Recording and using of financial business transactions to inform and support decision-making.

Develop an understanding about targeting your message and flexing your style to your audience.

Analyzing of financial problems corporations face including managing exchange risk, calculating the cost of capital, capital budgeting and taxation.

Managing and participating effectively in teams by understanding the factors that lead to effective and ineffective team behavior.

Identifying and capitalizing on market opportunities.

Identifying and understanding how effectively managing operations contributes to customer value.

Key concepts and tools in the context of competitive strategy; differences between corporate, competitive, and functional strategies.

Innovation is a necessary condition for entrepreneurship, be it among startups or established businesses. The course will provide students with a deep conceptual knowledge of innovation in its various forms, understand innovation processes, be able to apply that knowledge to build innovation-centric strategies, and to solve common problems related to innovation management. Specifically, the course will explore: product, service and process innovation concepts; innovation in high-tech and low-tech industries; how firms build and sustain innovation-centric strategies; creating and fostering a culture of innovation; and striking the balance between promoting innovation and harvesting its benefits.

This course focuses on how the advance of digital technologies extends the management capabilities required for competitive success across a range of business disciplines, including strategy, finance, marketing, innovation, and people management. The course examines “digital next chapter” issues in each of these disciplines, from platform dynamics in strategy to online customer engagement in marketing, to managing talent in an innovation economy. The course’s broad overview of the differences between digital business competition and more traditional ways of competing provide a context for the other core and elective courses in the program.

The modules and guided projects in this term cover software design skills, common design concepts and tools (like Web Design Skills, UX Design Skills, Business Process Mapping Tools (e.g. LucidChart / Modelio, and Programming Basics) as well as commonly used in enterprise platforms.

• MSc-Led Hack-a-Thon
• Resume/Portfolio Design Bootcamp
• At least one blended learning course badge in Design Software and Techniques, e.g. Adobe Cloud Design, etc.

This course focuses on examining the internal capabilities necessary to recognize the potential commercial value of digital technology emerging in the external environment, to define a concept through which to assimilate the technology internally and to adapt existing internal operations to apply the technology. Students will consider the prerequisite technology knowledge that must exist within an organization in order to bring in external technology knowledge. The course will examine multiple internal tensions that must be resolved in order to adopt new technology, specifically tension among internal elements of management preferences, corporate strategy, capabilities and resources. The influence of the current maturity of internal domains such as enterprise architecture, data governance, user privacy, cyber security, portfolio management, mergers and acquisitions.

The modules and guided projects in this term cover Systems Analysis and Design Skillsets and Business Process Analysis. Students will learn to use business process mapping tools, develop new or improved innovative business processes from gap analysis through process design in support of a company's strategic objectives in a socially responsible manner. Students will also learn how to develop business models that support a company's strategic objectives, be able to integrate appropriate information and other technologies, both existing and emerging, in developing business processes and business models. We have included courses on social media analytics and innovation in the social sector.

The purpose of this course is to assist in the development of skills, habits and expertise in salient dimensions of new venture creation. We consider innovation and new venture creation from the standpoint of the entrepreneurial individual in a variety of contexts - business, corporate and social enterprise. This course will focus on the process of ‘searching’ and ‘screening’ potential entrepreneurship opportunities and delve into the ways that entrepreneurs can develop preliminary ideas into the kinds of ventures that create real value - both social and economic.

Course offerings are subject to change and will vary by term. Choose two electives from:

• Accounting, Governance & Risk
• Causal Inference
• Competing in and with China
• Data Driven Management
• Data Management
• Entrepreneurship & Growth
• Frontier Markets
• Global Corporate Finance
• Global Financial Markets
• Global Supply Chain Management
• Inequality and Business
• Leading Responsibly
• Macroeconomics for Managers
• Managing Risk in Organizations
• Predictive Analytics
• Pricing & Revenue Analytics
• Social Media Analytics and Digital Marketing
• Sustainability
• Systems Thinking
• Technology and Humanity

The Digital Innovation Studio is a studio practicum in which students have the opportunity to practice the application of their developing skills in the context of a real client. Student teams will progress through 3 successive digital innovation design sprints, each of about one month in duration and each involving interaction with a different partner organization. These organizations will offer unique insights into their current service offering, end user profiles and their vision for the organization’s future. Student teams will engage in primary and secondary research to build an empathy for the context and then ideate the potential of adopting various digital technologies towards ‘what’s possible” in progressing towards the client vision. Each sprint will conclude with multiple teams presenting to their client at a Design Fair.

Summer 2024 partners*

1. Ivey Publishing
2. Sick Kids Hospital
3. CIBC
4. United Way – Elgin Middlesex
5. Karis Disability Services

*Please note, IDIS partners change yearly.

Podcast

IDIS Faculty Perspective
IDIS Student Perspective

The modules and guided projects in this term cover programming for business, e.g. R, Python, Java, Swift machine learning or quantum computing language.

This course provides students the opportunity to expand and apply their knowledge to current trends and situations at real entrepreneurial ventures. Expanding beyond the summer studios, this field work will demand a broader focus, greater leadership capability and advanced design and digital literacy based on the prior 12 months of course work. Through a combination of individual and team deliverables, students will learn (1) how to critically evaluate entrepreneurs’ responses and reactions to disruptive innovations and challenges; (2) how to develop a rapid response to a real entrepreneurial challenges; (3) how to work with an array of entrepreneurial clients to develop recommendations and best practices; and (4) how to assess and predict the emergence of tomorrow’s enterprise challenges.

The modules and guided projects in this term cover best practices in business applications knowledge and industry specific (e.g. Salesforce, HubSpot, SAP or Watson) and enterprise systems skills.

Course offerings are subject to change and will vary by term. Choose two electives from:

• Accounting, Governance & Risk
• Causal Inference
• Competing in and with China
• Data Driven Management
• Data Management
• Entrepreneurship & Growth
• Frontier Markets
• Global Corporate Finance
• Global Financial Markets
• Global Supply Chain Management
• Inequality and Business
• Leading Responsibly
• Macroeconomics for Managers
• Managing Risk in Organizations
• Predictive Analytics
• Pricing & Revenue Analytics
• Social Media Analytics and Digital Marketing
• Sustainability
• Systems Thinking
• Technology and Humanity

Electives are available for all MSc streams unless otherwise noted. Course offerings are subject to change and will vary by term.