School Notes: School of Management
September/October 2013

Digital courses help students network

The Global Network for Advanced Management expanded its offerings this fall with the launch of innovative digital courses designed to enable students from the network’s member schools to work together as they study business issues with global dimensions. Taught by Yale School of Management faculty, the Global Network Courses connect students for intensive, semester-long courses comprising faculty lectures streamed via the web and virtual project work by student teams spread around the world. IE Business School, a network member, has provided the courses’ technology platform. 

The two experimental pilot courses offered this fall are Analysis of Competition Law and Enforcement Across Countries, cotaught by SOM dean Ted Snyder and professors Fiona Scott Morton and Pierre Cremieux, and Mobile Banking Opportunities Across Countries, led by Professor K. Sudhir.

The Global Network for Advanced Management is a consortium of 23 international business schools that connects faculty, students, and deans with their peers worldwide to improve business education in an increasingly globalized world.

Fellowships help entrepreneurs

Five MBA students and a recent SOM graduate spent the summer developing their business ventures as fellows at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (YEI). YEI provides teams of entrepreneurs from across Yale University with financial support, a workspace, mentoring, workshops with entrepreneurs, and opportunities for networking and meeting potential investors. The SOM students’ ventures include: Isoplexis, a biotechnology company developing a technology, based on Yale research, for measuring immune response by analyzing protein secretions of single cells (Sean Mackay ’14MBA and Kara Brower YC ’13, founders); TummyZen, which has created a new antacid, also based on Yale research (Hasan Ansari ’14MBA, Srikar Prasad ’14MBA, Fanni Li ’14MBA, and Yulia Khvan ’14MBA, founders); and Truly Protect, a software company developing a method for encrypting software code in order to protect developers from theft (Dor Zaidenberg ’13MBA, founder).

Examining the role of business leaders

A diverse group of executives, government officials, investors, and academics explored the challenges faced by business leaders at the 72nd Yale School of Management CEO Summit in New York City on June 5 and 6. Titled “Can CEOs Be Superheroes? Do We Expect too Much from the Boss?” the all-day discussion was led by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, SOM’s senior associate dean for executive programs and the founder and president of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute at Yale SOM. Summit participants included Sir James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank Group and the recipient of the summit’s Legend in Leadership Award; William Donaldson ’53, the 27th chairman of the SEC; John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group; Tom Horton, chairman and CEO, American Airlines; and Robert Diamond Jr., former president and CEO, Barclays.