Provides a basic understanding of legal issues that corporations meet during their existence. Follows one firm throughout its life; from birth to bankruptcy, first as a breakaway from an established high-tech firm, then proceeding through initial funding efforts, establishment of its capital and corporate structure, and through problems in labor, trade secrets, contracts and antitrust, product liability, and resolution of transnational and domestic business disputes. This course provides a basic understanding of legal issues that corporations face during their existence. The course starts by providing the basic building blocks of business law. We then follow a firm through its life cycle from its "breakaway" from an established firm through it going public. The materials covered during 15.647 (the first half of the semester) emphasize the organization and financing of the company. In the second half of the course we examine a broad array of law-sensitive issues relating to intellectual property, product development, M&A transactions, international trade, the duties of directors and officers, business disputes, and bankruptcy and reorganization. The goal of the course is not to impart technical legal skills, but to enhance the judgment which students will bring to their responsibilities as entrepreneurs, managers in established companies, or consultants and advisors. There are two take-home exercises, and no exams.

In The Law of Corporate Finance and Financial Markets, much of the course focuses on M&A and the law-sensitive aspects of financial services and financial markets. The course is designed to be an introduction to business law which covers the fundamentals, including contracts, liability, regulation, employment, and corporations. 15.617 provides an in-depth treatment of the law of finance.

This course is designed to give students an introduction to the law-sensitive aspects of M&A. In Module I, we examine the legal implications of key roles and deal structures, and walk through some of the issues that would typically arise in a simple and friendly transaction. We also give a class to the legal issues arising in LBOs and the legal concerns of financial sponsors more generally, and another class to employment-related issues, including those relating to managers facing unsettled circumstances. In Module II, we look at a variety of complications, including those that arise in the friendly or unfriendly purchase of a publicly-held company; deals involving distressed and hi-tech companies; antitrust concerns; allegations of misconduct by management or board members; and deals involving non-U.S. companies.

Students work in a seminar environment to enhance their leadership capabilities. An initial Leadership Laboratory Outward Bound experience builds trust, teamwork and communications. Readings and assignments emphasize the characteristics of effective leadership. Distinguished leaders participate in the "Leadership Lunch" story-telling series to share their experiences and to provide recommendations. Discussions help explore and further probe leadership development. The learning experience culminates in a personal leadership plan.

Opportunity for group study by graduate students on current topics related to management not otherwise included in curriculum. This five-day interactive and experiential workshop focuses on how leaders lead innovations that both promote social responsibility and produce business success. The workshop is organized around three main parts: observation, sense-making, and creating. During the observation phase, students spend a full day inside the Boston office of the design company IDEO and visit some of the most interesting proven innovators in corporate social responsibility such as Ben & Jerry's, KLD, MBDC, Plug Power (fuel cell technology), PwC, chlumberger, or core team members of the UN Global Compact. After returning from their company visits, students describe to one another what they saw and learned. In the final part of the Lab, students conceive and implement innovation projects that serve the needs of a local community. Each team presents its practical accomplishments on the final day of the Lab.

This course explores how we use story to articulate ethical norms. The syllabus consists of short fiction, novels, plays, feature films and some non-fiction. Major topics include leadership and authority, professionalism, the nature of ethical standards, social enterprise, and questions of gender, cultural and individual identity, and work / life balance. Materials vary from year to year, but past readings have included work by Robert Bolt, Michael Frayn, Timothy Mo, Wole Soyinka, H. D. Thoreau, and others; films have included Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hotel Rwanda, The Descendants, Motorcycle Diaries, Three Kings, and others. Draws on various professions and national cultures, and is run as a series of moderated discussions, with students centrally engaged in the teaching process.

Provides students opportunities to meet senior executives of private and public institutions, and to discuss key management issues from the perspective of top management. Students prepare detailed briefings identifying and analyzing important management issues facing these organizations. Seminar concludes with a one-week field trip to New York City.

Graduate Women at MIT (GWAMIT) is an institute-wide, student-led group founded in 2009. Its mission is to promote the personal and professional development of MIT's graduate women. GWAMIT welcomes all members of the MIT community, including men. This OCW site features selected videos from the two conferences GWAMIT runs each academic year: a Leadership Conference in the fall and an Empowerment Conference in the spring. It also provides a list of related readings and other resources.

Students of this course will develop a broad understanding of Lean/Six Sigma principles and practices, build capability to implement Lean/Six Sigma initiatives in manufacturing operations, and learn to operate with awareness of Lean/Six Sigma at the enterprise level. All course materials are organized around a common "single-point lesson" (SPL) format, with some of the SPLs provided by the instructor and guests and with some developed and delivered by student teams.

This online textbook represents materials that were used in the first four semesters (two years) of the Mandarin program at MIT. They eventually formed the basis of a print textbook of the same name, published by Yale University Press; information and supplemental materials for the Yale edition are available at the companion website. The OCW course materials were extensively revised, and at times reordered, before publication, but the general principles of the original remain: to provide a comprehensive resource for the foundation levels of Chinese language that separates the learning of oral skills from literary (the former being transcribed in pinyin, and the latter in characters). This resource contains the complete online version of the text and accompanying audio recordings.

