Educator Resources

The Mind of the CFO: Becoming a Strategic Leader

Executive Education

• The Physics of Business Growth: Mindsets, Systems, and Processes

  This course is designed for practicing managers and business leaders as a how-to guide for explaining research findings and presenting tools and processes to help each participant to create an internal aligned growth system, identify growth opportunities, launch growth experiments, and create and manage a diversified growth portfolio. The book and cases in this course attack the natural proclivity of organizations to be anti-growth. Using research examples of growth leaders and growth companies, this course presents a roadmap for growth that can be used to transform a business into a consistent growth company. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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MBA Core

• The Brand Strategist's Toolkit: Creating, Developing, and Managing Superior Brands

  The Brand Strategist’s Toolkit: Creating, Developing, and Managing Superior Brands

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• Accounting for Managers

  As the language of business and the cornerstone of our capital markets, accounting provides terminology, frameworks, and concepts with which to analyze and understand the financial consequences of business activities. As these activities have become increasingly complex and global, the task of presenting timely, relevant, and reliable financial information to interested internal and external users has become more challenging. The primary purpose of this course is to help students develop a high degree of financial statement, financial analysis, and financial management expertise in order to enhance their capabilities as informed managers and decision makers. This course covers both managerial and financial accounting, but to the extent practicable, it does so by taking a comprehensive and integrative approach. As a part of the course, we will also bring to the discussion the news of the day as it pertains to the world of financial reporting. This course is intended to be thought-provoking and managerially relevant; it is not designed as one predominantly focused on accounting mechanics or the memorization of accounting rules. Upon completion, students should have a working knowledge of essential managerial and financial accounting concepts and should be able to understand how they apply to complex business decisions. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Business Ethics

  The purpose of this course is to enable students to reason about the role of ethics in business administration in a complex, dynamic, global environment. Specific course objectives include the following: To be able to recognize ethical issues in business; To be able to apply several important frameworks for moral reasoning to complex business issues; To appreciate the role of ethics as central in business decision making; To develop a general management perspective that includes an ability to formulate, analyze, and defend decisions in ethical terms; To critically examine your own ethics and test them in conversation with your peers. Ethics is an ongoing conversation about human interrelationships, so ethics is as much a part of management as finance, accounting, and organizational behavior. Ethics concerns how our actions affect each other, and it is about the choices  we make for ourselves and for others. Note that it is easy to generate heat in ethics discussions, but it is more difficult to generate light. Our focus will be on cases without easy answers, we will try to find some viable alternatives in extremely difficult situations, and we will develop reasoning skills to defend these alternatives from a managerial perspective. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Business Strategy

  This course develops students’ ability to evaluate, design, and execute a firm’s strategy by analyzing the competitive and organizational factors essential to sustained success. The objective of the course is to develop students' strategic thinking skills by learning the concepts, models, and tools of strategic analysis as well as how to apply those tools to actual competitive situations. Taking an action-based orientation, the course reinforces and revitalizes the enterprise management perspective. Because of increasing global interdependence and a rapidly changing business environment, the course emphasizes both the dynamic and the global aspects of strategic management. The tools and skills developed in this course will be vital to those pursuing careers as consultants and general managers as well as those pursuing careers in finance and banking, marketing, and entrepreneurship. The course spans a wide range of topics, including developing and evaluating strategy, developing firm capabilities and sustaining competitive advantage, analyzing industry evolution and competitive dynamics, and linking strategy and execution. Course objectives are accomplished through exposure to cases from a range of industries and managerial settings. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Decision Analysis

  This course highlights the analytical methods that decision makers use to gain insight into risk and uncertainty to help students develop the skill and sophistication to artfully use them. Students will become better decision makers as they learn to proactively manage risk in creative ways.

   The course emphasizes the design of analyses to fit circumstances and interpretation of results; it does not emphasize the mastery of sophisticated mathematical techniques. It studies and integrates individual judgment and personal intuition in realistic business situations with the most widely applicable methodologies of decision and risk analysis, probability and statistics, competitive analysis, and management science. The goal is always the quality of the decisions made in light of better analysis and deeper thinking, rather than simply the analysis itself.

  The first half of this course focuses more on a general framework for thinking about and managing risk. Students use the language of probability distributions to describe the uncertainty they face and simulation as a tool to explore the impact of that uncertainty for the decisions they face. Situations involving uncertain future cash-flow streams and the role of the timing of those cash flows on the valuing of opportunities will be examined. The role data can play in shaping calibration of future uncertainties, specifically touching on the use of parametric probability distributions as a way to describe uncertainty, sampling as a source of data, and regression as a tool to capture the relationship between uncertain quantities to produce better forecasts are considered. Students will also gain skill in spreadsheet modeling.

