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Curriculum

An innovative curriculum designed to fit your schedule.

Curriculum

The curriculum consists of 24 required courses; each course is five weeks long. Courses are open only to mpd² students, and all students take the same classes in sequence.

Overview

The courses range from those typical of a professional design and development curriculum, product management, understanding through design, obtaining meaning from data, protecting intellectual property, creativity, leading design sprints, design research and managing  innovation, to those typical of a business curriculum, such as marketing, finance, accounting, organizational behavior, leadership, negotiation, decision making and business modeling. The courses below can only accomodate MPD students. See the 2023-2024 class schedule here.

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Fall 1

MPD 400-0: Introduction to Product Design and Development

Course Description
  • Class time: AM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: Sept. 22, 30, Oct. 6, 14, 20
  • Instructor: Jim Wicks, Will Hubbard, Martin Ringlein

Understanding the overall process of the design and development of products and services from opportunity identification to realization.

MPD 450-0: Effective Communication

Course Description
  • Class time: PM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: Sept. 22, 30, Oct. 6, 14, 20
  • Instructor: Beth Bennett

Communication within the corporate environment: public speaking, live presentations, reports, and emails. External communication: interaction with clients/partners, domestic and foreign, crisis communication. Interpersonal and team communication, navigating difficult conversations.

MPD 430-0: Sustainability in the Product Development Process

Course Description
  • Class time: AM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: Oct. 28, Nov. 3, 11, 17, Dec. 2
  • Instructor: Craig Arnold

Exploring the choices made in product and service development, and their impact on performance, cost and sustainability strategies.

MPD 442-0: Team Building and Organizational Behavior

Course Description
  • Class time: PM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: Oct. 28, Nov. 3, 11, 17, Dec. 2
  • Instructor: John Boyce

Living with and exploring corporate culture(s), team building, motivation, managing change, feedback and mentoring. Cross-cultural issues in the global marketplace. Applying proven concepts in an organizational environment.

Winter 1

MPD 420-0: Accounting Issues for Product Development

Course Description
  • Class time: AM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: Jan. 5, 13, 19, 27, Feb 2
  • Instructor: Robin Soffer

Understand the financial statements with emphasis on the Income Statement and Balance Sheet. Understanding, analyzing and explaining the financial performance of a company for managerial decision making. Additional focus on areas of importance to new product teams including variable costing, cost analysis, cost allocations and development of projections for new products.

MPD 410-0: Understanding through Design

Course Description
  • Class time: PM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: Jan. 5, 13, 19, 27, Feb 2
  • Instructor: Greg Holderfield

Strong emphasis on right brain creative thinking for service design. Study will include: ethnography, consumer empathy, creative collaboration, brainstorming, design language, brand, storytelling, and the culture of innovation within business.

MPD 424-0: Financial Issues for Product Development

Course Description
  • Class time: AM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: Feb. 10, 16, 24, March 1,9
  • Instructor: Leo Brubaker

Financial skills for product development: valuation, capital structure, corporate governance, risk management, financial modeling and product cost analysis.

MPD 444-0: Negotiation/Conflict Resolution

Course Description
  • Class time: PM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: Feb. 10, 16, 24, March 1,9
  • Instructor: Connie Meyer

Win-win negotiation, power in negotiation, planning and conduct of negotiation. Minimizing and resolving conflicts, tactics and ethics in negotiation. Objective standards in disputes.

Spring 1

MPD 432-0: Leading with Data Analytics

Course Description
  • Class time: AM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: March 29, April 6,12, 20, 26
  • Instructor: Anthony Orzechowski

This course is focused on providing leaders in product development the methods to drive more effective decisions and actions through data analytics. The course will emphasize the use of simple effective visual methods to achieve this.

MPD 408-0: Global Product Design and Supply Chains

Course Description
  • Class time: AM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: May 4, 10, 18, 24, June 1
  • Instructor: Achal Bassamboo

The challenges and opportunities of global product development. Recent history, economic conditions and the techniques pursued by companies competing in the global economy. Leveraging the global supply and design chains across a variety of industries and contexts.

