15 weeks, including a three-day residential session — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Barbara Tannenbaum

For technologists to make a significant impact in the industry, it's not enough for them to merely have good ideas; they also need to possess the ability to sell them. Effective communication skills impact success. In this course, students will receive individualized coaching with an emphasis on theory, while receiving multiple opportunities to practice communication skills both virtually and in-person. Written components of the curriculum will be focused on short-form communication such as Slack, emails, and PowerPoint presentation best practices. While creating compelling business presentations, this course will examine the relationship between a presenter’s goal and that of their audience, with consideration to classical rhetorical elements of logos, ethos and pathos.

Key learning objectives:

• Speaking with more power and confidence
• Using communication tools such as video conferencing, email and PowerPoint presentations more effectively
• Applying the principles of persuasive communication
• Delivering formal and informal presentations to a variety of audiences in a variety of contexts

15 weeks, including a three-day residential session — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Edward Barrows

Professional development is a critical component of the curriculum and student experience. In this course, students will engage in discussions, reflections, lectures, simulations and experiential activities in both residential and online settings to grow their skill sets as leaders. Students will be consistently challenged to apply leadership theory and practice to the classroom and personal work environments. This course will provide students with opportunities to establish professional development goals, receive support from peers and faculty, improve their capacity to lead effectively in dynamic environments, and gain confidence in their ability to assume greater levels of responsibility.

Key learning objectives:

• Increasing self-awareness of leadership styles, strengths and weaknesses
• Improving talent development coaching skills
• Managing workplace interactions effectively regardless of race, culture, gender, sexuality, age, creed or ability
• Learning what constitutes high performance and how it contributes to team functioning
• Ability to create and implement a professional development plan

8-week online course — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Steven Sloman

Decision making and action, in business and in life, depend on many types of judgments: right and wrong, certainty of outcomes, personal preference, and the concepts of happiness and purpose. How can reasonable judgments be made in the face of tricky headwinds such as randomness, conflict, complexity and ignorance? This course will examine how to make the judgments required for decision making and action while revealing facts about human thinking and the systematic errors that affect it.

Key learning objectives:

• Understanding the biases behind the judgments of others
• Knowing how to reduce bias in one’s own judgment
• Apply these ideas to both leadership challenges and one’s personal life

8-week online course — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Steven Sloman

Leadership is a choice — one that determines your quality of life and the value that you bring to your organization. However, due to the complexities of the world, our limited knowledge and the nature of making decisions that affect those beyond yourself, it is not an easy task. A follow-up to The Psychology of Judgment, this course will examine how people make decisions while considering strategy and revealing systematic biases. Students will review topics related to behavioral economics, and cover academic and applied topics while drawing on disciplines such as cognitive science, psychology, statistics, economics, and philosophy to improve individual, professional, and societal decision making.

Key learning objectives:

• Framing problems of decision making within the heuristics-and-biases paradigm
• Understanding how intuitions, emotions and communities influence our decisions
• Reflecting on the results and beginning to develop habits for practicing these skills in life and in the workplace

15-week online course — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Don Stanford

Chatbots, web crawlers, scrapers and AI are just a few of the many digital tools transforming our businesses, societies and understanding of reality. The economic promise held by this technology's glittering allure can come with enormous risks and responsibilities. In this course, students will explore how accessing data and advanced technology, coupled with the relentless imperative to be innovative and competitive, can tempt us to cross the line with the hope of promised rewards. This course shall examine how technology can often give rise to deep ethical dilemmas that every leader, regardless of industry, must fully grapple with. 

Key learning objectives:

• Decision making in morally ambiguous situations
• Understanding the historic context and example of key business leaders
• Responding as a leader when faced with evidence of egregious conduct in pursuit of economic gain

15-week online course — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Banu Ozkazanc-Pan

In the context of global competition and rapid technological advancements, developing entrepreneurial leadership skills can propel individuals and organizations toward growth and innovation. In this course, students will adopt an entrepreneurial mindset to help them identify unmet needs, stay resilient under conditions of uncertainty and develop a propensity to seek creative learning opportunities. While honing students’ leadership skills, this course will examine the digital transformation required for businesses to thrive in the age of technological disruptions.

