I have taught core courses on Strategy for NYU Stern’s MBA students, in the 2-year, Langone and Executive MBA programs. Since 2018 Fall, I teach a 2-semester long MBA elective course on science and technology entrepreneurship. This course, which I developed and offered for the first time at Stern, integrates the experiential learning gained through working with startups admitted to the Endless Frontier Labs, with an academic curriculum that exposes students to the latest research on entrepreneurship, venture screening and startup strategy. I also teach doctoral courses on innovation and entrepreneurship. I enjoy teaching and consider it an honor to interact with, and train, future business leaders and scholars.
TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
I view my role in class as helping students become better strategic thinkers. Strategic thinking is an art and a science. The art of strategic thinking involves generating new ideas about courses of action that create value for customers, investors, other stakeholders of a business and society. This requires creativity and is hard to teach. The “science” of strategic thinking requires developing hypotheses about the consequences of pursuing actions, and choosing among the actions, typically with imperfect information about outcomes. I aim to teach students this systematic aspect of strategic thinking. Accordingly, while teaching, I leverage my comparative advantage as a social scientist and emphasize the following three principles.
Data-based decision making. Better-informed managers make better decisions. And as more and more data become available to decision-makers through the electronic recording of economic and social transactions, the ability to analyze data, and convert data into intelligence will be a key source of competitive advantage for businesses. Accordingly, I encourage students to always ask “what do the data say?” and integrate the resulting insights as part of their strategic analysis. This focus on data-based decision making allows me to bring my expertise as a large-sample researcher to the classroom.
Integrating qualitative and quantitative analysis. Strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship are “big picture” topics—they bring together analyses of firms’ revenues and cost components. Of course, while analyzing data helps, many big-picture decisions are made with limited data and in the face of ambiguity. Strategic thinking thus requires integrating qualitative and quantitative analyses to chart a course for the future. I teach students to qualitatively analyze situations by applying appropriate frameworks and to consider how their calculations are sensitive to the qualitative assumptions underpinning their analyses.
Counterfactual thinking. As an empirical researcher, it is second nature for me to question whether observed relationships between variables are indeed causal. This skepticism towards causal claims arises through constantly evaluating the factual against counterfactuals—by asking whether the apparent effects of an action could have been achieved through alternative, typically unobserved, influences. To draw an example from my research, one may observe a positive correlation between patenting activity and profitability in a cross-section of firms. However, without knowing the counterfactual—what would firms’ profits be, if they did not patent but did everything else, including inventing, identically as firms which patented—one cannot recommend managers to pursue more patenting. Hence, while analyzing cases and business situations, I encourage students to always ask the “what if” question, and to construct experiments that allow the evaluation of strategic actions with respect to their counterfactuals.
COURSES TAUGHT
- Science and Technology Entrepreneurship (Endless Frontier Labs course). MBA program
- Competitive Strategy. MBA program
- Corporate Strategy. MBA program
- Strategy. MBA program
- Seminar on Innovation & Entrepreneurship. PhD program
You can read my full teaching statement here.