Course Description – GSIM

Rapid technological innovation and market competition nowadays make existing business or industry change faster than ever. To stay competitive, a company must modify and evaluate the business all the time. Every investment as well as business expansion, a reorganization, or acquisition with strategic, financial, and organizational implications will force the manager to consider a broader aspect of the business in making a better financial decision. This course provides today’s managers an ability to make a capital investment, understand the financial information, and communicate effectively by using business language.

This course will focus on Python programming, libraries, and tools as opposed to data analysis methodology.
Participants are expected to be a programmer, a person who is skilled in the art of programming including manipulating, processing, cleaning, and crunching data in Python.

Portfolio management is designed to explore concepts in and approaches to portfolio management in financial markets.  The understanding of the theory of modern portfolio analysis provides a bridge between knowledge and practice in financial markets.  This course will help you to extend your knowledge of individual financial assets such as stocks and bonds to a portfolio context.  The analytical skills you will learn in this course will be a strong foundation for further study of Derivative Securities.  Basic knowledge of investments and capital markets is required for this course.

Entrepreneurial Finance helps prospective entrepreneurs make decisions regarding the financing, deal structures, and exits of new ventures.  This course covers both the financial aspects of entrepreneurship such as financial modelling of valuation methods, pro-forma financial statements, etc., and also discusses how to develop the business model to understand the nature of venture businesses in order to enhance both qualitative and quantitative analysis.  This course consists of lectures, case study discussions, assignments, and projects.

This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the linkages between global capital markets and funding environment, social and governance (ESG) related projects. Sustainable finance plays a key role in mobilizing capital towards a greener agenda while taking into account social and governance issues. In recent years, the financial sector is increasingly prioritizing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues in investment decisions. The key here is to provide an overview to students to gain basic knowledge on how to tap the financial instruments or cater to investing strategies which support ESG-related projects.

In this course, you will be given an overview of fintech.  What is fintech, and when did it start.  The course will also provide an introduction to digital currencies – Cryptocurrency and Blockchain.  You will learn the foundations of digital signatures and the intricacies of Blockchain technology.

Fintech is increasingly changing the way for payments and investing.  This course will help you realize the role fintech plays in facilitating transactions among businesses and consumers, and in providing an entrepreneurial solution to investments.  You will gain an understanding of the complex structure of payment methods and financial regulations, and employ strategies in developing a fintech strategy for your business.

Participants will learn how to use the statistical software, R, for implementations of financial data analysis
to achieve the goals of studying analytical techniques and equipping with advanced knowledge about financial markets.

Uncertainties of business have triggered a shift to corporate risk management practices for companies.
This course provides participants understanding and managing the various risks a company faces
which also involves derivatives hedging, risk exposure analyzing, and potential loss measuring.

This course studies the basic knowledge of data analytics skills, in particular, statistical skills, which will be applied in various business areas such as Corporate Finance, Investment, Risk Management, Big Data Analytics, and Marketing etc. This course covers the basic knowledge on probability and statistical principles in order for you to be a good user of statistical data analysis.
This course is a fundamental core required course for two-year MBA and DXP, and a core elective course for other students. It is helpful for students seeking careers such as consultants, financial analysts, general managers, policy makers, and operational managers.

Playing at the heart of Organizations’ Digital Core, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly emerging as the most important and transformative technology of today’s business. Recent advances in machine learning have led to a proliferation of ever more sophisticated applications that are changing the game for companies in almost all industries. ML algorithms offer better ways to automate business processes, detect based on patterns in data and help business to do informed judgement and proactive measures. Students are to gain an understanding of the growing deployment of AI and comprehend what it can and cannot do for their own workplace.

This course centers around the discussion of ethical issues related to the business use of digital technologies. The course is discussion-intensive during the class-sessions. Students are expected to read designated materials before the class and contribute to the discussions during the class.

This course introduces students to the subject of Data Management and Data Modeling, the methods and computational procedures that are helpful in solving management problems in Finance, P.O.M., Accounting, M.I.S., Marketing, Operations Management, etc. Emphasis is placed on models and their solutions. It discusses how the quantitative models can be used as tools for decision makings in various business situations. It gives students a good foundation in basic problem solving as a preparation for upper-level quantitative courses such as Big Data Analytics.

