Cohort Schedule
Please refer to the Course Schedule for course offering dates, times, and semesters.
Year 1
- 752.600 Foundations in the Life Sciences
- 752.610 Value Identification in the Life Sciences
- 752.708 Transition to the Business
Year 2
Year 3
- 752.701 Addressing the Challenges of Growth
- 752.801 Capstone: Integrative Field Experience in the Life Sciences
- 752.705 Reflections in the Life Sciences
- 752.830 Mentorship Practicum in the Life Sciences
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752.600 Foundations in the Life Sciences
The first part of the program will be an intense grounding in the fundamentals of business and management: accounting, management, economics, statistics, organizational behavior, marketing, and ethics. This module will provide the basic concepts and skills that students will need before addressing later topics. In addition, faculty and guest speakers will introduce the critical issues and questions facing the life sciences industry. Classes will be held two nights per week, for three hours each (9 credits).
Open to MBA in the Lifes Sciences Students Only.
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752.610 Value Identification in the Life Sciences
The cohort will be divided into five-student teams. Each team’s primary activity during this module will be to identify – and develop a proposal to commercialize – one idea in the life sciences that meets the needs of a targeted audience. Each student on the team will be responsible for conducting market research and identifying an emerging idea in the life sciences (e.g., a molecule that might be the basis for a new pharmaceutical, a protein that can advance agricultural biotechnology, a bioinformatics algorithm) that might have commercial possibilities. Each student will develop – and present to the team – a 5-page proposal that describes the idea and explains its commercialization potential (in terms of the size and needs of a target population, societal impact, and financial return). Each team will select one of the five initial proposals, based on criteria that they develop. The students whose proposals are not selected will revise their proposal based on the comments of the team and the faculty adviser. The entire team will then revise and enhance the chosen proposal for the next phase of the learning process (4 credits).
Open to MBA in the Life Sciences Student Only.
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752.708 Transition to the Business
In this module, the teams will prepare a business plan for their chosen concept for commercialization and present it to potential sources of funding (e.g., venture capitalists, private foundations, government agencies). That is, they will develop mission and vision statements for their idea (and organization), conduct a market assessment (including competitor analysis), develop an overall strategic plan, prepare a financial pro forma analysis, develop an appropriate organizational structure (including recruiting a management team and governing board), and articulate the investment opportunity for potential funders (5 credits).
Open to the MBA in the Life Sciences Students Only.
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752.710 Starting and Managing the Enterprise I
The entire second year of the MBA in the Life Sciences program will be devoted to the students learning how to create and manage the organization they will need to commercialize the business idea that they developed and for which they successfully “received funding” in the first year of the program. During this year, each team will need to: · Revise and finalize its business plan · Obtain approval from an internal regulatory body (e.g., Institutional Review Board) · Prepare patent (or similar) applications or negotiate licensing agreements, as appropriate · Develop an organizational structure (including incorporation or application for non-profit status, as appropriate) · Prepare key job descriptions for the organization · Prepare budgets and key performance metrics for the short-term and long-term · Develop and implement marketing plan · Identify critical vulnerabilities in the organization and prepare contingency plans (e.g, if lead scientist leaves organization, organization sued for patent infringement by competitor, economy enters recession) · Negotiate agreements with outside entities (e.g., sources of funding, partners, vendors) · Report progress to its board of directors on a quarterly basis. Throughout the year, the program’s faculty will introduce scenarios of opportunities and threats that the teams will need to address. Some of these scenarios will be applicable to all teams; others will be specific to the business concept or type of organization that each team has developed. Students on each team will be initially assigned roles of Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Information Officer, and Chief Science Officer. Students will rotate roles throughout the year so that they understand the perspective and gain the skills needed to succeed in each of these crucial positions in a life sciences organization (9 credits)
Open to MBA in the Life Sciences Students Only.
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752.711 Starting and Managing the Enterprise II
The entire second year of the MBA in the Life Sciences program will be devoted to the students learning how to create and manage the organization they will need to commercialize the business idea that they developed and for which they successfully “received funding” in the first year of the program. During this year, each team will need to: ·Revise and finalize its business plan ·Obtain approval from an internal regulatory body (e.g., Institutional Review Board) ·Prepare patent (or similar) applications or negotiate licensing agreements, as appropriate ·Develop an organizational structure (including incorporation or application for non-profit status, as appropriate) ·Prepare key job descriptions for the organization ·Prepare budgets and key performance metrics for the short-term and long-term ·Develop and implement marketing plan ·Identify critical vulnerabilities in the organization and prepare contingency plans (e.g, if lead scientist leaves organization, organization sued for patent infringement by competitor, economy enters recession) ·Negotiate agreements with outside entities (e.g., sources of funding, partners, vendors) ·Report progress to its board of directors on a quarterly basis. Throughout the year, the program’s faculty will introduce scenarios of opportunities and threats that the teams will need to address. Some of these scenarios will be applicable to all teams; others will be specific to the business concept or type of organization that each team has developed. Students on each team will be initially assigned roles of Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Information Officer, and Chief Science Officer. Students will rotate roles throughout the year so that they understand the perspective and gain the skills needed to succeed in each of these crucial positions in a life sciences organization (9 credits).
Open to MBA in the Life Sciences Students Only.
Prerequisite(s): 752.710 Starting and Managing the Enterprise I.
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752.701 Addressing the Challenges of Growth
Each team will complete its work with its business concept and organization. It will need to address the variety of issues facing organizations as they grow and mature: the transition to sustainability; the management of product maturation and new product development; change leadership and management; formulation and execution of an exit strategy. Specifically, each team will need to: · Develop methodologies to improve the quality and efficiency of the enterprise · Revise its marketing plans, to accommodate maturing and new products · Develop succession plans to replace each of the founders · Develop and implement an exit strategy (e.g., buyout or merger with another organization, or initial public offering) (6 credits).
Open to MBA in the Life Sciences Students Only.
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752.801 Capstone: Integrative Field Experience in the Life Sciences
The proposed curriculum for the MBA in the Life Sciences is structured so that students will always be integrating their learning. To ensure that students are able to translate this learning beyond the hypothetical business concept and organization that they created, we will organize an opportunity for them to apply their knowledge and skills to a real organization. The Capstone project will match up teams of students with real life sciences organizations in the Baltimore-Washington region that are experiencing challenges of sufficient magnitude to engage the interests of both the students and the organizations (6 credits).
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752.705 Reflections in the Life Sciences
To wrap up the program, students will reflect on what they have learned, how the learning applies to the real world, and how the program affects their career directions. They will develop a set of “lessons learned” from the experience in creating and managing their hypothetical life science organizations. They will consider how to apply the “tool kit” that they have acquired during the program to their current organization – and for future organizations. Finally, they will engage in formal career counseling, to determine the future direction of their professional life (2 credits).
Open to the MBA in the Life Sciences Students Only.
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752.830 Mentorship Practicum in the Life Sciences
Throughout the third year of the program, students will be given the opportunity to apply their new knowledge in a different format. Based on their interests, they will do one or more of the following: teach mini-courses to first-year students in the Foundations module; mentor individual first- or second-year students; or consult with one of the first- or second-year student project teams. This experience will enable students to integrate, deepen, and apply in a related context what they have learned during the program (4 credits).
Open to the MBA in the Life Sciences Students Only.
