D R A F T - The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Preliminary, Subject to Change Posted: 11.25.2013The Playing Field The First Book Open it. Go ahead, it won’t bite. Well…maybe a little. You see, it keeps on opening. You may fall in. Sure, it’s hard to get started; remember learning to use knife and fork? Dig in: You’ll never reach the bottom. It’s not like it’s the end of the world-­‐-­‐ just the world as you think you know it. Rita Dove ______________________________________________________________________________________ Week of January 6 thThis first session introduces the concept of business policy and presents some of the elements that are contained within. A central goal of this course is to add as much value as possible to your education. To add value requires much more than reiterating and integrating material that you have already studied in other courses. While such material is enormously important to strategic thinking, its value is better understood and appreciated by examining in a new light some of the orthodoxy found in MBA programs. While the toolbox of analytic methods will be acknowledged, this course will focus more directly on the broader context in which these tools are used. Articles: Eisner, “Ten Lessons the Arts Teach” Edmundson, “Dwelling in Possibilities” Crawford, “Thinking as Doing” 3