  The second half of the course builds on the first by focusing more on ways to proactively manage risk, particularly through identifying and/or creating opportunities to add value and/or reduce risk through the sequencing of decisions. Students will consider the value of acquiring additional information before decisions have to be made, as well as the value of strategies to reduce (or eliminate) risk at the time of decision. Gaining experience with assessing uncertainties and forecasting probability distributions and learning ways to address competitive situations, where uncertainty includes not knowing how a competitor might behave, will be topics. Students will learn how to influence active competitors that are capable of anticipating their actions and responding to them (in part, via analysis of matrix games). Finally, the use of linear constrained optimization models (and Excel Solver) to aid decisions with a large number of decision variables and constraints will be studied.

  Objectives :

  • To develop a process for knowing when and how to do managerially relevant analysis under conditions of uncertainty, many decision variables, and unstructured contexts, using both data and personal judgment.
  • To develop a framework for understanding uncertainty, a language for describing uncertainty, and methodologies for making decisions in light of uncertainty, all through field-based case studies about practicing managers.
  • To provide the basic skills and conceptual understanding of the most widely applicable methodologies of decision and risk analysis, probability and statistics, competitive analysis, optimization, and management science.

  Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Financial Management and Policies

  Financial Management and Policies (FMP) reflects three important features of the Darden School MBA program: (1) it is a general management program; (2) the program through its frequent use of the case method of instruction has a practical, pragmatic bias and a decision orientation; and (3) the first-year program provides the basic training on which students can build in their second-year. Consistent with the first-year program, this course provides:

  1. An Introduction: The course provides the basic framework necessary to pursue further study in finance in the second-year of the MBA program or individually thereafter. This framework is an orientation toward valuation.

  2. Basic Mastery: The course emphasizes essentials: the tools and concepts that every general manager, entrepreneur, or manager in other functional fields should know.

  3. A Corporate Perspective: Because we seek to understand the problems of general managers, this is a corporate finance course, rather than a course in investments, banking, or personal finance. While elements of these related topics must be brought to bear, the ultimate focus is corporate policy and tactics.

  4. An Underpinning for Addressing Broad and Challenging Questions: These key themes run throughout the course: (a) How can the firm create and sustain value for its investors? (b) How do managers communicate with investors and vice versa? (c) How should value be allocated among the firm’s stakeholders? (d) How does the firm’s competitive position affect its policy decisions? (e) What is “excellence”?

  Students with experience in finance will find this course an opportunity to broaden their understanding of the field to include a general management perspective. Students who are new to the field are urged to look beyond the mastery of terms, tools, and techniques toward the managerial insights that an understanding of finance helps develop. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Marketing

  In this course, we will explore consumer and organizational decision processes that underlie choices of products and services. We will then use knowledge of these decision processes and competitive dynamics to determine how businesses should make profitable decisions about products, pricing, and promotional and distribution strategies. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Operations

  Darden's core operations course is intended to enable a manager in any area to leverage his or her individual performance, via an understanding of operations and how it integrates with other business functions to influence a firm's performance. Throughout the course, we focus on how to manage operations for superior firm performance. Achieving operational excellence requires a mindset of integration with marketing and the other functions of the firm so that improvement efforts throughout the firm reinforce each other and so that the functions work together to create and enhance value for customers. Having learned how operational effectiveness can be a powerful contributor to successful firm performance, we spend the remaining classes learning how to analyze and design processes. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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MBA Electives

• Financial Institutions and Capital Markets

  This course highlights the importance of institutions and markets. Markets do not exist in a vacuum; participants interact in organized markets that are set up to promote efficient exchange of funds from buyers to sellers. Institutions, such as banks, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, etc., are key players in the capital markets looking for arbitrage opportunities; with their insights and volume of trading, any arbitrage opportunities are usually eliminated quickly, pushing markets to become more efficient. Markets that have existed for some time are generally efficient but that may not always be true for newer markets, such as some emerging markets. Trading in the markets takes place in the form of instruments, the most common of which are stocks and bonds. Constant innovation on the part of banks has created a large number of alternative securities; to the extent that these new instruments facilitate trading (or help in the execution of arbitrage trading strategies), they can have a long life (e.g., stock options) and earn banks fees.