Key learning objectives:

• Cultivating an understanding of the entrepreneurial thinking process
• Fostering a creative problem-solving approach to new challenges
• Utilizing entrepreneurial thinking to approach innovation 
• Engaging in entrepreneurial leadership as a tool for competitive advantage

7-week online course — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Adam Braff

Acquiring, enriching, and analyzing data is essential for utilizing technology in business enterprises. In this course, students will develop the ability to oversee the transformation of business data into actionable information—a management role that is ubiquitous in modern enterprises that use data analytics, business intelligence and data science teams. The final project in the course will further students’ progress toward the Critical Capstone Project (CCP) by asking them to solve real-world problems within their existing MTL CCP. With the use of tools such as Excel and Tableau Desktop, students will integrate, transform and analyze data sets within their chosen topics and create appropriate visual summaries to present their results and insights.

Key learning objectives:

• Understanding and applying frameworks for data-driven problem-solving
• Preparing data sets for business analytics 
• Analyzing data sets to discover and explore meaningful relationships 
• Interpreting analyzed results to develop strategic recommendations
• Producing analytically-supported data visualizations to communicate business opportunities

8-week online course — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Adam Braff

Building on skills developed in Descriptive Analytics, this course is a deep dive into the predictive analytics techniques that underpin strategic decision-making in contemporary business environments. Students will consider advances in generative AI and customer lifetime value, examining their application to data analytics and potential to revolutionize the way businesses analyze, visualize and forecast trends. Students will make informed predictions and take action at scale while exploring event forecasting, customer-level predictive modeling techniques and Bayes’ Theorem, resulting in a final project that will showcase students’ ability to create forward-looking business strategies and derive actionable insights.

Key learning objectives:

• Forecasting the probability of binary events that may affect a business
• Applying Bayes' Theorem to practical questions of business uncertainty
• Predicting future values in a time series of KPIs
• Calculating customer lifetime value and knowing how to act upon it
• Understanding the utility of generative AI in business analytics

7-week online course — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Reuben Fischer Baum

Data visualization is an essential tool in both discovering and communicating key analytical findings. However, data practitioners and developers often undervalue the visual polish that goes into creating the most effective graphics. This course will act as a primer for creating high-quality graphics using Excel, Adobe Illustrator and similar tools while zeroing in on the graphic design decisions that elevate visualizations, such as color, hierarchy, font selection and labeling.

Key learning objectives:

• Exploring and visualizing data using Microsoft Excel
• Using Adobe Illustrator to edit visualizations exported from Excel
• Making proper chart selections based on dataset and analysis needs, including findings related to uncertainty and probability
• Understanding and confidently implementing key design principles in order to communicate findings effectively

8-week online course — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Banu Ozkazanc-Pan

Innovation is a key driver for creating value, and with the advent of new technologies such as AI, automation and IoT in today’s globally connected world, there is ample opportunity for organizations to engage in it. Yet creating a culture of, and developing a strategy for innovation has many challenges. This course focuses on the foundations of, and drivers for innovation in leading global firms. The curriculum will address the challenges of creating innovation for global customers while also considering the importance of inclusion. Students will have the opportunity to learn from case studies that demonstrate successes and failures in various firms across different industries while considering the development and deployment of innovation.

Key learning objectives:

• Understanding the processes, practices, and organizational cultures that lead to innovation
• Assessing opportunities for adopting new, emerging and established technologies
• Examining how innovation strategies impact success on a global scale
• Understanding the value and role of inclusion in innovation

8-week online course — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Patrick McHugh

In order to navigate the complex landscape of business strategy, leaders must possess the knowledge and skills necessary to set and execute institutional visions. In this course, students will develop a strategic mindset by analyzing industry dynamics and predicting firm outcomes. While exploring and applying management principles and tools, students will enhance their abilities to implement and adjust strategies in real-time by effectively evaluating and tracking progress against strategic objectives. This course will encourage critical reflection on the processes that drive strategic innovation and enable students to foster creativity and adaptability in organizational strategies.

