15.990 Projects for change: A collaborative management learning lab
Spring 2008
15.990 Projects for change: A collaborative management learning lab
MW 1-2:30 p.m.
This full-semester, 9-unit course is open to MBA students, as well as other MIT graduate students with the instructor's permission.
Work on projects that could make a real difference in tackling poverty, improving health, or furthering development. Learn the skills for effective action while you do so. With your projects as our main focus, this course gives you the chance to design and live your own case study.
Projects. In Spring 2008, 15.990 projects cluster in three domains of the social sector:
- Global health delivery, with projects that tackle pressing needs in developing countries to reduce infectious diseases and improve heath. For example, one potential project addresses expansion plans a successful health organization in Zambia, and another project examines how a local program in Rwanda improves health outcomes.
- Enterprises and networks that could address poverty worldwide, with a cluster of projects that pair you with existing companies and student teams in India, China, Mexico, and Columbia to work on specific opportunities and challenges, such as an assessment of various models of corporate venture capital for social enterprise.
- Other entrepreneurial start-ups in the social sector, including innovative new business models, hybrid organizations, and successful start-ups that are addressing the challenges of scaling up. Alongside opportunities we have already collected, there is potential room for student-generated projects, but they must meet specific criteria (see below).
Students are matched to projects early in the semester and work on teams with the project hosts, using email, skype, and other means to collaborate with hosts and other stakeholders.
Course philosophy: learn by doing. Classes are designed as working sessions that address a key aspect of your project every week. Learn about relevant ideas, research, and theory via focused readings and mini lectures, and apply them right away via in-class exercises and clinics. You will accomplish something on your project every week and are expected to participate actively in class to integrate your project experience with course content.
Get started. First, contact Anjali Sastry, the professor, and before 15 January 2008, fill in a brief questionnaire. Email shiba@mit.eduor go to https://wikis-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/sloan/praxis
.
Interested in global health and want to get in on the ground floor? Join our IAP workshop to develop, scope, and plan a project based on specific opportunities connected to the Global Health Delivery Initiative. Together with an introduction to global health, the workshop gives you a chance to apply a basic project framework to potential projects in global health. The result will be a set of projects that could be used in the class.
Busy during IAP but interested in developing an appropriate project? Scoping and planning materials will be posted online for you to draw on, together with deadlines and requirements for use in the class.
Just want to do the project? All students, including those who want to join existing projects, must submit a brief questionnaire by 15 January. Then come to class ready to join a project team!
Questions? contact Prof. Sastrysastry@mit.edu, current 990 TA Shivani Garg shivani@sloan.mit.edu, course assistant Shiba Nemat-Nasser shiba@mit.edu