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Playing at the heart of Organizations’ Digital Core, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly emerging as the most important and transformative technology of today’s business. Recent advances in machine learning have led to a proliferation of ever more sophisticated applications that are changing the game for companies in almost all industries. ML algorithms offer better ways to automate business processes, detect based on patterns in data and help business to do informed judgement and proactive measures. Students are to gain an understanding of the growing deployment of AI and comprehend what it can and cannot do for their own workplace.

This course takes a look into some of the digital industries from different parts of the world, and discusses characteristics and relevant concepts that are useful in the future transformations in other industries or regions. If some of you have chosen to submit industry report as a part of fulfilling the degree requirements, we strongly encourage you to present your report or key materials during this course to contribute to the course and improve the report. Digital industry in this course is defined broadly, to incorporate any industry which uses digital technologies in a strategically significant manner. The final product or service may or not be delivered using a digital technology.

This course provides cases and insights from digital frontiers of Japanese society. The national government has launched the concept of “Society 5.0”, which integrates cyber and physical aspects of people’s everyday life. It envisions further economic growth, and expects to create new way of solving social problems.

We will discuss the state of the art of Japan’s digital society, identify problems we need to deal with, and discuss the way to tackle social problems through use of information technologies under the concept of “Society 5.0”. Specifically, we look into topics from government, industry, and consumer sectors.

The purpose of this course is two-fold. One is to give the students a broad understanding on how Japanese industries developed. Another is for the students to learn logical frameworks to understand those Japanese development and try to apply theoretical essence of Japanese development to their own countries. We focus on six industries, video tape recorder, automobile, semiconductor, chemical, steel and banking, to learn why of their development. The course also discusses contribution of the Japanese corporate system to industry development.

The objective of this course is to introduce how small to medium-sized firms (often called SMEs) have developed. Dividing the history of modern economic development in Japan into several eras, lectures and discussions of this course focus on the following three points. First, SME development is the result of operations by each firm, thus, we see cases of typical SMEs established in each era. Second, we discuss policies supporting SMEs in Japan. Third, based on the understanding of SMEs and policies in Japan, we discuss the internal and external environment surrounding SMEs in low- and middle-income countries.

Japanese manufacturing has become synonymous with high quality, low cost, and timely delivery. In this course, we will examine how and why Japanese firms are able to achieve the right mix of QCD, while also pursuing the flexibility and continuous improvement needed to be competitive over the long term. We will introduce the Japanese word, monozukuri (which covers product development, manufacturing, and sales), to provide a unifying view of customer-centric management that extends beyond a narrow understanding of “making things” into service management and innovation. The course will be taught through lectures and class discussion.

This course will introduce Japanese style management. It was established amid social chaos after World War II and has evolved into a unique management system which is distinct from a typical textbook model. This new system eventually led Japanese companies to rapid growth and worldwide success. The creation of Japanese management system was an adaptation process of business theory to its unique environments. Its success was not accidental, but based on sound economic rationality. This course will review this process and economic rationality behind it.

Japan industry had survived its tough stages after World War 2 and experienced several recessions, but by using its fundamental advantage in human capital power, they have recovered as one of key player in word business. Japan industry has the special paradigm in its fundamental assumptions and approaches for the human capital, especially in the people management practices.

By focusing on the several practices and cases in Japan, students will learn the industry knowledge in human capital areas which enhanced Japan development stage, especially in order to apply the practices to the developing regions and revitalizing countries.

This course is designed for international MBA students in particular to learn about the relations between Japanese corporate/economic performance and supporting financial infrastructure in a historical context. We critically review the roles of financial systems how they worked. Then, we more critically review these (once very effective) Japanese financial systems and Japanese business models under new globally and innovation oriented environments during the post-bubble period (lost decades). The critical articles and cases in this course cover advantages and disadvantages of Japanese businesses and financial system associated with unique Japanese corporate governance under new global financial and industrial environments.

The learning objectives of this course are two-fold. One is to give the students a broad understanding on how Japanese business leaders acted in the process of the industrialization and economic growth. Another is for the students to learn logical frameworks on entrepreneurship in general.
The beginning two sessions focus on historical overview of the Japanese business leaders from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 to the present time. The next twelve sessions discuss on representative leaders. The last two sessions summarize the whole contents of the course and have a general discussion on entrepreneurship.

