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B20.3362 Advanced Technologies for Business ApplicationsSpring
2004, Wed.
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Course Description
The IT revolution is far from over, and, contrary
to the well-known claim of Nicolas Carr, IT does
matter. In fact, according to some experts, the next 10-15 years will witness a
new wave of technological advances that will fundamentally change the ways we
live and do business.
This course will provide a thorough examination
of several enabling technologies responsible for major advances in the
high-tech industry. The goal of the course is for the students to study these technologies, explore various business opportunities that
they create, and to develop a good understand of various interrelationship
between technical and business issues pertaining to these technologies. The technologies
to be covered in this course include:
1. Wireless, Pervasive and “Smart” Technologies
2. Business Integration and Web Services Technologies
3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Personalization Technologies
4. Bio-Technologies
The students will not only familiarize themselves with these technologies, but will also explore corresponding markets and study some of the key companies operating in these markets. In particular, the students will examine what these companies do, which technologies they deploy, how these technologies support their critical applications and allow the companies to achieve their business objectives, and how these companies compete and collaborate with other companies. Moreover, we will discuss possible future directions and trends for the technologies being studied, novel applications that they enable and how high-tech companies can leverage these trends.
While studying these advanced technologies, the students will evaluate their business potential by examining what business applications these technologies would enable and whether some of them constitute truly transformational technologies that will affect our lives and major business processes in organizations. We will also evaluate if some of the emerging technologies have a potential of “crossing the chasm” (using Geoffrey Moore’s paradigm) and becoming mass-market technologies. Moreover, we will also examine where some of the emerging technologies lie on the Gartner’s “hype-and-gloom” curve.
The students will learn the material through the combination of class lectures, discussions, student presentations, case studies, and demos. Periodically, experts from the industry will be invited to share their experiences pertaining to the technologies being studied and discuss current trends and future directions for these technologies and corresponding industries. In particular the following guest speakers are scheduled to give guest lectures for each of the four modules listed above:
· Richard Lynch, CTO of Verizon Wireless
· Dwight Merriman, CTO and Co-Founder of Doubleclick
· Michael Liebow, Vice President of Web services, IBM Global Services
· Stelios Papadopoulos, Vice Chairman, SG Cowen, and Founder and Chairman of the Board of Exelixis, Inc. and Eric Schmidt, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at SG Cowen Securities Corp.
The dates and times of their visits to Stern are provided in the Course Schedule presented on the last page of this syllabus.
Intended Audience and Prerequisites
This course is intended for the students who have already
acquired some basic knowledge of technical concepts and who want to advance and
deepen their knowledge of technologies beyond the basics. The course is recommended for the students interested in careers in the
high-tech companies, high-tech consulting, investment banking in the technology
sector and venture capital.
Prerequisite: B20.2317 (Information and Internet Technologies) or the working knowledge of the material covered in that course, including basic understanding of
1. how computers work;
2. communication networks and how Internet works;
3. WWW basics.
The students who have not taken B20.2317 can assess their technical skills by examining the syllabus of that course at B20.2317. In addition, such students are encouraged to examine the following books
- How computers work: Millennium Edition, Ron White, Que, 1999.
- How the Internet works: Millennium Edition, Preston Gralla, Que, 1999.
and familiarize themselves with the material covered in these books. Finally, if you are still not sure if your background is appropriate for this course, you should contact the instructor.
The Project
The students will be grouped into small teams (4 students per team on average) and asked to analyze a company or a specific technology covered in the course. The deliverables of this analysis are (1) an in-class 12 – 15 minute presentation and (2) a written report that will be delivered at the end of the course. The purpose of this project is to encourage exploration and independent research and to stimulate thinking about emerging applications and factors contributing to the success or failure thereof.
The students will also be asked to write a short report either (a) on one of the topics selected by the instructor or (b) about one of the cutting edge and highly innovative technologies of your choice that also has a strong business potential, or about a particular company commercializing this technology. In the latter case, the student will be asked to make a 5-minute class presentation about this technology.
Requirements and Grading
The bulk of the grade will come from the project
(both an in-class presentation and a written report) and the report mentioned
in the previous section. Also, there will be four short quizzes administered
in-class to test the knowledge of the material. The purpose of these quizzes is
to encourage periodic review of the course material and strengthen
understanding of the concepts covered in class.
A student’s overall combined average score will be calculated based on the following components:
1. Project 40%
2. Report 21%
3. Quizzes (4) 24%
4. Class participation 15%
All of these items will be graded on a 100-point basis (i.e. no grades will be given for individual components). These grades will be combined using the weights specified above, and the final grade will be based upon the weighted numerical score.