  Financial engineering (structured products) can provide a solution to clients' problems often in a cost-effective way. Arbitrage and financial engineering both entail risks; sometimes these risks are not clearly seen and evaluated properly, which can cause (and has caused) problems among banks and even for the entire market-based system (just think of the recent sub-prime mortgage crisis as one such example).

  Risk management is a key function firms use to understand their exposures and manage them. Recent moves by banks have elevated its stature; only time will tell whether these new measures will be sufficient to avert new crises. The government plays a big role in the creation and evolution of the markets, most commonly via regulation. Regulation can also change the rules of the game altogether and create a new class of winners and losers. Understanding its implications is therefore critical to continued innovation and growth on the part of market participants.

  This course is important for students pursuing careers in investment banking, private equity, sales and trading, hedge funds, investment management, and financial services. The course is also appropriate for those seeking careers in corporate treasuries or wanting to understand markets, as well as for financial consultants (such as asset management consultants). The course links with several courses in the MBA curriculum, such as Valuation, Investments, M&A, Financial Trading, and Fixed Income. With the exception of Valuation, none of the other courses listed here are requirements for taking or successfully completing this course. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Business-to-Business Marketing

  This course is designed primarily for students seeking a marketing career in organizations that market products and services to other organizations. While the course should be of special importance to individuals interested in business-to-business marketing (B2B), it is also appropriate for those seeking careers in consulting, manufacturing, and in nonmarketing functional areas of B2B firms. The course emphasizes the tactical aspects of business marketing as well as the conceptual and strategic elements. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Marketing Analytics

  Marketing Analytics focuses on developing marketing strategies and resource allocation decisions driven by quantitative analysis. Topics covered include market segmentation, market response models, customer profitability, social media, paid search advertising, product recommendation systems, mobile geo-location analysis, media attribution models, and resource allocation. The course will draw on and extend students’ understanding of issues related to integrated marketing communications, pricing, digital marketing, and quantitative analysis. The course will use a combination of cases, lectures, and a hands-on project to develop these skills. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Corporate Financing

  Corporate Financing focuses on capital raising and has as its ultimate goal greater understanding of the capital acquisition process. Corporate Financing emphasizes capital raising in the public markets—the public equity and debt markets and the quasi-public Rule144A market. Issuance in public security markets entails strict adherence to the rules and regulations that govern the marketplace. While these rules place more limitations on managers' actions than private placements, U.S. and developed world capital markets offer firms the broadest array of possible funding sources at the lowest cost. The course covers the institutional process of security issuance—both the formal rules and regulations as well as the informal norms and practices of the marketplace.

  In the first part of the course, students survey a number of commonly used financing arrangements, such as initial public offerings, follow-on equity issues, and several forms of straight and convertible debt. The range of securities covered is meant to accomplish two goals: Inform students of the terminology and basic features of these instruments and help them understand the appropriate context for when a particular security should be used. Financial strategy and the study of ways that firms ensure adequate funding and on-going access to capital markets are also examined. In the latter portion of the course, financial structure and how individual securities work together within a firm’s overall capitalization are the topics. Because firms typically rely on multiple providers of capital, well-designed financial structures must achieve compatibility among the interests of the individual capital providers. The extent to which the market perceives the potential for conflict affects both the availability and costs of external capital. All aspects of financing and this course as well require an understanding of the markets—the buyers, sellers, and institutional features.

  This class targets students with professional interest in corporate finance, commercial and investment banking, financial services, and management consulting in financial services. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Valuation in Financial Markets

  "Corporate Financial Policies" (CFP) extends the corporate finance topics that were introduced in the first-year "Financial Management and Policies" course (UVA-MOD-0123Y) and then enhanced in the Valuation course. The course is taught predominantly from the viewpoint of the chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and treasurer of a corporation. The objective of the course is to introduce students to the various aspects of a chief financial officer's job. Topics include: risk management, resource allocation, dividend policy, raising external funds, determination of the cost of capital, evaluating investment opportunities, and the design of management. The Valuation in Financial Markets course is a prerequisite for this class.

