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2024/2025  KAN-CCMVI2135U  Making Better Bets: An Introduction to Management Consulting

English Title
Making Better Bets: An Introduction to Management Consulting

Course information

Language English
Course ECTS 7.5 ECTS
Type Elective
Level Full Degree Master
Duration Summer
Start time of the course Summer
Timetable Course schedule will be posted at calendar.cbs.dk
Min. participants 30
Max. participants 50
Study board
Study Board for cand.merc. and GMA (CM)
Course coordinator
  • Martin Skrydstrup - Department of Management, Society and Communication (MSC)
This is the same class as taught in the summer of 2024. Title and exam are the same. The only change from last year is that I have tweaked the description and learning objectives a bit.
For academic questions related to the course, please contact course responsible Martin Skrydstrup (msk.msc@cbs.dk).
Main academic disciplines
  • Customer behaviour
  • Innovation
  • Strategy
Teaching methods
  • Face-to-face teaching
Last updated on 07/11/2024

Relevant links

Learning objectives
To achieve the grade 12, students should meet the following learning objectives with no or only minor mistakes or errors.
  • 1) To frame a business problem that lends itself to a social scientific lens.
  • 2) To design research methodologies to approach and uncover social phenomena.
  • 3) To gain experience with conducting different ethnographic methods and identify which one(s) yields the most productive insights vis-a-vis social phenomena.
  • 4) To plan, organize and execute team based ethnography for a client.
  • 5) To distill and develop insights from raw ethnographic data and translate such insights to meaningful business opportunities and concrete ideas.
  • 6) To use ethnography to genuinely question your own biases about the constitution of the social world.
  • 7) To critically analyze and discuss the fundamental assumptions and limitations of ethnographic methods for business problems.
Course prerequisites
Completed Bachelor degree or equivalent
Examination
Making Better Bets: An Introduction to Management Consulting:
Exam ECTS 7.5
Examination form Home assignment - written product
Individual or group exam Individual exam
Size of written product Max. 10 pages
Assignment type Essay
Release of assignment The Assignment is released in Digital Exam (DE) at exam start
Duration Written product to be submitted on specified date and time.
Grading scale 7-point grading scale
Examiner(s) One internal examiner
Exam period Summer and Summer
Make-up exam/re-exam
Same examination form as the ordinary exam
Retake exam: 72-hour home project assignment, max. 15 pages, new exam question.
If the number of registered candidates for the make-up examination/re-take examination warrants that it may most appropriately be held as an oral examination, the programme office will inform the students that the make-up examination/re-take examination will be held as an oral examination instead.
Description of the exam procedure

Home assignment written in parallel with the course.

 

Course content, structure and pedagogical approach

 

Making Better Bets: An Introduction to Management Consulting

 

This is a practical course, where you will imagine that you are a management consultant. Your client is a large European bank who is realizing that they are facing a new generation of customers, who have been raised for a very different world – one that is completely unlike the one that your client is used to navigate. They are struggling with what meaningful services they can offer in the future to attract, support, and retain this new generation of customers. Your role will be to help solve this puzzle for them.

 

In order to solve this puzzle, you will have to explore and uncover questions: How do kids really navigate money? What really informs parental decisions? And what really defines which novel technologies households will trust and buy into? Going beyond conventional sit-down interviews, surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, quantitative methods and Big Data, the methods of ethnography often more accurately capture the answers to such questions.

 

When we are in the realm of values and valuations of people, we cannot assume them to be utility maximizing agents. In such spaces, human behavior often turns out to be unexpected, paradoxical and illogical. This course will teach you how to use ethnography as a human-centered approach to gain novel insights that may disrupt markets, transform companies and shape the products of tomorrow.

 

From plotting consumer navigation and mapping user experience (UX) to more holistic understandings of complex organizations and markets, fieldwork based ethnography is on the rise in the private sector. Currently, leading consulting agencies apply such ethnographic methods to get inside the real desires and decisions of consumers, to unravel the trust barometers of end-users subject to new technologies, to uncover the blind spots of complex organizations and to forecast the next mega trend. What this means is that corporate ethnography is currently used to make better bets in business and for business.

 

The purpose of this course is to learn how to plan and conduct fieldwork based ethnography and translate it into commercial opportunities and human centered innovation. In collaboration with a leading consultancy agency, you will learn how to plan and conduct fieldwork and translate your findings and insights into strategy formulation and actionable recommendations. You will develop a practical understanding of what it takes to work closely with different clients: From C-suite executives in global corporations to grassroots organizations.

 

You will work in teams towards a final presentation for the client, which is due in the penultimate class entitled Engaging the Client. Your final presentation will take the shape of a slide deck, which builds on three preceding exercises: (1) Framing of the Social Phenomenon; (2) Postcard from the Field; (3) Insights from the Field. Ultimately, this course will prepare you to question everything, even your own biases. Our only expection is that you enroll in the class with an open mind and a will to explore the real world and your own assumptions about it with genuine curiosity.

 

 

Description of the teaching methods
This course features an array of different teaching methods: 3 hours lectures in class by CBS faculty and management consultants; Completion of practical hands-on field methods conducted in teams between classes; In-class student presentations of findings and insights with instructor feedback; Practical in-class exercises such as Poster Session etc; Guest lectures by leading practitioners; Class discussions; Final slide deck presentation for the client; Active teamwork participation throughout the class; Office hours can be booked for student mentoring and consulting.
Feedback during the teaching period
Students will receive feedback in class on their in-class presentations. They can also book office hours to get feedback on their exam essay, as well as their overall course performance.
Student workload
Preparations 129 hours
Lectures 30 hours
Fieldwork based ethnography in between classes 20 hours
Exams 27 hours
Further Information

6-week course.

 

Preliminary assignment: The course coordinator uploads information about the Preliminary Assignment on Canvas at the end of May. It is expected that students participate as it will be contributing inputs toward the final exam, but the assignment is without independent assessment and grading.

 

Please see a pdf with pictures from last summer's poster session and case competition under the rubric of "Courses" at the staff site of the course responsible here:  www.cbs.dk/en/staff/mskmsc

 

 

 

 

 

Expected literature

Tentative literature subject to change

 

1) Christian Madsbjerg (2023) Look: How to Pay Attention in a Distracted World: New York: Riverhead

2) Christian Madsbjerg & Mikkel Rasmussen (2014) The Moment of Clarity. Boston,         MT: Harvard Business Review Press

3) Gillian Tett (2021) Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology can Explain Business and             Life. New York City, NY: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

Last updated on 07/11/2024