Product Innovation

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

Business can, and indeed must, play a greater role in responding to society’s grand challenges. The deep poverty faced by the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) – the 4-5 billion poorest people on this planet and constituting approximately two-thirds of humanity – presents a challenge on the grandest scale. While donation-based approaches have their place, the promise of achieving both profits and social impact through market-based approaches offers an exciting alternative.

OPEN TO ROSS STUDENTS

Launching a new enterprise, business unit, product or service is fundamental to business success. In this team competition organized by the Zell Lurie Institute, students develop a systematic framework for thinking about innovation by working with a collaborative corporate partner, conducting real research, formulating and testing hypotheses in real time, and engaging in customer discovery and design thinking.

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

Curious on how to transform the business world through developing a new, innovative business strategy? This course is aimed at students primarily interested in venture capital or strategy who want to learn about constructing a proper model that ensures success for both short and long term ventures.

OPEN TO ROSS STUDENTS

Improving an existing enterprise is a ubiquitous management challenge. This hands-on exercise gives students the opportunity to systematically evaluate a business, identify areas of leverage, and develop strategies for better executing on a mission.

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

Curious about how data across the internet can be used into powerful information that transforms company projections? This course is designed to give students insight into managerial decisions by using data reduction techniques like multivariate regression, factor analysis and more with statistical software.

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

This business basics course covers how to make a product or service idea real in the form of a tangible, marketable product and an organization that can produce and distribute it. Topic areas covered include: motivation and social purpose of entrepreneurship, market research and product development activities, people resource management, capital resources management, and go-to-market management.

This course provides an interesting approach to real-world entrepreneurship, focusing on the acquisition of an existing firm. This class gives students the space to explore and address a range of issues of entrepreneurship acquisition, such as restructuring and the LBO search fun to improve their new business.

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

Looking for a team based project learning initiative centered in product development? This course allows students to be well versed in cross-disciplinary fields to give them experience in Human Centered Product Design and to test their ultimate product in the market.

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

The course is structured so that students form into teams of four, each with mixed disciplinary backgrounds spanning business, engineering and art/architecture. A product category is announced, and each team acts as an independent firm competing in that product market. This is, each team must independently work through an integrated exercise of market research, product design, product development and manufacture, pricing, forecasting, inventory policy and competition with their product against other firms in both a web-based competition and a physical trade show.

Interested in starting a new business? Curious about venturing and business fundamentals? This class teaches mainly MBA students on how to start, grow, and run a successful startup through speaker series, class discussions, and more from experienced professionals in the entrepreneurial world.

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS 

This course offers students the opportunity to establish and lead a functional team in an actual, operational business unit, working directly with executives of a sponsoring company, and learning under the supervision of faculty advisors. Students accepted into this course will work as team members in one of several Ross enterprises that have been created for the purpose of experiential learning and the practical application of foundational knowledge in a real business setting.

OPEN TO ROSS STUDENTS

MAP is a field study program in which teams of students apply structured problem solving techniques to analyze multidisciplinary business problems or opportunities and make recommendations for improvements. It is a unique feature of the Ross MBA program — the action learning experience it provides is central to the School’s curriculum.

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

This course discusses the stages in the new product development process and avenues for making the process more productive. Specific topics covered include creative techniques for idea generation, designing new products and services using analytical techniques, sales forecasting, testing, and tactics and strategies for new product launch. The course uses lectures, cases, and outside speakers. Moreover, the course includes a project wherein student teams will use the creativity techniques covered in this class to come up with new product ideas and perform a concept test in order to evaluate their feasibility.

OPEN TO ROSS STUDENTS

This course is designed to focus on the new product development process which is key to the success of any organization. The course will expose students to (a) creative techniques for idea generation, (b) fine-tuning these ideas to develop products and services that meet specific consumer needs, and (c) testing the feasibility of these ideas.

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

This course discusses the stages in the new product development process and avenues for making the process more productive.

OPEN TO ROSS STUDENTS

This capstone course explores methodologies for planning and starting entrepreneurial ventures as well as new business development and market-entry sources. Team based projects allow students to research and formulate a business plan and investment pitch.

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

This course focuses on strategies and tools useful in management of non-repetitive business activities. Examples of such activities include construction, new product development and market introduction, consulting engagements, and organization restructurings.

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

This course entails getting your product to the right consumers, is a fundamental aspect of any business. However, few sectors have experienced as much change as the retail landscape in the past years. The rise of ecommerce has significantly disrupted traditional retail chains, forcing existing retailers to re-evaluate and adapt their strategies.

OPEN TO ROSS STUDENTS

This course has two interrelated components: Team dynamics and managing software development projects; presented in an integrated fashion. Team dynamics content will include such topics as the emergence of behavioral norms in project teams, team decision making, potential sources of conflict, and managing conflict constructively.

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

Curious about autonomous vehicles or autonomous mobility? Dedicated to gain experience with cutting edge technology in order to develop and implement your project into reality? This course gives students a deep dive into the transportation industry using tech and strategic discussion as key steps to achieve success.

OPEN TO ROSS STUDENTS

This course is designed to educate and train students on the role of technology as an enabler and catalyst for business innovations. Innovation is a process that leverages new and existing scientific knowledge applied in a user context to solve real world problems and deliver value. Technology on the other hand embodies tools, techniques, and processes, and when applied carefully to business innovation pursuit, can impact sustainable business outcome.

OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS

This course covers venture capital market structure and institutional arrangements and the application of financial theory and methods in a venture capital finance setting. Students are given financial case studies in the real-world to help cultivate their experience in working with early stage tech firms.

Design+Business at the Ross School of business is open to MBA students with the goal of fostering design-thinking in their members when solving business challenges relating to a diverse corporations within the business and technology industry. D+B hosts design thinking education workshops and provides members with early access to courses led by top Michigan design thinking professors.

Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (EVC) brings together students that are dedicated to furthering their educational and professional goals as prospective entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and/or venture capitalists. EVC provides students with events, networking opportunities, workshops, and recruiting support to advance their ambitions.

The University of Michigan’s newest product-building organization.

MPowered is broken up into six teams, each led by two Project Directors. Once you join, you’ll be placed as a “talent member” onto one of them. Each of these teams leads a unique, year-long initiative either across campus or within MPowered itself.

MProduct is the first and only student-led Product Management organization at the University of Michigan. We are a close-knit group of designers, engineers, makers, and curious thinkers working together to build, launch, and improve today’s products and break into product management careers.

We are an organization at the University of Michigan that offers programs, courses, mentorship, and funding for students of all ages and majors to work on self-directed projects.

The Tech Club at Ross is offers programs, events, and resources to their members that connect MBAs with the tech companies  they are interested in working with and learning about. They  work with recruiters from tech firms of all sizes to provide students with diverse opportunities for full -time roles and internships within these firms.

Creatorspace is a platform where you can easily shop through creator’s sponsorship opportunities, ad placements and innovative ideas. You can communicate with these creators around the listing, add it to cart if your company would like to sponsor it and check out.

V1 is the community for ambitious student builders — engineers, artists, designers, founders, scientists, and more. We provide the most driven students with an extraordinary network, exclusive opportunities within startups, and mentorship to grow and achieve great things.

VOID Tech Consulting at the University of Michigan is made up of undergraduate students interested in consulting and Technology. VOID gives members real-world software development experience through learning opportunities to educate students as well as hands-on projects to help develop skills.