  The course is organized into two modules. The first module, "Bond Pricing Basics & Advanced" (UVA-MOD-0162), concentrates on valuing traded financial assets in the fixed income, options, and currency markets. These assets have precisely defined payoffs and often involve complicated structures. In the second module, "Valuing Companies" (UVA-MOD-0163), the course focuses on valuing entire companies (i.e., enterprises) and the implication for stock prices and equity value. We pay particular attention to different ways to deal with the impact of both operating results and financial structure on market value. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Corporate Financial Policies

  Corporate Financial Policies (CFP) extends the corporate finance topics that were introduced in the first-year "Financial Management and Policies" course (UVA-MOD-0123Y) and then enhanced in the Valuation course. The course is taught predominantly from the viewpoint of the chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and treasurer of a corporation. The objective of the course is to introduce students to the various aspects of a chief financial officer's job. Topics include: risk management, resource allocation, dividend policy, raising external funds, determination of the cost of capital, evaluating investment opportunities, and the design of management. The Valuation in Financial Markets course is a prerequisite for this class. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Data Analysis and Optimization

  This course is designed for students who want to be optimally prepared to perform quantitative analysis at a level consistent with (and exceeding) expectations for MBA interns in positions where quantitative sophistication is required. Its only prerequisite is the first-year Decision Analysis course; no additional quantitative experience or acumen is required. The course will focus primarily on data analysis used to both gain useful insights into relationships and make better, more useful forecasts. In addition to more advanced treatment of regression analysis (the goal being for students to be able to build and apply sophisticated regression models), students will be familiarized with other common approaches to forecasting, such as rudimentary time series analysis. Finally, the course will introduce students to the concepts of optimization using Excel Solver add-in to determine how to optimally allocate resources in situations involving complex trade-offs. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity

  Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity (EFPE) focuses on a wide range of financial situations that arise in the private equity industry. We cover early (venture capital) to late stage enterprises (buyout) to provide perspective on how the risk of the firm (stage of development) affects the terms, structure, forms of financing, and valuation of the transaction. Over the past two decades there has been tremendous growth in private equity deal volume, from roughly $7.8 billion in 1993 to a peak of $880.1 billion in 2007.1 Since 2007, the industry has been recovering from the financial crisis, but still controls a sizable portion of corporate assets. As PE has grown it has become a more integral part of corporate finance and the financing options available to firms. Despite the overall growth in this industry, private equity remains a relatively small part of total invested dollars. For every dollar of private equity in the portfolio of U.S. institutional investors, there is approximately $40 of publicly traded equities. As a result, industry is generally less well known and understood to a wide range of professionals and EFPE is designed to familiarize students with the practices of this industry. EFPE focuses primarily on the investment phase of the private equity cycle and examines the investment strategy, management, valuation, and structure of enterprises at various stages of development before becoming public companies. The classes are sequenced to reflect the progression of investments from early to late stage. The sequencing of the course material from early stage to late stage is intended to provide a perspective on how financing and valuation change over the life-cycle of a firm. There are many judgments in finance that rely on an intuitive sense of the capability and maturity of an organization. How much uncertainty must be resolved before an investment moves from early stage to late stage in investors' minds? The rate of resolution of uncertainty plays a critical role in the value of enterprises, in the returns required by investors, in the type of financing available, and the structure of the deal. It is intended that this sequence and the class discussions will help identify the factors that are most influential in managing the development of enterprises. Valuation in Financial Markets (UVA-MOD-0162Y) is a prerequisite for the course. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Managerial Quantitative Analysis

  This course will review and reinforce the basic concepts gained from the first year Decision Analysis course, such as spreadsheet construction, simulation, regression, and decision trees. The two primary objectives of the course are to improve students' basic analytical skills and to strengthen their ability to integrate quantitative analysis into their general decision-making process. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Sustainability, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

  The purpose of this course is to provide students with practical information on the growing frontier of innovation and entrepreneurial activity at the nexus of business and natural systems. The term "sustainable business" refers to competitively advantageous strategies and practices firms adopt to grow revenues, cut costs, improve market share, enhance brands, and redesign products and processes to reduce or eliminate adverse environmental and health impacts. Students will study trends and science driving the growing demand for clean technology and life cycle product designs. Students will look at drivers of corporate innovation, strategic shifts, and new markets, learn skills to help identify market opportunities, and understand the tools, concepts, and frameworks used by companies currently pursuing sustainable business opportunities. Through the use of articles, technical notes, cases, and guests, the course examines company strategies and practices while providing history and frameworks for context and comprehension. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• Postmerger Integration

  Postmerger integration (PMI) is a relatively new field of practice as well as research. While PMI is a hot topic in executive suites and consulting practices, it is also an area that has only just started accumulating a body of knowledge, in terms of fundamental principles, best practices, and cornerstones of success. This is reflected in the low level of tangible success in an activity whose global transactions total more than $3.8 trillion annually.
  This course examines a number of transactions over a variety of circumstances in order to distill PMI principles and practices. Students are presented with a series of postmerger situations and are asked to not only solve the problems and dilemmas encountered, but also track the similarities and differences across them. From this, students develop a unique understanding of PMI relative to their individual experience. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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• The Global Economics of Water

