OIM9526 #CX #XD Innovation
(Formerly MOB9526 #CX #UX #XD)
1.5 Intensive Elective Credits

If you took and passed MOB9526, you cannot register for OIM9526, as these two courses are equivalent

This course will complement an existing graduate 1.5-credit elective called Strategies for Innovation and Growth. It is also a good complement to the Managing Technological Innovation course. As their titles suggest, the latter course is overwhelmingly focused on technology based products and hi-tech industries while the former is focused on how can large firms can create and sustain innovation and growth activities. This course will complement two existing graduate 1.5-credit electives (1) Leading Innovation @ Gorillas, Chimps & Monkeys and (2) Innovation Processes.

All countries go through life cycles-agriculture, manufacturing, services and knowledge. The majority of the developed world can be considered today to be primarily in the post-service knowledge based industries. Providing services in addition to goods, which were at one time a differentiator for most businesses are more or less commoditized today. Several trends have emerged over the last 15 years: (1) Move from Services to Experiences; (2) Emergence of new Digital and Networked Economies; (3) Information and Knowledge Intense Economies; (4) the rise of the new post-PC industry, also known as the TIME industry, i.e., the convergence of the Telecom, Information, Media and Entertainment industries and (5) new forms of Designing & Delivering Great Customer Experiences. This course explores the innovations that are driving all these trends as primarily applied to a broad section of service industries-Airlines, Retail, Hospitality, Healthcare, Financial, B2B, TIME and even Not-for-Profits.

This course will cover: understanding the customer psychology and perceptions in service interactions; explore concepts, methods and tools to dream, define, design and deliver great customer experiences; innovative strategies to use customer experience as a differentiator; and how the convergence of digital technologies - data, voice & video - is helping firms to engage customers in new and innovative ways.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Fall/Spring/Summer

SEN1337 A Crash Course in Surfing

(Student Instructor: Benji Cantera) There are few feelings that compare to the excitement after you catch your first wave, but acquiring the courage to take action can be daunting. In this interactive course, students will learn the basic information needed to not only talk about the surfing industry as a whole, but also embark on their own surfing journey in the future. Students will learn the history and current landscape of the surfing industry, the process of building a surfboard, what makes a good surf break, and the basics on how to surf. Presentations, guest lecturers, and in class hands-on activities will help students gain the confidence needed to take the next step in their lives!

Wednesdays 6:30 - 9:00 pm

HSS2019 A History of Food and Election Campaigns

4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsTreating voters to food and drink in exchange for their vote on Election Day has a long history. This course focuses on campaigning for public office from 1876 to the present. We look at how political meetings and campaign stops provides the opportunity for a candidate to identify with voters and thereby gain their vote. As an HSS, this course cultivates ethical structures for interrogating the world, understanding choices, and making decisions. It focuses on frameworks for critically understanding the cultural constructions of meanings and identities and the simultaneous and reciprocal construction of cultural and political context by human beings as ethical agents.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

ACC3536 Accounting Analytics
4 Advanced Management CreditsStudents who have taken ACC3545 cannot take this course and vise versa

Data and analytics are being used to assist businesses in becoming more efficient and effective in their decision-making process. This course will improve your ability to critically analyze data in order to make better business decisions and to communicate this information effectively to your audience. Students will learn how to use analytics tools from the lens of a manager, a financial statement user, a tax analyst, an auditor, and a forensic accountant. The course will introduce you to various analytics software products, and provide an opportunity to interact with professionals in the field.

Prerequisites: Junior or Senior Class standing

ACC4530 Advanced Accounting
4 General CreditsThis course extends the in-depth study of accounting concepts and techniques which began in Intermediate Accounting I and II. Topics include business combinations and consolidation of financial statements, accounting for variable interest entities, translation and remeasurement of foreign currency-denominated financial statements and consolidation of foreign subsidiaries, governmental and not-for-profit accounting and accounting for partnerships.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Spring

Prerequisites: ACC3500 & ACC3501 as a pre-requisite or a co-requisite

SEN1310 Advanced Excel & VBA through Personal Investing

(Senior Instructor: Dineth Siriwardane) This course will serve to teach students useful technical skills, which they will practice by exploring a variety of personal investing strategies.

Advanced Excel through Personal Investing will introduce students to concepts applicable to personal investing such as technical, fundamental and comparative analyses. Simultaneously, students will learn advanced Excel functions such as VLOOKUPS, COUNTIFS, SUMIFS, INDEX MATCHES and OFFSETS as well as basic VBA commands. While these skills will be applied to personal investing in this course, they are also transferrable to multiple situations in the work world.
Overall, this course aims to teach students two distinct yet complementary skills-personal investing and Excel. By the end of the class, students will have created a comprehensive template for personal investing, derived from the skills learned in this course.

