Harsha Desai

Design and Implementation of an Interdisciplinary Marketing/Management Course on Technology and Innovation Management

Given increasing industry demand for integrative learning, marketing curricula need to emphasize interdisciplinary approaches to teaching. Although team teaching is a useful method for achieving cross-functional integration, there are very few frameworks for effectively implementing team teaching. Consequently, marketing educators seeking to offer team-taught, interdisciplinary courses have little direction on how to proceed. Against this background, this article describes the design and implementation of a team-taught, Marketing/Management interdisciplinary course on Technology and Innovation Management (TiM). On the basis of their experiences with the course, the authors provide instructors with a template for effectively implementing similar courses.

Teaching Scientists Entrepreneurship: A Dialectical Approach

Today, we know relatively well about what should be taught in the entrepreneurship program for non-business majors. However, our understanding of how should the non-business students be taught is still limited. To address this issue, we study the entrepreneurship curriculum developed for students in the Nontraditional Doctor of Pharmacy (NTPD) program at the University of Maryland Baltimore. In principle, the core of this entrepreneurship curriculum resembles a typical business school entrepreneurship course with an emphasis on developing a business or a project plan at the end of a two-semester, six-credit course sequence. This entrepreneurship curriculum for PharmD has a successful track record. From 1995 to 2003; 35% to 40% of the business plans developed by the NTPD students have been successfully funded. Although the program is structured in a similar manner as many other short-term entrepreneurship curricula in non-business programs, its implementation and dialectic approach create a dynamic learning environment that has effectively assisted non-business major graduate students to engage in business venturing activities. The infusion of dialectical inquiry at the NTPD program enables clinical pharmacy students to exploit their professional expertise while developing competence in business planning. Students are expected to plan for the implementation of some new aspect of clinical pharmacy into a new or existing practice. In this research, we reported the design of NTPD entrepreneurship curriculum and the training of business planning. Given the lack of foundation business knowledge and course time limitation in NTPD (and other hybrid programs), we posit that the effective implementation of dialectical inquiry will help students improve the quality of new venture planning.

Putting a Public Health Face on Clinical Practice: Potential for Using an Infectious Disease Management Model for Chronic Disease Prevention

Chronic diseases are the major cause of death and disability worldwide, accounting for 60% of all deaths. This article presents a strategy that has been developed based on an infectious disease management model, to improve earlier detection and treatment of patients with chronic disease. We argue that one of the best ways to combat chronic and infectious diseases is through early detection, treatment, and follow-up, including major lifestyle and behavioral changes. We believe that the infectious disease control model offers opportunities that could be utilized in the prevention of chronic diseases. In this model, infected individuals or cases are identified and treated. This article proposes considering a chronic disease event — e.g. a heart attack, breast cancer diagnosis, or diabetes mellitus diagnosis — as the index case and then screening the siblings and progeny (their brothers, sisters, and children), who are predictably at higher risk of precursors and early disease markers.Early intervention (between the ages of 30 and 40 years in men and between the ages of 40 and 50 years in women) should reap major benefits in terms of risk reduction and lower disease exacerbation. A 5–6% change would have a profound impact on healthcare costs. More importantly, a major segment of the population would enjoy a better quality of life. The goal would be to increase their awareness, target risky behaviors, and promote preventive measures. This also suggests the need to develop a systematic process of monitoring feedback and periodic recall. This, in addition to improved primary prevention, is a reasonable secondary prevention strategy that may provide major benefits to large segments of society, both in the US and worldwide.

Global outsourcing - USTC's entry into India: HR issues

Subject area The case primarily deals with the HR issues confronted by a US telecom company entering India for software development. Study level/applicability The case can be used of MBA and BA level courses in human resource management and international management. Case overview The focus of the case is on the international HR issues that emerge and how this company goes about solving its challenges of charting an international course. The telecom company establishes an Indian subsidiary, USTC-I, for this purpose and recruits fresh graduates and experienced professionals for USTC-I. The case describes the human resources challenges faced by Todd Johns, an HR Manager with the US company as the company attempts to recruit professional for USTC-I. This case deals with specific HR tools and techniques that can, and perhaps, should be used in identifying, recruiting, hiring and retaining employees. Expected learning outcomes Students should be able to: evaluate the current situation of the organization and offer possible remedies and solutions for improving future human resource practices in a global context, identify and analyze the effectiveness of how HR tools (recruiting methods, interviews, selection methods, orientation programs, reward systems) are implemented, develop a plan for improvement of HR recruiting and selection in an international context, explain the factors and problems that can undermine an interviews usefulness, and techniques for eliminating these problems in an international context, explain the pros and cons of background investigations, reference checks, and pre-employment information services in an international context. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

Implications of an internet startup entering in a market with low level of technological adoption: case study

Recent writers on innovation diffusion and adoption describe why some technologies are successful while others fail. The successful technologies have been unique, exclusive and compatible with the values of the users. Users also seem to find these technologies beneficial. Furthermore, the key to successful adoption has also been the development of ‘rational relationships’ between the technology introducers and users of these technologies. We explore the prerequisites for successful technology diffusion and its subsequent adoption in Chile. The case shows how an internet startup faced a market that was not ready to adopt its service, from a technological perspective, and the challenges this created for its market entry strategy.