  In “The Global Economics of Water,” students study water from an economic perspective. We link key macro and micro economic concepts to water use and water scarcity across the world. We argue that the global economy can provide answers to local water scarcity when it gives way to more efficient water use and when local solutions can be applied across the globe. Our economic perspective complements the prevailing engineering, environmental science, and hydrological approach to studying water and defines the environment within which firms operate. An alternative way to look at the course is to see it as an opportunity to learn more economics and to study key micro (and macro) economic concepts (comparative advantage, natural monopoly, Coase theorem, open access resource, tragedy of the commons, Green Solow Model, etc.) that will complement the economics you learned in first-year GEM courses and enhance your understanding of how markets function.

   The class has four modules. After the introduction, in which we link climate change to the water cycle, we focus on the global context of water and water use, anchoring our discussion with the case of Singapore. The second module is focused on public policy. We first tackle the open-access nature of water and the public supply of water before studying water markets as an increasingly popular tool to fight water scarcity. In the third module, we specifically put corporations and nongovernmental organizations at the center of the analysis and study how they try to curb water use. The fourth module consists of group projects, focusing on desalination, corporate social responsibility, and investing in water. Click on the PDF icon next to this course title to download the full syllabus which has links to the course materials.

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Case Method and Pedagogy

• Case Method

  This note describes the case method, its pros and cons, and its demands on both the instructor and the student. Click on the PDF icon next to this document title to download a complimentary copy.

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• On Writing Cases Well

  How does one know what makes a good case? Are there certain attributes that effective business school cases have? This technical note was intended to help writers who may or may not be business school professors write a case. The note includes material on objectives, finding leads, interview questions and interviewing techniques, and case structure. Although the idea of what constitutes a good case may be debatable, there are several characteristics that good case studies have in common. Click on the PDF icon next to this document title to download a complimentary copy.

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• The Student and the Case Method

  This note describes some of the characteristics of the case method and what is expected of the student for a successful experience. Click on the PDF icon next to this document title to download a complimentary copy.

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• Experiential Methods

  This note introduces the concept of experiential methods in teaching. Intended primarily for a doctoral seminar on pedagogy, the note would also be appropriate for instructors wishing to examine their teaching style or to use experiential methods in their teaching. Click on the PDF icon next to this document title to download a complimentary copy.

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• How to Study and Discuss Cases

  This technical note, written for students, gives a first "how to do it" introduction to studying by the case method. The note argues that success follows from a combination of good attitude, good "infrastructure," and good execution. This could be distributed along with a course syllabus or advance materials and was written with the objective of helping students more quickly achieve levels of effective preparation and discussion. Click on the PDF icon next to this document title to download a complimentary copy.

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• Fundamental Elements in Teaching

  This note, an introductory conceptual framework for a doctoral seminar on pedagogy, outlines seven key contributors to effective learning and discusses the relationships among those elements. The seven elements are institutional culture, program culture, instructor, students, materials, setting, and methodology. Click on the PDF icon next to this document title to download a complimentary copy.

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• Learning at The Darden School

  In this note, expectations and practices of learning teams at the Darden Business School are detailed, as well as some basic frameworks that will help learning teams to meet with continued success. Click on the PDF icon next to this document title to download a complimentary copy.

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• Managing Discussions

  This note is intended for college-level instructors as a description of "bridge" skills between lecturing and the case method. It describes both the benefits and the disadvantages of discussions, techniques for using discussions, and tips for starting and managing discussions. Click on the PDF icon next to this document title to download a complimentary copy.

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• Getting the Most Out of Executive Education Experience

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• Teaching Notes

  This note describes the characteristics of good case-method teaching notes. Click on the PDF icon next to this document title to download a complimentary copy.

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• Teaching Notes for Cases

  This note describes the characteristics of good case-method teaching notes. Click on the PDF icon next to this document title to download a complimentary copy.

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• On Writing Teaching Notes Well

  What material should be included in a teaching note, the instructional tool that accompanies your business school case study?and makes its use far more likely? All good teaching notes have several characteristics in common. This technical note can help any business school professor, case writer, or collaborator create a teaching note that helps an instructor use your case to its fullest potential. Click on the PDF icon next to this document title to download a complimentary copy.

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• Case Writing

  This note describes the process of case writing and offers suggestions and tips. Click on the PDF icon next to this document title to download a complimentary copy.

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Finance for Nonfinancial Managers