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Due to the rapid change at the age of globalization, business leaders are now facing with the critical and tough situation and they are required to respond to the change by making the best decision consistent to the vision and mission shared among the organizational members.

From aforementioned points, this course provides participants how to manage events occurring in organizations derived from human behaviors and management activities.

In order to achieve organizational goals in global and cross-cultural environment, participants should understand the concept of global leadership and how to exercise their leadership capability by influencing the organization and people.

The objective of this course is to introduce the concept of strategic management with the understanding of both external business environment and internal management assets. In the first session of each week we discuss what kind of issues should be considered and why they are critical for firms to fit into the conditions related to customers’ needs, competitive structure, accumulation of resources including technology, and psychological aspects of internal people influencing strategy implementation. In the second session, major concepts and frameworks by various researchers are introduced so that students understand strategic management from various perspectives.

This course of international management is designed to provide student core knowledge for carrying out management in an international business context. Given the globalizing business world that we are living and working in, a better understanding of how to deal with international phenomenon and management has become a must. By applying both theoretical and practical sessions, students need to work in group for a real international business planning.

Business leaders are expected to acquire and develop a capability to lead their people, teams, and organization with their mindset of living with society.

Due to the rapid change at the age of globalization, business leaders are now facing with the critical and tough situation and they are required to respond to all stake holder needs with the balance of each benefit

This course provides students how to generate, implement and manage Corporate Social Responsibility strategy and its implementation plan as a business leader, in order to achieve organizational goals in global context and cross-cultural environment.

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The objective of the course is to introduce basic knowledge about social business and processes necessary for the preparation of own businesses for solving social issues with frameworks usable for each process. With actual cases of social businesses, we will discuss how entrepreneurs identified issues, what kind of solutions they came up with by using what kinds of resources available. It also includes discussions on how their businesses are analyzed from the perspectives of management frameworks and how those businesses are related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Students are expected to make a part of own business plan every week as an assignment using frameworks introduced in the classes. It is required to present his/her business plan in the final week (some students will be in the same group).
In addition, it is planned to hold a joint discussion with staffs of manufacturers in Niigata to idealize prototype of products for solving social issues.

This course is provided exclusively for the students of International Social Entrepreneurship Program (ISEP). The purpose of the field study is to create a local network to actually realize the business plan, verify with prototypes of products and services as a solution, and clarify points for improvement.
Prior to the field study, students will first formulate a business plan to implement ideas for solving social issues at the place of field study through an advanced seminar.
The focus is on reducing the risks of working as a full-fledged social entrepreneur by preparing to start a business while still in IUJ students a good foundation in basic problem solving as a preparation for upper-level quantitative courses such as Big Data Analytics.

1. This course deals with fundamental concepts of human resource management (HRM) and global talent management (GTM). The HRM lay the foundations for people management practices. The GTM offers the class participants the opportunity to be exposed to the most contemporary people management challenges among global organizations. The course also provides a chance to take a glance at today’s People Analytics practices.
2. This course is suitable for students who plan to pursue general management as well as human resource specialist careers.
3. It is recommended that you have OB knowledge before taking this course.

1. In today’s economy, the majority of GDP is created from the service sector—more than 70% in developed countries, and above 50% among developing countries. We cannot live without knowledge of service management anymore.
2. This course provides basic and practical understandings of the service businesses, especially under the context of man-to-man service excellence.
3. This course is relevant to those who will engage in various service operations, both for business purposes and for public welfare.
4. The topics include strategic service model design, service marketing, and service operations, cap stoned by people as well as organization management/leadership issues.

This course of Corporate Strategy involves strategic decision making and management at the corporate level. Through the business logic, added value logic and capital market logic, the course evolves with portfolio strategy, adding and subtracting values, and management strategy from the corporate headquarters’ perspective, and interaction with business strategy. The approach of the course is practical and problem-oriented. The major part of the course will involve applying concepts, analytic frameworks, and intuition to the strategic issues which real-world companies face.

This course of Competing in Emerging Markets focuses on the challenges and opportunities associated with business and management in emerging markets. By examining the various social economic and institutional factors particular to emerging markets, the course addresses specific organizational strategies that firms need to pursue to overcome these obstacles and exploit opportunities in emerging markets. The course combines lectures, class participation, cases, and a number of visiting speakers will help to tie the course theory to business practice.