This seminar explores experiments in education and discusses how education and learning might be done, through reading and discussion. This seminar is not a survey of experiments in education, but rather, its goal is to determine how learning should happen and what kinds of contexts allow it to happen.

" The primary purpose of this seminar is to enable students to craft approaches to so-called "First World"/ "Third World" city comparisons that are theoretically sophisticated, methodologically rigorous, contextually grounded, and significantly beneficial. Since there exists very little literature and very few projects which compare "First World" and "Third World" cities in a sophisticated and genuinely useful manner, the seminar is structured around a series of readings, case studies, and discussions to assist students in becoming mindful of the potential and pitfalls of comparative analysis, the types of data, the methods of analysis, and the urban issues or sectors which may benefit the most from such approaches. The course is designed to be interdisciplinary and interactive, and is geared towards masters and doctoral students."

" This class explores the creation (and creativity) of the modern scientific and cultural world through study of western Europe in the 17th century, the age of Descartes and Newton, Shakespeare, Milton and Ford. It compares period thinking to present-day debates about the scientific method, art, religion, and society. This team-taught, interdisciplinary subject draws on a wide range of literary, dramatic, historical, and scientific texts and images, and involves theatrical experimentation as well as reading, writing, researching and conversing. The primary theme of the class is to explore how England in the mid-seventeenth century became "a world turned upside down" by the new ideas and upheavals in religion, politics, and philosophy, ideas that would shape our modern world. Paying special attention to the "theatricality" of the new models and perspectives afforded by scientific experimentation, the class will read plays by Shakespeare, Tate, Brecht, Ford, Churchill, and Kushner, as well as primary and secondary texts from a wide range of disciplines. Students will also compose and perform in scenes based on that material."

Provides an introduction to legal and institutional arrangements for the establishment, transfer, and control over property under US and selected comparative systems including India and South Africa. Situates the debate about property in the context of international development and planning. Examines the relationship to the use of land by individuals, entities, communities, and the State through "private" and "public" regulation. Emphasis on efficient resource use, institutional, entitlement, and cultural approaches to property, distribution, and other social aspects, and the relationship between property, culture, and democracy. This course is designed to offer an advanced introduction to key legal issues that arise in the area of property and land-use in American law, with a comparative focus on the laws of India and South Africa. The focus of the course is not on law itself, but on the policy implications of various rules, doctrines and practices which are covered in great detail. Legal rules regulating property are among the most fundamental to American, and most other, economies and societies. The main focus is on American property and land use law due to its prominence in international development policy and practice as a model, though substantial comparative legal materials are also introduced from selected non-western countries such as India and South Africa.

Lego Robotics uses Legos as a fun tool to explore robotics, mechanical systems, electronics, and programming. This seminar is primarily a lab experience which provides students with resources to design, build, and program functional robots constructed from Legos and a few other parts such as motors and sensors.

This course provides an overview of the distinctive features which distinguish sound categories of languages of the world. Theories which relate these categories to their acoustic and articulatory correlates, both universally and in particular languages are covered. Models of word recognition by listeners, features, and phonological structure are also discussed. In addition, the course offers a variety of perspectives on these issues, drawn from Electrical Engineering, Linguistics and Cognitive Science.

This course explores the history of the ideal of personal freedom with an eye towards contemporary debates over the pros and cons of the regulatory state. The first part of the course surveys the sociological and theological sources of the concepts of freedom and civil society, and introduces liberty's leading relatives or competitors: property, equality, community, and republicanism. The second part consists of a series of case studies in the rise of modern liberty and libertarianism: the abolition of slavery, the struggle for religious freedom, and the twentieth-century American civil liberties movement. In the last part of the course, we take up debates over the role of libertarianism vs. the regulatory state in a variety of contexts: counter-terrorism, health care, the financial markets, and the Internet.

Examines the field of theatrical lighting design. Students gain an overall technical working knowledge of the tools of the trade and learn how and where to apply them to a final design. Explores artistic, conceptual, and collaborative processes of the craft. Hands-on approach with several classes spent in the theater. Students take advantage of the Boston theater scene by touring several off campus spaces and learning how theater architecture affects design choices. Assignments include: written script analysis, plot and paperwork for theoretical design in MIT theater space, and adaptation of plot to different spatial situations and locations. Oral presentations and in-class critiques. Final project required in which students execute a fully realized production (frequently a dance concert) from start to finish. This class explores the artistry of Lighting Design. Students gain an overall technical working knowledge of the tools of the trade, and learn how, and where to apply them to a final design. However essential technical expertise is, the class stresses the artistic, conceptual, collaborative side of the craft. The class format is a "hands on" approach, with a good portion of class time spent in a theatre.

This is a communication intensive supplement to Linear Algebra (18.06). The main emphasis is on the methods of creating rigorous and elegant proofs and presenting them clearly in writing.

This course covers matrix theory and linear algebra, emphasizing topics useful in other disciplines such as physics, economics and social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering.