MBA CURRICULUM

Like the world of business to which we apply it, our understanding of Integrative Thinking and how to teach it continues to evolve. Following is a snapshot of how we are currently weaving it into our MBA curriculum.

FIRST YEAR CORE COURSES

Foundations of Integrative Thinking
This first-year, first-quarter MBA core course focuses on the phenomenon and technology around thinking, and is rooted in concepts derived from the psychology of judgment and decision-making. Managers are continually barraged with information that may be reliable or not.  They must regularly choose courses of action in the face of many uncertainties, often much more rapidly than they would like. Do they make optimal decisions and how should we assess what is “optimal”? Do their actions accurately reflect the thinking process used to generate the outcome? Conversely, how can we make inferences about the cognition of others by simply observing their actions? This course will contrast how managers do make decisions with how they should make decisions by thinking about how “rational” decision makers should act. In particular, we will draw upon work in the areas of social and cognitive psychology, behavioural economics and the philosophy of science to develop a toolkit for thinking. Topics covered will include: managerial judgment and decision making, making inferences, intuitive thinking, dynamic decision making, context based choice, integrative thinking, framing effects and mental accounting, decision engineering and creativity.

Integrative Thinking Practicum
Professor: Michael Ryall
A fundamental building block of integrative thinking is the ability to clearly define and communicate one’s own view while at the same time seeking to explore others’ views with the explicit purpose of learning something new. Accordingly, this course is designed to allow students to experientially explore, understand and reconstruct their own and others’ mental models, in particular those relevant to business practice, using a new set of tools and frameworks.  This course will also give students a chance to practice reconstruction, analysis and integration of different mental models in a setting that emulates real business situations. Click here for the course outline.

SECOND-YEAR ELECTIVES

The Opposable Mind
Professor: Roger Martin
Instructors: Suzanne Spragge, Jennifer Riel
Note: a new morning offerering of this course will begin in January 2010
Day-to-day in your career, and in the rest of your life for that matter, you will be faced with a series of choices, big and small. Of course, some of the choices are simple and straightforward. Most require some degree of careful thought and deliberation. And then there are those few game-changing decisions. These are the choices we make when faced with certain kinds of problems - the kind of problems that seem to change as we attempt to solve them, the kinds of problems that seem to have no good answer, no answer that doesn't entail a series of unattractive negative consequences. The goal of this course is to provide you with a toolkit that helps you tackle these wicked problems. Integrative thinking asks you to refuse to accept the choice but instead to dig deeper into the complexity of the problem, to recognize and use the tension of the opposing answers to create a new solution – a resolution of the tension between the two options. This new answer takes aspects of each but integrates them to create something better than either is alone.

Design Practicum: Business Innovation Lab
Professor: Heather Fraser
This half-year course revolves around the three pillars of design thinking – deep consumer understanding, rapid prototyping of concepts that address a consumer need, and business design that make the concept viable in a strategically sustainable way. Students, paired with Ontario College of Art and Design graduate students of Industrial Design, are partnered with clients in order to develop solutions to large-scale, actual innovation challenges they face. As they go through the process, they apply the principles of design and in the process, ‘learn-by-design-doing’.

Innovation, Foresight and Business Design
Instructor: Alexander Manu
This course aims to prepare the MBA candidate for the ambiguous challenge of creating and supporting a real culture of innovation within the framework of an organization. In content, manner and style, this course has been designed to focus on developing the candidate’s ability to inspire discovery and learning within teams as well as increasing the value of their own creativity. Students will work with “pre-design” methods that will help them to identify and validate ideas and transform these results into pre-competitive products, services and systems. Finally, this course will explore how these insights inform strategic decision-making and ultimately create wiser policy options, by realigning the desires of people with the potential of new technology and the capabilities of organizations.

Leadership From the Inside Out: Building Relationship Skills That Work
Instructor: Melanie Carr
The main objective of this course is to provide participants with the opportunity to develop and practice models of empathy through an understanding of interpersonal communication, models of conflict resolution, and the development of a reflective stance. This course is predicated on the notion that increased interpersonal and self understanding is key to the design of an ongoing learning strategy and therefore to a successful business career.

Getting It Done
Professor: Brendan Calder
This is a course about Getting It Done^TM -- ‘It’ being strategy, operating results, annual objectives, culture change, key projects, initiatives, targets, restructuring and employee involvement and commitment. The course teaches proven methodologies and tools that have been continuously improved over 30 years based on the work of Peter Drucker, Bill Reddin and Mike Kami. The course is built around four integrative frameworks: Strategic Planning, Strategic Deployment, Performance Management, and Continuous Improvement. Visit the Getting It Done Web site.

Top Manager’s Perspective
Professors: David Beatty and Tim Rowley
This course is designed to help you sharpen the managerial tool kit you have developed during your career and at the Rotman School. Perfect your ability to think logically and communicate clearly, and maximize your impact as a strategic decision-maker.

Learning How to Learn
Not offered in 2009-10
Professor: Mihnea Moldoveanu
This course builds on the experience and insights of the First Year Integrative Thinking Lab and aims to develop and refine a nexus of adaptive emotional, behavioral and cognitive skills that underlie successful managerial thought and action. This cognitive, emotional and behavioral repertoire is cultivated through interactive classroom exercises, case studies developed by participants individually and in groups, and short presentations from faculty members.

Business Problem Solving: An Integrative Approach
NOTE: The first offering of this course will be in the Winter 2010 term
Professor: Mihnea Moldoveanu
The course is intended to give participants a first-hand learning experience in real business problem solving in an integrative framework. In doing so, it builds explicitly on the experiences and lessons of the first-year Integrative Thinking Practicum.
Click here for the syllabus.