Explain Evaluation, Modeling and Simulation, and the importance of the Test and Evaluations Master Plan.

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Explain Evaluation, Modeling and Simulation, and the importance of the Test and Evaluations Master Plan.

Explain Thiel’s critique of competition. Do you agree with his perspective? Why or why not?

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This assignment is designed to familiarize MBA students with Thiel’s upside-down world. It requires students to examine both Thiel’s perspective and the conventional wisdom critically. In a disruptive age, managers must think seriously about handling the disruption by thinking disruptively.

  1. Peter Thiel is a contrarian who supports contrarian thinking and action. He believes that many of the standard lessons we are taught at school yield mediocre performance at the individual, group, enterprise and national level. The highest performing students at prestige universities, such as Stanford University (Thiel’s alma mater) are molded into being conformists – often the top students go into high status, high paying fields such as law, consulting and finance – careers that do not add value to the economy or society. One of his most controversial views is that competition is not generally good for individuals, groups, enterprises and societies. This view goes against the most basic precepts of economic and financial thinking.
  2. Explain Thiel’s critique of competition. Do you agree with his perspective? Why or why not?
  3. Explain Theil’s statement that companies should strive to become monopolies. Do you agree with his perspective? Why or why not? Please illustrate your points with examples.
  4. One of Thiel’s recurring themes is that great companies have secrets. What does he mean by this? How do the secrets contribute to superlative performance? Please illustrate your points with examples.
  5. Thiel devises a simple framework for predicting an enterprise’s future performance. He asks: 1) Do the enterprise’s leaders and employees have a perspective on the business that is definite or indefinite? 2) Do the leaders and employees have a perspective that is optimistic or pessimistic? Bottom line: there are four distinct combinations of these perspectives: definite-optimists, indefinite-optimists, definite-pessimists, indefinite-pessimists.
  6. Briefly describe the characteristics of each of these four outlooks. Please illustrate your points with examples.
  7. Which outlook is best-suited to establishing a start-up that can grow into a great enterprise? Explain. Please illustrate your points with examples.
  8. What is your opinion on Thiel’s framework? Does it make sense to you? Why or why not? Please answer this question in a business context (no gut feeling, non-specific responses, please).
  9. When examining new ventures to see whether they merit support from his venture capital company, Thiel raises and answers seven questions about the initiative:
  • The engineering question: Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
  • The timing question: Is now the right time to start your particular business?
  • The monopoly question: Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
  • The people question: Do you have the right team?
  • The distribution question: Do you have a way to not just develop but deliver your product?
  • The durability question: Will your market position be defensible 10 to 20 years in the future?
  • The secret question: Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?
  1. Which of these questions apply to the full gamut of non-trivial new ventures needing investment dollars, from establishing a trendy restaurant to starting a computer security business to coming up with a truly innovative product that has the potential to move markets? Explain your rationale.
  2. Think about this list of questions. There are some notable questions missing that are usually viewed as important questions investors should ask before investing in a new venture. Identify two. Why do you think Thiel doesn’t include them in his list?

Write a literature review on women on board and its impact on firm performance.

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A description of the task: You need to write a literature review on women on board and
its impact on firm performance. You could argue the possible advantages and
disadvantages of hiring women in the corporate board. Your grade will be based on your
critical discussion on the topic. You should consult reliable and high-quality academic
sources.
 The requirements/expectations of the task: You are expected to draw on theoretical as
well as empirical evidence and relevant case studies.
 Presentation format/style: 12 font, double line spacing, the text should be ‘justified’.
 Referencing style/requirements: Harvard style

Discuss what are the Biblical and ethical motivators for implementing such a diversity and inclusion initiative policy/program?

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Research and identify an organization that has exemplary diversity and inclusion practices and policies (level one: within the company). Be sure to identify a specific organization that can be researched in available university databases. (Really small and unknown organizations are discouraged due to difficulty researching.)
Paper Setup:
1. Organization history/background: Specifically, and thoroughly identify the organization, and provide a concise background including clear description of the organization’s core business/purpose.
2. Diversity & Inclusion Initiative (Policy/program): Precisely Identify and describe a specific and formal policy and/or program in place within the organization for the purpose of promoting workplace diversity and inclusion.
a. Provide summary and description of the program/policy.
b. Identify the cultural group that the initiative is aiming to promote (women, minorities, people with disabilities, etc) and what might be the barriers faced by that population without this initiative in place.
3. Assessment of the Initiative:
a. What was the organization’s motivation for implementing inclusive practices (e.g., major law suit, CEO’s vision, etc.)
b. Evaluate how the initiative promotes organizational benefit and positive outcomes (ie. employee satisfaction, productivity, performance, profits, etc.).
4. Assess ethical implications and biblical/christian principles:
a. Discuss what are the Biblical and ethical motivators for implementing such a diversity and inclusion initiative policy/program?
a. Insightful identification and thorough assessment of ethical repercussions or concerns.