Some of the factors affecting class participation include showing interest in the subject and active participation in the class discussions, regular class attendance, and preparedness for the classes.
It is not possible to do
supplementary assignments to compensate for poor or missing grades obtained in
any of these categories.
Reading Materials
The following materials are required for the course:
1. The
2. Understanding the Genome,
Scientific American (editor), George Church Warner Books publisher, March
2002.
These reading materials can be purchased from the NYU Bookstore. Additional handout material will also be provided in class and on the Web.
Also, the following textbooks will provide background information and sources of additional reference:
1. L. Harte, S. Kellogg, R. Dreher, T. Schaffnit. The Comprehensive Guide to Wireless Technologies. APDG Publishing, 2000.
2. W. Webb, The Future of Wireless Communications, Artech House, 2001.
3. Joe Clabby, Web Services Explained: Solutions and Applications for the Real World, Prentice Hall, 2002.
4. Eric Newcomer, Understanding Web Services: XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI. Addison-Wesley, 2002.
5. Eric Marks and Mark Werrell, Executive’s Guide to Web Services, John
Wiley & Sons, 2003.
6. Jill Dyche, The CRM Handbook: A Business Guide to Customer Relationship Management, Addison-Wesley, 2002.
7. Paul Greenberg, CRM at the Speed of
Light, McGraw-Hill, 2002.
8. Matt Ripley, Genome, HarperCollins,
2002.
9. George Wolff, The
Biotech Investor’s Bible, John Wiley & Sons, 2001.
10. Cynthia Robbins-Roth, From Alchemy
to IPO: The Business of Biotechnology, Perseus
Publishing, 2000.
Contact Information and Office Hours
Office: KMEC 8-84
Phone: 998-0832
e-mail:
URL: www.stern.nyu.edu/~atuzhili/B203362.html
Office Hours: Wednesday,
Course
Outline
We start with the “grand tour” of the course and overview the major emerging technologies and their business applications enabled by these technologies. We will also cover the major themes of the course, such as examination of business pull and technology push strategies and the interactions between the two, Gartner’s “hype-and-gloom” curve and where different technologies lie on the curve, transformational nature of various technologies, and other themes. We will also consider the thesis of Nicolas Carr that “IT does not matter” and will discuss its applicability in the current business environment.
Module 1: Wireless Technologies
1. Motivating examples and discussions of interesting
wireless applications; overview of the market for wireless technologies.
2. Foundations of wireless technologies: radio
spectrum, the concept of a channel and how radio communications work, analog
vs. digital communications; cellular systems; system access technologies (FDMA,
TDMA, and CDMA) – how they work and how they differ from each other.
3. Generations of wireless technologies (1G, 2G, 2.5G, 3G and 4G), and corresponding numerous standards (e.g., AMPS, IS-136, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, W-CDMA and CDMA2000); making sense of these standards. Cutting-edge wireless technologies, including Smart antennas, mesh networks, ultrawideband (UWB) radio and agile radios.
4. Wireless LANs and the corresponding standards, including IEEE 802.11 and 802.16 (WiMax) standards; wireless personal area networks and the Bluetooth technology.
5. Pervasive and smart wireless technologies, including RFID technologies; the paradigm of smart mobile wireless devices connected into smart wireless networks communicating to each other and to the outside world; location-based wireless technologies.
6. Studies of wireless applications and services for data, voice and video. Overview of different types of services, including location-based, messaging, monitoring, mobile commerce and mobile entertainment services.
7. Overview of the markets for mobile application
developers, equipment manufacturers and carriers; studies of some wireless
companies: what they do, how they compete and cooperate with each other; how
they use wireless technologies covered in this module.
8. Future directions in wireless, including
discussions of innovative applications and emerging technologies supporting
these applications.
Reading materials: PWC 2002-2004, p. 413 – 464, BW articles from the Coursepack and on-line materials.
Module 2: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Personalization
Technologies
1. Overview of CRM and its various components, including customer contact centers and customer services, sales force automation, marketing and CRM analytics.
2. Overview of personalization and how it relates
to CRM; overview of basic types of personalization technologies: from trivial
(shallow) to smart (deep) personalization; overview of the personalization
process: from collecting customer data to providing personalized services and
delivering personalized information.
3. Overview of the underlying personalization
technologies: real-time data gathering, profiling, collaborative and
content-based filtering, rule management, dynamic content presentation, data
mining, and how they are deployed in some of the personalization systems;
capabilities of these technologies and applications that they enable.
4. Overview of some of CRM and personalization companies, and how they position and differentiate themselves in the CRM space. Packaged CRM suites vs. best-of-breads. ERP systems and its integration with CRM systems via Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) middleware.
