Digital Transformations Course Overview

Today’s most valuable companies have created digital products and platforms that we use every day.  The market capitalization of the so-called FAANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) far exceeds investors’ wildest dreams of only a decade ago.  The development of new technologies that is driving this shift in the way we live our lives is only just beginning.  The decades ahead will include more innovation, growth, and more disruption based on digital technologies.

This class will focus on strategies for using digital technology to add value to a company’s products and services, or to create a new business altogether.  A major portion of the class will be spent with entrepreneurs who have created and lead some of Colorado’s top digital technology companies.  These companies are thriving in this new world.  Some are even creating new platforms that are disrupting their entire industry. 

As a current or future executive, this course will help you develop a framework for evaluating whether a business is effectively leveraging new technologies or if it is ripe for disruption.  This will help you make good decisions and lead the change, hopefully reducing the risk of becoming irrelevant (or less relevant) like so many of our great companies in the past (E.g. Sears, GE, The Yellow Pages, Campbell’s Soup).  

This is a capstone course and will cut across functional areas. Therefore you will be expected to apply principles from several MBA disciplines including marketing, finance, accounting, management, and operations in your class discussions and homework. You will be expected to produce thoughtful, real-world work and ideas that you could apply in a real world business situation.

Readings

In keeping with the contemporary nature of the course, readings will consist primarily of links to relevant articles.  Please see the course schedule for details.  Most digital strategy textbooks are outdated by the time they are published, given the fast-changing nature of Colorado’s digital economy.  Books will be replaced by top leaders of companies actually disrupting the space.

The Course Will Consist of the Following and you will be Grading As Indicated: 

Class attendance and participation in discussion: 25%

Guest Lecturer Assignments: 20%

Two tests: 20%

Your Personal Journal: 10% 

Your Capstone Project: 25%   

Grading Policies

(1) No grades will be based on "extra work" which is not required of, or optional for, all students enrolled. Further, without exception, no late cases will be accepted.

(2) Course grades will be based on a weighted average of percentage scores from the assignments, project, participation, and the average on the exams according to the following scale:

A 93.00 - 100 %

A- 90.00 - 92.99

B+ 87.00 - 89.99

B 83.00 – 86.99

B- 80.00 – 82.99 

 and so on

Class Participation

Since this is a practicum class that is heavily guest-speaker focused, it is impossible to make up in-class information via the readings or “extra” activities. Therefore, class attendance and participation are particularly important. 

Class participation will be assigned on an “overall” basis based on the instructors’ subjective opinion of your participation efforts. In order to get participation points it is necessary for you to discuss constructively and actively in class as well as make a significant contribution during your final presentations. Please be aware that the correlation between “talking” and “participation” is sometimes spurious. 

Physical attendance in class is expected for the entire duration of each class, and will be taken every night. After the first class missed, you will automatically lose 2 percentage points for each additional class you skip, whatever be the reason. 

Please note that attending class remotely, i.e., via skype or similar processes, while encouraged, does not constitute “attendance”. Long story short: if you expect to miss several classes, please consider taking this class in a different semester.

If you attend class regularly but never participate in discussions, you will get, at most, half of the participation/attendance points. It is therefore necessary to attend and regularly participate to get full points.

Showcase Classes

Some of the classes, labeled SHOWCASE classes, will be part of the “Best of Colorado” speaker series offered by the Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship. During these special sessions, we will invite guests from outside class to attend as well. Since our classroom cannot accommodate extra people, these classes will be held on the 5th floor Laube Commons. Please see the course schedule regarding the dates for these SHOWCASE classes. As a special bonus, food and drink will be provided by the Center on these dates. 

The SHOWCASE event will only be during the first half of the class.  During the second part, we’ll head back to our classroom for the rest of the discussion.

Academic Dishonesty

All forms of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Internal Affairs Committee of the Business School for further action.  Typical academic dishonesty includes—but is not limited to—plagiarism, submitting a homework assignment or project that you did not write, submitting a previously written project, copying someone else’s assignment etc. Typical consequences for cheating are failure in the course and suspension for one semester