My teaching portfolio includes undergraduate- and graduate-level courses on entrepreneurship, design thinking, creativity and innovation, business strategy, and corporate strategy.

I am currently the course designer and lead teacher for SI250 “Ideas to Impact”, an interdisciplinary undergraduate course on developing innovative ideas to better the world around us. SI250 is the introductory course to BU’s phenomenal new Innovation and Entrepreneurship minor.

The Ideas to Impact syllabus here freely accessible here. The full course plan, including readings, is available here.

Select teaching materials (free access):

  • Battle of Cannae. This is a 45 minute in-class simulation in which student teams develop battle plans for Hannibal’s army in the Battle of Cannae. I pair it with Ch. 5 from Rumelt’s excellent “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy”, which allows students to explore the importance of diagnosing strategic issues and tradeoffs inherent in formulating an effective strategy.

  • Small talk design thinking exercise. This is a 90 minute in-class partner exercise modeled on the Stanford d.school’s excellent wallet and gift-giving projects. Students work in pairs to interview partners, reframe needs, develop user statements, and prototype solutions. “Small talk” is accessible and facilitates experiential prototyping.

  • Soapbox derby (handout, Excel). This is a 30 minute spreadsheet-based exercise in which teams compete with a limited budget to design a soapbox derby car. It provides a fun warmup to the resource-based view and competitive strategy.

  • A terrible restaurant. This is a simple 20 minute in-class exercise which helps students articulate and understand the importance of a clear value proposition and supporting actions, which they learn by designing a restaurant that is absolutely terrible…for everyone except their target customer.

  • Gold rush. This is a historical team exercise around the California gold rush. Teams work through a pile of (real) historical documents and photographs to try to determine whether they should join the migration West in search of riches. Key concepts covered are five forces, competition, and fleeting opportunities (email for info).

  • Embrace the remix. This is a simple 15 minute warmup exercise intended to introduce the concept of recombinant innovation.

If you’re an instructor and are interested in using any of the above, please feel free to email.