5. Privacy: overview of major principles of privacy; opt-in vs. opt-out policies, ownership of raw and processed customer information; conflicting views on privacy as expressed by the industry and some of the privacy advocates; discussions of how to satisfy privacy concerns and the needs for personalized services.
Reading materials: PWC 2003 – 2005 p. 133 – 168, and on-line
materials.
Module 3: Business Integration and Web Services Technologies
1. Business Integration technologies: what they are and why they are important from the business point of view; business integration architectures.
2. Overview of the main Web service concepts; business perspective on Web services and discussion of the major business drivers for Web services; connection between Web services and Business Integration.
3. Technological perspective on Web services and
overview of its key technologies, including XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI languages
and protocols; emerging additional standards and protocols for Web services,
including business process execution (e.g., BPEL4WS), transaction and security
standards; architectures of Web services.
4. Providing and consuming Web services using
.NET.
5. Overview of the Web service market, the key players and their Web service strategies.
Reading materials: PWC
2003 – 2005 p. 375 - 406, and on-line materials.
Module 4: Bio-Technologies
1. Introduction: the dawn of the bio-tech
revolution – what it is and where the industry is heading in the long run.
2. The genomics and proteomics primer: from genes
to proteins, and how proteins regulate various processes in the cells.
3. Biological causes of diseases and various
genomics-based methods to control these causes; the process of drug discovery
and design; population genomics and pharmacogenomics.
4. Enabling technologies and the role of IT in
this bio-tech revolution.
5. An overview of bio-tech industry: types of
bio-technology companies and their business strategies; how “big-pharma,” some of the chemical companies (e.g., Monsanto, DuPont and Dow Chemicals) and agribusiness companies prepare
themselves for the bio-tech revolution; the convergence process among
agricultural, chemical, biotech, pharmaceutical, energy and environmental
businesses and exploration of the causes of this convergence.
6. The HBS case study on Biogen.
7. Ethical and social issues pertaining to the
bio-tech revolution: from Frankenstein foods to bio-terrorism to the creation
of new forms of life; the dark side of the revolution: from the science of
eugenics to the creation of the next generation of biological weapons and their
potential use by terrorists; discussion of how to maximize positive impacts of
the bio-tech revolution and minimize potential problems through government
regulation and other means.
8. Discussions of future directions and trends in
the bio-tech industry.
Reading materials: Book “Understanding the genome,” HBR article “Transforming Life, Transforming Business: The Life-Science Revolution,” MIT TR article “Life Made to Order,” BW article “Five hurdles of biotech”, HBS case on Biogen and on-line materials.
Course Schedule
Please note that, if necessary, the following schedule may be altered
depending on the progress made during the course. If this is the case, the
instructor will provide a modified schedule in advance.
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Lecture |
Date |
Topic |
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1 |
Feb 11 |
An introduction and overview of the course. Module 1 (Wireless) Overview of the market for wireless technologies and applications. Foundations of wireless technologies. |
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2 |
Feb 18 |
Generations of wireless technologies and wireless standards; wireless LANs and PANs; pervasive and smart wireless technologies. |
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3 |
Feb 25 |
Wireless applications and services. Studies of the wireless industry. Discussion of future directions and trends in the wireless industry. |
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4 |
Mar 3 |
Guest speaker: Richard Lynch, CTO of Verizon
Wireless. Module 2 (CRM and Personalization): Overview of the basic concepts of CRM. |
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5 |
Mar 10 |
Guest speaker: Dwight Merriman, CTO of DoubleClick. Overview of personalization and its relationship to CRM. |
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6 |
Mar 24 |
Business perspectives on CRM and personalization; overview of the CRM and personalization industries. Privacy vs. personalization. |
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7 |
Mar 31 |
Module 2 (Business Integration and Web Services) Business Integration; overview of the main Web service concepts. Business perspectives on Web services. |
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8 |
Apr 7 |
Guest speaker: Michael Liebow, VP of Web Services, IBM. Technical perspectives on Web services and overview of its key technologies. |
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9 |
Apr 14 |
Architectures of Web services. Web services and .NET. Overview of the market for Web services. Student presentations of the projects. |
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10 |
Apr 21 |
Module 4 (Bio-tech): An introduction to biotech; a primer on genomics and proteomics. Overview of basic bio-tech concepts. The process of drug discovery and how genomic revolution affects it. |
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11 |
Apr 28 |
An overview of the bio-tech industry. Guest speakers: Stelios
Papadopoulos and Eric Schmidt, SG Cowen. |
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12 |
May 5 |
The HBS case on Biogen. Ethical and social issues pertaining to bio-tech revolution. Student presentations of the projects. Course wrap-up. |