This course provides essential frameworks and associated keywords that help to understand digital transformation (DX). The course aims to investigate the following three core topics; DX structure, DX process and DX culture within an organization. Discussions around these themes are based on the notion of “sociotechnical system” which regards a work system as correlative interacting systems of the social system and the technical system. Also, in this course, we consider an organization as a capital creation system.
Three core topics in this course consist of: process and innovation management, value chain, transformation orchestra, decision making model (waterfall/agile), platform strategy and data management. Various examples are introduced in order to understand how such frameworks are applied to practice. Students will facilitate a case discussion every two sessions. The case is associated with the topic we learned in this course. This course enables students to understand how organizational transformation is escalated through digital technologies and its management.

The learning objectives of this course are to understand concepts of innovation, the essence of entrepreneurship, to learn the historical context of innovations and entrepreneurial activities. For the second purpose, this class examines the Japanese modernization, economic growth, and dematurity process.

The beginning two sessions focus on historical overview of the Japanese business history. The next four sessions discuss the theoretical framework of innovation and entrepreneurship. Sessions 7 to 12 highlight the historical context which enabled innovations and entrepreneurial activities. In the last four sessions, every student makes a presentation on a free theme about innovation and entrepreneurship.

This course is particularly useful for students who are interested in starting their own business and want to learn different aspects of business management. This course is also suited to those involved in corporate entrepreneurship or in improving competitive positioning and transforming corporations towards value-creation. This course uses several concepts and knowledge from other courses (strategy, marketing, accounting) and is an efficient way to put them in practice in an integrative business plan. The course primarily uses a combination of lectures, class discussions, case analyses, group and individual assignments.

This course addresses two fundamental issues of innovation-driven business development for practicing managers and entrepreneurs. ① Innovation-driven business creation: Managers must be able to identify new innovation opportunities, formulate them as viable business concepts, and manage the initial business launch. ② Innovation-driven business growth: In order to grow businesses through innovation, managers must be able to do ① above in the context of preexisting, “legacy businesses”, which will force them to meet the challenge of the classical dilemma, known as “exploration-exploitation ambidexterity”.

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New generations of digital technologies impact the whole value chain of business activities from branding to marketing to operations to organizational capability building. These impacts throughout the value chain are collectively enabling a host of new strategies that are often disruptive to conventional, pre-digital businesses. The course aims to help students (1) Understand strategic impacts of new digital technologies (e.g., Blockchain, AI, collective intelligence), (2) Gain insights on how digitally-enabled strategies are often disruptive to conventional businesses and (3) Analyze and assess strategic options available to incumbent businesses to counter disruptive moves of digitally equipped competitors.

Today, competitions in many industries and in many parts of the world are becoming increasingly global due to the rapid rise of emerging economies, continuously integrated world economies, and more recently game-changing advances in digital technologies. In such competitive circumstances, even a domestic competition would not complete its story unless interpreted in the context of global-scale competitive advantage. This course examines the forefront of such global competitions by focusing on industries where the impacts of digital technologies are most prominent.

Today, competitions in many industries and in many parts of the world are becoming increasingly global due to the rapid rise of emerging economies, continuously integrated world economies, and more recently game-changing advances in digital technologies. In such competitive circumstances, even a domestic competition would not complete its story unless interpreted in the context of global-scale competitive advantage. This course examines the forefront of such global competitions by focusing on industries where the impacts of digital technologies are most prominent. Global Strategy in the Digital Age II can be taken independently of Global Strategy in the Digital Age I.

Business leaders must understand how their leadership is effectively functioned in their decision making, especially in the critical situation. Furthermore, in order to achieve organizational goals, they must understand the difference between the management systems and their leadership power by empowering their people and applying organizational resources.

Upon completion of this course, student should be able to:

• understand what leadership is, how to use leadership, and how to develop leadership capabilities in order to become a competent business leader
• become effective business leaders who can implement and lead business goals in organization environments.

One of the most important capabilities of a Leader is the ability to make informed strategic decisions without having access to perfect and complete information.  This course is meant to serve as a “Capstone” course within the 1-Year MBA curriculum, bringing together all of the hard and soft skills students have learned to become effective global leaders, and put these into practice through real-time interactions with the senior leadership team of a chosen company. This course will focus on enabling participants to develop to practical skills and capabilities to analyze imperfect and incomplete information within a constantly changing business environment.

