

Digital currencies are transforming our monetary systems. Since the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was introduced in 2008, many new developments have challenged the use of traditional notions of money, payments and financial contracts. Bitcoin and other crypto assets rely on a foundational digital technology – blockchain.

A blockchain is a ledger of encrypted issuance and transaction records stored as a hashed chain of blocks on a distributed network of nodes. All nodes of a given blockchain store copies of the entire history of the blockchain. Some nodes also support a blockchain by selecting, validating, and adding/chaining new blocks of records to the ledger in accordance with a pre-specified consensus algorithm.

The blockchain ecosystem currently encompasses ledgers with very diverse underlying technological features (specific cryptographic technologies and electronic sharing protocols), as well as varying governance solutions (private vs open access to the ledger and a variety of consensus algorithms).

This course provides foundational knowledge of blockchain technology and goes over a number of its key applications leading up to decentralised finance (DeFi) on the one hand and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), on the other.

This module equips you with negotiation and strategic skills relevant to high-technology organisations. The relevant negotiations include those within the firm (such as between management and labour or within a board or among firm founders), those between firms (as occurs in the building of industrial consortia), and negotiations between firms and government agencies or amongst a diverse group of stakeholders. Strategic issues covered include situations of conflict and cooperation under a range of assumptions about timing of actions and the kind of knowledge available to decision makers.

Negotiation simulations play a critical role in the pedagogy. As befitting the nature of negotiations, this is a simulation-driven workshop with a bit of theory sprinkled in rather than a lecture-based module with occasional simulations.

It is well understood by executives that the difference between successful and unsuccessful businesses lies in their strategy. Yet, in recent decades, businesses have been confronted with a new set of digital challenges and opportunities, leading to a revolution in competitive dynamics and an ongoing challenge for public policy.

The biggest business success stories of our time (Meta, Google and Microsoft, amongst others) are platform-based firms active in sectors that are heavily influenced by network effects and big data. Similarly, firms like Apple and Xiaomi may produce hardware but are in fact shaping ecosystems that enable the success of their hardware. Finally, established retailers, banks, media companies and other service providers are confronted with challenges and situations that define the new economy – multi-sided markets, serial monopolies, winner-take-all networks, platform mediated networks. Now, the rise of GenAI adds uncertainty and complexity to the picture.

But how technologies and platforms are developed and leveraged by firms to attain competitive advantage is not simply about technological expertise, but about business systems and strategies. The module examines various other challenges that firms face including strategic advantages provided by winner-take-all networks and strategies for overcoming them, multi-sided markets, direct and indirect network effects, role of complementors and much more.

This module introduces you to 2 essential and complementary ways of dealing with future uncertainties. On one hand we have diversification, the intuitive notion that you should “not put all your eggs in one basket”, which is ubiquitous in modern management. This exemplifies passive risk management. On the other we have the real options paradigm. This emphasises that future value depends on both unfolding uncertainties, which you cannot control, and the flexibility of your future responses. By investing in research and development projects, for example, companies buy the option to launch a product, which they may or may not exercise, depending on the level of success of the R&D effort and on market conditions at the time of launch. However, flexibility also costs money: R&D expenditure, for example in the biotech industry, can be huge. So how much flexibility shall we build into the system? This is the realm of project design for active risk management. System designers and project managers need tools that help them decide if added flexibility is worth the money. This course gives you a mindset and a suite of tools to tackle such problems.

All participants are expected to be familiar with probability and statistics at the level of an introductory undergraduate course.

Econometrics I is designed primarily for research-oriented MPhil students. It is taught in Michaelmas Term.

The module develops students’ ability to use linear regression and related statistical techniques to investigate economic and managerial relationships using primarily cross-sectional observational data. Particular attention is given to the assumptions and research designs required for causal interpretation. By the end of the module, students will be able to specify, estimate, test, interpret and critically evaluate single-equation regression models, with applications drawn from management, finance and business economics.

If you are interested in taking this module, you will be required to pass a qualifying test based on a summer reading list at the beginning of Michaelmas Term.

The Finance course provides a solid grounding in finance, and develops your understanding of the tools necessary to make good financial decisions. The course focuses on corporate investment and corporate financing decisions. The concept of risk and return, the cost of debt, the cost of equity, and the weighted average cost of capital (WACC), as well as the issue of capital structure are examined in detail from the viewpoint of a financial manager. A good knowledge of the topics in this course is important for future advanced finance elective courses or for a career in investment banking, consulting and corporate management. At the end of this module you’ll have learned how to identify the financial cash flows generated by the firm, and value the firm’s stock and bonds, as well as about the impact of financing decisions on firm and shareholder value. You’ll be able to make capital budgeting decisions and to calculate the appropriate risk-adjusted rate of return.

This course covers key theories in the field of strategy, innovation and organisations. We discuss the foundational theories, central debates and key readings that help us understand organisations and their strategies to survive and innovate through both technological and managerial innovations. Discussions include why managers adopt particular courses of action, how innovation is fostered, how new markets are created and how is strategy formulated. The field of innovation, strategy and organisations is inherently interdisciplinary, and so is this course. Accordingly, we not only discuss the underpinnings of research in innovation, strategy and organisations but also a host of related questions that have since become significant to understanding this body of research. The course is based around intensive seminar-based sessions. The format is group debates around contrasting perspectives related to the readings. The course enables you to critically interpret, analyse and problematise scholarly material and develop an understanding of how to make theoretical contributions in the field.

This course provides a firm foundation in modern electricity policy, introducing you to a wide variety of mature and emergent electricity generation and demand-side technologies. It also exposes you to the local, regional and global environmental effects of energy use. The course introduces the key considerations of energy policy and develops frameworks by which progress against policy goals may be achieved. Furthermore, it discusses issues with electrification of heating and transport.

Government decisions shape the conditions under which economies grow, technologies evolve, and societies pursue sustainability. They determine the incentives, rules and institutions that influence everything from investment and innovation to environmental protection and social wellbeing. Understanding how such decisions are made — and how they can be influenced — is crucial for professionals working across engineering, energy and business.

This module examines the relationship between public policy, legislation and governance in tackling complex global challenges. It explores how political priorities, economic analysis and scientific evidence interact within real decision-making systems at international, European and UK levels. Using cross-sectoral case examples – from infrastructure and digital technology to climate and energy policy – you will consider how ideas move from problem definition to implementation, and why outcomes often diverge from intentions.

This course looks at engineering and infrastructure development with an understanding that infrastructure designed today needs to be able to deliver services for an uncertain future. It highlights the limitations of managing infrastructure systems under the assumption of a stable environment and the need for planning for ‘risk tails’.

Part 1 of the course introduces key concepts of risk and resilience – familiarising you with fundamental principles and ongoing debates in theory and practice.

Using mega-cities as a background for the design and management of infrastructure, Part 2 of the course explores the strategies and tactics for delivering liveable and resilient cities of the future. This includes an exploration of adaptation pathways and aims to cover key concepts such as liveability.

Part 3 moves towards a more operational view for managing city infrastructure systems, highlighting current examples of practice for the anticipation of and recovery from shocks and stresses. The wider international agenda and theory of disaster risk management is provided, but the predominant focus remains to be case study discussion.

How can society guide innovation towards more sustainable outcomes? The module explores manufacturing, design and business-model perspectives and identifies contemporary issues in the field, including the design principles for sustainability (including eco, social, inclusive and whole-system perspectives), value perspectives, the circular economy, risk and resilience within global supply systems, and organisational challenges in adopting and advancing sustainability practices. Specific attention is drawn to structured methods for analysing and guiding innovation in design and manufacturing, linking the development processes to the products and services that result from them.