MPD 445-0: Product Management

Course Description
  • Class time: PM
  • Credits: 1
  • Dates: March 29, April 6,12, 20, 26, May 4, 10, 18, 24, June 1
  • Instructors: Birju Shah

PMs define a product's requirements and then lead a team responsible for its development, launch, and ongoing improvement. Practices in Product Management aims to understand the PM role and develop skills required to perform the role.

Fall 2

MPD 406-0: Human Factors

Course Description
  • Class time: AM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: Sept. 23, 29, Oct. 7, 13, 21
  • Instructor: Russ Branaghan

Human cognitive and physical capabilities and limitations applied to the design of products, processes and services. The design of controls, displays, and human-computer interaction. Design for differing abilities.

MPD 416-0-20 and MPD 416-0-21: Customer Driven Opportunities

Course Description
  • Class time: PM
  • Credits: 1
  • Dates: Sept. 23, 29, Oct. 7, 13, 21, 27, Nov. 4*, 18, Dec. 1
  • Instructors: JoEllen Kames 1 5w and Elisa Vargas 2 5wk

Integration project starting point, exploring ‘new to the world’ opportunity. Integrates all aspects of product development in a hands-on team project for identifying unmet, under met and unarticulated needs supported by using various research techniques with quantifiable results.

*Please note MPD 416 will be teaching both AM and PM sessions on 11/4.

MPD 458-0: Intellectual Capital Strategy

Course Description
  • Class time: AM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: Oct.27, Nov. 10, 18, Dec. 1
  • Instructor: James Conley

Management of innovations and intellectual property. Understanding patents, copyrights, secrets, trademarks. Value translations, value transference. Regulatory and international issues. Using intellectual property as corporate strategy.

*Please note MPD 458 will be teaching both AM and PM sessions on 11/10.

Winter 2

MPD 402-0: Management of Product Innovation

Course Description
  • Class time: AM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: Jan. 6, 12, 20, 26, Feb. 3
  • Instructor: John Renaldi, Mike Edmonds

Planning, organizing and creating a product innovation culture. Innovation roadmaps, resource deployment, competencies, partnerships and alliances for sustained innovation productivity.

MPD 403-0: Creativity and Understanding through Design Sprints

Course Description
  • Class time: PM
  • Credits: 1
  • Dates: Jan. 6, 12, 20, 26, Feb. 3, 9, 17, 23, March 2, 8
  • Instructor: Josh Campbell, Jim Wicks

In this course students will learn how to evolve and further their understanding of their product concepts. The class will teach how to diverge and converge on ideas in the product design process through iterative design and prototyping. They will learn how to create product questions and prioritize what to solve for. Students will learn to create minimum viable prototypes with low-fidelity tools for digital, hardware, or service product concepts. They will use user research as a method to evaluate their product concepts using their prototypes. As a team they will hone their ability to give and receive critique to augment their research. Throughout this course students will evolve their product based on its desirability, viability and feasibility, culminating in a presentation of product concepts and associated value proposition

MPD 405-0: Agile Management of Software Product Design & Development

Course Description
  • Class time: AM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: Feb. 9, 17, 23, March 2, 8
  • Instructor: Chris Riesbeck

Project Management for software: requirements, work breakdown structure, time/cost estimation. Risk management, development methodologies, scope creep. Motivating and maintaining productive teams. Understanding MVP (minimal viable product).

Spring 2

MPD 401-1: Principles of Marketing

Course Description
  • Class time: PM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: March 30, April 5, 13, 19, 27
  • Instructor: Candy Lee

Understanding and integration of key marketing principles into the management of product development. Identification and application of audience centric goal setting, segmentation, branding, positioning, and promotion techniques to ensure growth of products and services.

MPD 449-0: Global Leadership in a Smart and Connected World

Course Description
  • Class time: PM
  • Credits: 0.5
  • Dates: May 3, 11, 17, 25, 31
  • Instructor: Robert Schwartz

The challenges of leadership of product development teams in a corporate or entrepreneurial environment including how to nurture talent; how to consider growth in a complex, global world; how to lead ethically; how to be a financially literate leader.

MPD 409-2: Business Model Design

Course Description
  • Class time: AM
  • Credits: 1
  • Dates: March 30, April 5, 13, 19, 27, May 3, 11, 17, 25, 31
  • Instructors: John Renaldi and Mike Edmonds

Culmination of capstone project integrating all aspects of product development. Iterative development of the capstone business model.

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