The final paper should be double-spaced, meeting APA font, format, and citation requirements. Including an introduction paragraph and conclusion paragraph, cited sources should be academic articles/journals. Cites & references at least 5 sources.

Is your business idea part of a start up or a family firm? If it is a startup, then you will face scarcity of resources issue. How do you plan to overcome this challenge? Will you use network, etc?

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WRITE A REPORT WITH THESE DETAILS
1. Create or develop your own SME. Why is it interesting? What product does your company have to offer? What services does your company offer?
2. How did you identify that there is need for a new product or service? How did you identify a business opportunity/gap? How did you capture this opportunity?
3. Will the business idea help local communities (social entrepreneurship etc), if yes, how?
4. Is your business idea part of a start up or a family firm? If it is a startup, then you will face scarcity of resources issue. How do you plan to overcome this challenge? Will you use network, etc?
5. How will you fund your firm or business idea? Will you use angel investors? Venture capital? Crowd funding? Which platforms? (refer to lecture slides for examples).
6. How will you protect intellectually the business idea?
7. How will you expand your business idea in foreign markets (will you have to change the product or service there-transformation part). Which market will you enter? Who are your main competitors? Which entry mode will you use (Upsalla model, contractual etc) ? What is your market segment (young people, socio-economic characteristics (income etc). how will you promote or advertise your business idea?
8. Include graphs, tables and statistics
9. Cite your report properly and add reference list at the end.

 

What kind of outreach or marketing could the company do to help make its ethical choices more part of the norm for business as a whole?

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Welcome to the Core Assessment Presentation! This part of the course requires a bit more creative thinking than the previous activities, and will help you write the Core Assessment Paper as well.

For the good company, you should try to figure out how the policy, program, or practice they had could be spread to other companies in the industry of the company or outside the industry. What kind of outreach or marketing could the company do to help make its ethical choices more part of the norm for business as a whole? Note that this isn’t just about other companies replicating the policy or program, it’s about what the ethical company could do to help spread the word.

Guidelines for the Core Assessment Presentation
For the second half of the core assessment in this course, you have to prepare a multimedia presentation about a company and its ethical or unethical practices.

Multimedia presentations don’t have to be PowerPoint presentations. But since everyone needs to be able to view your presentation in this course I’m asking you to make a PowerPoint presentation. The presentation should cover it exactly the same areas with the same structure that the paper has: first you should present about what the company does and it’s history, second you should write about the incident that you believe makes the company ethical or unethical, and third you should analyze the incident and tell us what makes it ethical or unethical. Finally, for a good company, you should present on how the ethical practice, policy, or program(s) can be spread to other companies and/or industries. For a bad company, you should present on how to prevent the unethical incident from happening again (or happening in the first place).

Since this is an online course, of course you won’t be presenting to a physical classroom. But you’re not just handing in a PowerPoint presentation either. You should devise some way of leading your audience from slide to slide. The easiest way to do that is to use PowerPoint’s “Narration” feature that let’s you talk a little bit about each slide as you’re going through it. Read more about how to use that feature here: (Links to an external site.) .

Here are some additional suggestions for your presentation:
It should be 4-7 minutes long.
It should feature text and images.
It should include your references on the last slide.
It should include narration that illustrates and expands on the information in your slides.
It should all be in your own words. Just like a paper, taking information from the web and presenting it without quotes or citations as your own words constitutes plagiarism and failure for the course.
Accomplishing this technical task will result in an acceptable PowerPoint presentation, but not necessarily a good one. Here are some guidelines for creating a good PowetPoint presentation:

Don’t cram tons of text onto a slide; 3-4 bullet points is a good guide.
Don’t use scary/flashy/annoying transitions between slides unless you really know what you’re doing.
Do rehearse your presentation a couple of times.
Do not read straight from your slides.
Try to make the information in your presentation come from the commentary on your slides, not the slides themselves.

Describe a change in the tax code that might increase private saving.

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  1. Describe a change in the tax code that might increase private saving. If this policy were implemented, how would it affect the market for loanable funds?

Analyse the effectiveness of strategies used to improve employee performance.

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Evaluate individual and team performance against objectives.

Analyse the effectiveness of strategies used to improve employee performance.

 

Write a report analysing the ethics of management during the crisis at Amazon

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Write a report analysing the ethics of management during the crisis at Amazon