A business negotiation may be sometimes the formal affair that takes place across the proverbial bargaining table, in which a business people argues and discusses a wide variety of issues for either individual or mutual gain.

Upon completion of this course, student should be able to:

• Outline strategies of negotiation, conflicts and business communication, which help students at the new start of business career after graduation, through discussions and practices in this program to have confidence in the daily tasks
• Embody their knowledge, concept, theories and learnings in the other programs as the dynamic business conflicts resolution.

This course develops a sound conceptual understanding of persuasive communication through effective presentations, as applicable to individuals in leadership positions in organizations. Students learn about “presenter’s mindset,” “psychological presence,” and “influence.” They also develop the ability to speak assertively; logically structure and naturally deliver a value-based presentation to an audience; and become more confident as communicators. The course combines interactive lectures, group discussions, and individual & team presentation activities with customized, constructive feedback. In addition to text materials and cases, the course uses selected TED-talks, expert presentations, and comments from presentation experts from online sources, for modelling and in-class discussions.

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Understanding customers and how to deliver value in an increasingly competitive national and international market is a fundamental task for each company. Although these issues are generally accepted by managers, many cases show failures in the products launched due to poor analysis and understanding of markets and customers. Therefore, students need to consider marketing as a core discipline in order to deliver value not only to customers but also to society as a whole.
This marketing management course provides the basic marketing principles as well as some advanced tools and methodologies necessary for creating successful marketing plans.

Marketing Intelligence (MI) is a specialized practice focusing on anticipating critical market, the environment and the competition changes. More and more firms require a formalized MI functions to feed the marketing decision-making process with up-to-date insights. Some environmental and organizational conditions are directly related to the success of MI functions (Comai, 2016). Therefore, companies need to use this information efficiently by collecting qualitative information. The data used by a MI function replace those decisions that are based on historical data with forward-looking information. The purpose of this course is to create professionals able to implement a IM in the firm.

This course will help students understand brand management basics and make better decisions on marketing and brand communication strategies. Theories, models, and frameworks useful in developing effective brand strategies will be introduced. This course will augment students’ understanding of other marketing courses from a practical point of view. It will clearly benefit those working in marketing functions or marketing-driven organization. Given the central role of a ‘brand’ to an organization’s success, the course is likely to be beneficial to students in a broader array of functions, from finance to sales and operations.

Students will understand the key principles of relationship marketing and how a Customer Relationship Management program should be formulated and implemented. The course will emphasize developing the knowledge and skills needed for strategic customer management. Organizations are now discovering that the cost of gaining new customers requires a substantial investment. However, not all customers are profitable ones, and therefore organizations need to assess which ones are, and discover how to keep them. Consolidation and testing of lessons and principles learned will be achieved through a major group project on CRM which will be completed during and after the classroom sessions.

The growth of the new generations, the connectivity between people through mobile devices and the access to open source information have changed the way customers make their purchase. In these conditions, traditional marketing is undergoing a major digital transformation and it is affected by important changes from consumers new habits.
In order to take advance of this trend, it is important to understand not only the digital marketing tools that are available but also how consumers behave and make decisions in order to prepare the best campaign using in both online and off-line medium. On top of that, all these activities need to be organized using a digital marketing plan.
The aim of this course is to provide a fundamental knowledge about how consumers behave and how digital media can influence the consumer decision process. The course provides students with a step-by-step process including campaigns, tools and techniques, all organized under the digital marketing plan.

Marketing analytics enables marketers to measure, manage and analyze marketing performance to maximize its effectiveness and optimize return on investment (ROI). Beyond the obvious sales and lead generation applications, marketing analytics can offer profound insights into customer preferences and trends, which can be further utilized for future marketing and business decisions. This course gives you the tools to measure brand and customer assets, understand regression analysis, and design experiments as a way to evaluate and optimize marketing campaigns. You’ll leave the course with a solid understanding of how to use marketing analytics to predict outcomes and systematically allocate resources.

This course introduces students to marketing research and provides an introduction to many of the quantitative techniques currently used in modern marketing practice. The course will familiarize students with fundamental concepts of marketing research and some of the frequently encountered research topics and techniques used in marketing practice. The topics to be covered will be in the areas of data collection and techniques of data analysis; and may include techniques used in: market segmentation and targeting; positioning and branding; pricing; product design; and advertising and promotion.