Here's the new class lineup

Look at these happy men. Just look! Maine was wonderful. It was crisp and gorgeous and full of delicious food and quaint townage. We went to Ogunquit for the weekend to relax and get away from school, and for the most part we did, aside from about an hour we spent reading some cases.

Tomorrow, Monday, is the first day of Fall II, the second quarter. It is striking fear into the hearts of SOM students. It appears there will be substantially more group assigments, case work, outside-of-class commitments, accountability and structure -- every class has assigned seating, for example. No slacking in Fall II.

Fall II marks the beginning of the "Organizational Perspectives," the integrated curriculum that makes Yale SOM unique. Each class looks at an aspect of business from a particular perspective, and then brings in material from various fields and disciplines to add dimension to that perspective. The idea is that these classes more realistically simulate the way problems arise in the real world. (For example, as a manager, I won't have a problem about "marketing," I will have a problem about "customers.")

Here's the lineup:

1. Competitor. This course uses economics, accounting, marketing, organizational behavior and politics to help us recognize constraints, predict behavior and generate strategies in a competitive environment.

2. Investor. This is a quant course that draws on what we did in Probability Modeling & Statistics and Spreadsheet Modeling to analyze how investors think, what they care about, and what they do.

3. Customer. This course aims to illustrate how to become a customer-focused and market-driven company, it draws from HR, accounting, marketing, strategy and operations.

4. Sourcing & Managing Funds (SMF). I've heard this is the hardest class in Fall II. It's about how people at a firm raise and manage capital.

5. Negotiation. This is a three-week course, with the option of continuing all quarter, about the art of deal-making. It involves videotaped negotiation exercises and case readings.

Who's ready?? (Silence)