Course Schedule:
Class 1 - Tuesday, January 27
Class 2 - Tuesday, February 3
Class 3 - Tuesday, February 10
Class 4 - Wednesday, February 18 (as February 17 is a Babson Monday)
Class 5 - Tuesday, February 24
Class 6 - Senior Seminar Showcase: Tuesday evening, 3/3 or Friday afternoon, 3/6. Details to be confirmed by first day of class.

OIM7502 Advanced Programming for Business Analytics
3 Elective Credits

Python is a general-purpose programming language that has rapidly become one of the most popular languages for data science. Python allows users to quickly and efficiently collect, clean, analyze, visualize and narrate using any kind of data (structured, semi-structured or un-structured); irrespective of how messy the data might be. In this course, students will advance their python skills for data science. Students use a variety of data to learn powerful ways to conduct data analytics and learn helpful data science tools along the way. This will equip students to conduct their own analyses towards the end of the course.

Prerequisites: OIM 6301

SPN4615 ADVANCED SPANISH IN THE COMMUNITY
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsSPN4615 Advanced Spanish in the Community is a service-learning course where students will explore issues of Latino identity in the U.S. Through direct engagement with a community partner in Boston, along with corresponding readings, films, podcasts, and class discussion, students will consider the diversity of the contemporary Latino experience and its representations in the media, popular culture, and politics. Class discussions will be supplemented with a review of advanced grammar topics designed to help students improve their proficiency and gain confidence in their language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing). As an integral part of this course, students will complete 12 hours of service learning (approximately 2 hours every other week) through a partnership with Sociedad Latina, a Boston-based organization whose stated mission is _to create the next generation of Latino leaders who are confident, competent, self-sustaining and proud of their cultural heritage._ Students will provide mentorship to high school students that are participating in a 10-week entrepreneurship curriculum as part of an after school program run by Sociedad Latina. Extensive journaling will allow students to reflect on their experiences and improve their writing in Spanish. Guided writing workshop sessions will help prepare students' written reflections to be published on a class blog. At the end of the semester, Babson students and their high school mentees will develop a joint presentation about their collaborative learning.

Prerequisites: SPN4620 or higher, or similar proficiency as demonstrated by a required placement test. Heritage speakers may enroll upon permission of the instructor.

EPS4515 AFFORDABLE DESIGN AND ENTREPRENERSHIP (ADE)
4 General Credits1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 per day (The Millennium Development Goals Report, 2009). While the problems afflicting the poor are great, there is power in thinking small - how a simple, focused innovation can change an individual life, a personal choice or a system.

Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship (ADE) is an international, experiential social entrepreneurship and design course where students work in partnership with communities in India, Ghana, Morocco and Alabama to co-create and test innovation concepts and sustainable business models. The focus is on income generation and meeting daily human needs through new product and service design and development but the scope considers the cultural appropriateness of design choices and their impact on social venture success. This includes how design can impact the desirability and viability of innovations in different problem-opportunity contexts, examined in the innovation phases of observation, conception, strategic planning and implementation.

A joint offering by Babson and Olin College, the course integrates core elements of user-oriented collaborative design and engineering design with entrepreneurial opportunity shaping and venture strategy. Babson and Olin College students work collaboratively in cross-functional teams to exploit their respective expertise and strengths. Starting with ethnographic research, venture teams collaborate first-hand with local communities on focused issues to identify addressable problems and to evaluate and test potential innovation solutions. Mixing entrepreneurship and design pedagogies, the course takes a systems view considering how design choices in product/service design and business model design can enhance-or diminish-a social venture's impact.

The course is run as a virtual firm where students work on distributed teams to develop social ventures by engaging with partner organizations, prioritizing programs, and setting and pursing goals while deploying modest amounts of seed capital. The course is time-intensive but rich and immersive. Students travel once per semester to partner sites to build relationships, learn about local culture, understand and map needs, identify stakeholders, perform experiments and tests, and collect information on local infrastructure and value chains.

Prerequisites: FME1000

CVA2002 African American History and Foodways (HIS)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThe course covers the major periods, movements, and events that have shaped African American history and foodways. These include: the African slave trade; antebellum period; the civil war and reconstruction; World War I and the great migration; Harlem Renaissance and Garveyism; Great Depression; Spanish Civil War and World War II; Civil Rights and Black Power movements; industrialization, the growth of the prison industrial complex, and the _war on drugs_. The course will also include content on African American foodways from the African slave trade to the Black Power movement. Classes discuss the assigned reading with lively student participation. Out-of-class work includes readings, online exams, attending lectures, artistic presentations, and films, as well as independent research.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)