Key learning objectives:

• Developing a strategic mindset to assist in the formulation of vision and direction
• Applying strategic management tools to analyze and predict outcomes for industries and firms
• Identifying mechanisms to evaluate and track progress against strategic objectives
• Critically reflecting on techniques to enable or enhance strategic innovation

7-week online course — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Patrick McHugh

A critical component of effective leadership is a thorough understanding of corporate finances and financial decision making. This course will examine the strategic aspects of financial management, blending core concepts with practical applications. Through an exploration of strategic frameworks and models, students will gain market and industry insights  alongside the fundamentals of financial accounting and analysis. In this course, students will engage in discussion about contemporary topics and their implications on finance and strategy, with an emphasis on strategic financial decisions in mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Utilizing basic financial analysis techniques to understand firm performance and evaluate future potential
• Supporting responsible management decisions through the application of forecasting and scenario analysis
• Understanding the components of cost of capital
• Applying techniques for internal and external investment decisions such as new project funding, business acquisitions, divestitures and make-buy analyses
• Utilizing evaluation techniques to consider strategic fit and organizational culture in the analysis of acquisition and divestiture opportunities

8-week online course — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Peter Chomowicz

Jumbo shrimp, minor crises and strategic plans all have one thing in common: they’re oxymorons. A plan is concrete, finite and highly specific, while a strategy is open-ended, variable and composed of several different possibilities. This observation is not merely semantic; it highlights the approach this course shall take in understanding the various tools used to plan for a future that is less than certain. This course is centered around the scenario planning method, incorporating tools such as nominal group technique, the Delphi Method and Set-Based Design. By the end of this course, students will have gained an understanding of how strategic planning, regardless of the tools used, is ultimately about building consensus across an organization to communicate and act strategically.

Key learning objectives:

• Achieving mastery of several strategic planning tools
• Developing the ability to build consensus among diverse constituents
• Becoming knowledgeable of the key forecasting instruments
• Acquiring knowledge of the history, literature and development of strategic planning methods and their innovators

8 week online course — 0.5 credits
Instructor: Stephen Porder

The threat of climate change is ever-present, and the seemingly insurmountable problems that appear daily in the news lead to anxiety and helplessness. This makes it harder to find solutions that pave the way for a more positive future. Nevertheless, solutions are springing up with remarkable speed, from the deployment of renewable energy to the transition to electric vehicles to neighborhood tree-planting movements.

This multidisciplinary course will introduce students to climate science, the fundamentals of the climate change threat, and, most importantly, focus on just, equitable and feasible solutions. Through examining the ways in which technology has both contributed to and can possibly rescue our global environment, this course will help prepare future leaders, and their organizations, to become part of the solution. 

Key learning objectives:

•  Understanding the different sectors of our society responsible for greenhouse gas emissions
•  Articulating the emissions changes required to remain below temperature thresholds

15 week online course — 1.0 credits
Instructor: Larisa Leventon

How can leaders align team members, stakeholders and other parties in order to implement new strategies and pave the way towards a shared vision of change and excellence? The capstone requires students to consider such questions while utilizing their leadership skills to respond to and drive towards organizational change. While addressing an important business, social, organizational or sector-level problem of their choice, students will gather input from faculty, project advisors and peers to maximize impact. The CCP will examine the development and application of technology, as well as the application of knowledge and skills acquired through the MTL program, to develop solutions that are innovative, transformative and viable.

Key learning objectives:

• Combining business fundamentals with personal leadership skills to advance a solution to the challenge project
• Developing a solution to the challenge project that is adaptable to changing market needs, technological advances and increased global competition
• Demonstrating the rationale, value and importance of the project in ways that are meaningful to senior leaders
• Gaining the skills to successfully lead, inspire and communicate with diverse, cross-functional teams and stakeholders to advance solutions for the critical challenge project 

Learn More about CCP