Strategic Computing and Communications Technology
Spring 2007
1 Instructor
Hal R. Varian: http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~hal
2 Web site
The primary web site will be
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~hal/Courses/StratTech07. However,
we hope to make use of some of the features of
http://courseweb.berkeley.edu/courseweb/pub/courses/2007/Sp/INFO/C224/001.
3 Numerology
This a Management of Technology course and has 3 different numbers.
It is known as IS224, MBA 290C.1 and EECS C201, depending which
department you are in.
4 Prerequisites
Graduate standing in the College of Engineering, Haas School of
Business, School of Information Management and Systems. Space
permitting, graduate students from other units, or advanced
undergraduate students, may be admitted.
5 Topics
This course is about business strategy for technology-intensive
industries. We distinguish between external strategy (how to
interact with customers, suppliers, complementors and competitors) and
internal strategy (how to organize and manage the information
resources of the firm). Of course, these are very broad issues, and
our primary focus will be primarily applications involving on external
strategy in information technology industries.
Traditional business strategy has focused on the the classical issues
of suppliers, customers, competitors, entrants and substitute products.
However, several new phenomena emerge in technology intensive
industries such as
- Network effects.
- The value of a new product to a potential
user may depend on how many users adopt it.
- Lock-in.
- Once a product is adopted, it may be very costly for
users to switch to a new product.
- System effects.
- The demand for your product, such as software,
may depend on the price and characteristics of other very different
products such computer hardware.
- Co-opetition.
- The same firms may be both competitors,
suppliers, customers and providers of complementary goods and
services.
6 Schedule
Here is the schedule for the semester.
7 Reading
The basic textbook for the course is Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian,
Information Rules, Harvard Business School Press, which focuses
primarily on external strategy. Other readings and lecture materials
will be provided for internal strategy discussions. Here is the
web site for the book.
8 Requirements
There are two types of requirements.
- Individual requirements
- Participate in class discussion
- During the semester, read the business and technology press
and find 4 examples of news stories involving examples of
strategic issues we have discussed in class. Submit them along
with a one or two paragraph summary of how this relates to course
topics. Here are some examples of
news articles that students prepared last year.
- Group requirements
- Technology assessment. Your group will prepare a short writeup
and a Powerpoint presentation on a particular technology that
summarizes current issues and future prospects of that technology.
We will assign technologies and topics to groups based on interest.
Groups will be created by the instructor in order to ensure balance
among students with different backgrounds. Here are some
examples of previous technology assessments.
- Policy debate. Your group will prepare a debate on an assigned
policy issue. First prepares an outline that discusses both sides of
the issue. A week before the debate you submit your outline and
your preference for which side you want. We will tell you which
side you are on a few days before actual debate. Here are some
examples of previous debates.
9 Grading
Grading will be based on the items mentioned above along an evaluation
of your contribution to the group by the other members of the group.
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