Didier Sornette: Catalogue data in Spring Semester 2016

Name	Prof. em. Dr. Didier Sornette
Field	Entrepreneurial Risks
Address	Dep. Management,Technolog.u.Ökon. ETH Zürich, SEC F 7 Scheuchzerstrasse 7 8092 Zürich SWITZERLAND
E-mail	dsornette@ethz.ch
URL	http://www.er.ethz.ch/
Department	Management, Technology, and Economics
Relationship	Professor emeritus

Number	Title	ECTS	Hours	Lecturers
351-0778-00L	Discovering Management Entry level course in management for BSc, MSc and PHD students at all levels not belonging to D-MTEC. This course can be complemented with Discovering Management (Excercises) 351-0778-01L.	3 credits	3G	F. Hacklin, M. Ambühl, S. Brusoni, E. Fleisch, P. Frauenfelder, G. Grote, V. Hoffmann, P. Schönsleben, D. Sornette, J.‑E. Sturm, G. von Krogh, F. von Wangenheim
Abstract	Discovering Management offers an introduction to the field of business management and entrepreneurship for engineers and natural scientists. The module provides an overview of the principles of management, teaches knowledge about management that is highly complementary to the students' technical knowledge, and provides a basis for advancing the knowledge of the various subjects offered at D-MTEC.
Learning objective	Discovering Management offers an integrated learning system, which combines in an innovate format a set of lectures, an advanced business game simulation and a set of group exercises involving industry speakers (ranging from leading venture capitalists to executives at established corporations). Unlike more traditional courses, the learning model for Discovering Management involves 'learning by doing'. While the 13 different lectures, in-class discussions and assigned readings provide the theoretical and conceptual foundations, the experiential learning outcomes result from the interrelated group activities: 1) the interactive case studies and exercises, 2) the business game simulation. By discovering the key aspects of entrepreneurial management, the purpose of the course is to advance students' understanding of factors driving company success, where success is understood as a broad construct including financial return, employee, customer and supplier satisfaction as well as social and ecological responsibility. Discovering Management is designed to suit the needs and expectations of Bachelor students at all levels as well as Master and PhD students not belonging to D-MTEC. By providing an overview of Entrepreneurial Management, this course is an ideal enrichment of the standard curriculum at ETH Zurich. No prior knowledge of business or economics is required to successfully complete this course.
Content	The lectures for Discovering Management are designed to broaden the participant's understanding of the principles of entrepreneurial management, emphasizing the interdependence of various specialties in the development and management of a firm. For this reason, the lectures are structured on the basis of a coherent business model and will be presented by the respective area specialists at D-MTEC. The lectures broaden the view and the understanding of technology by interlinking it with society. Corporate sustainability, for example, introduces economic, ecological and social issues that are relevant to all engineering disciplines. Practical examples stimulate the students to assess these issues and be aware of their responsibilities as engineers. Technology and innovation management, to mention a second example, focuses on the interplay of technical and organizational change, and how these often neglected interactions explain why many new technologies are never used. It fosters the students' ability to see the business and social consequences of their 'technical' decisions. Critical skills will be trained by the case study exercise, a participant-centered learning activity, which provides students with the opportunity to place themselves in the role of the decision maker, as they learn more about the specific case and identify the challenge they are faced with. Students will be presented real case scenarios by industry guests from established corporations and will have to critically analyze specific issues. The case study exercise will provide an insight into the context of a managerial problem-solving and enhance the participant's appreciation for the complex tasks companies deal with. Discovering Management attempts to overcome the limitations of traditional teaching curricula of management in technical universities, which often merely focus on transferring specific skills to students, e.g. planning or forecasting. In response to the new challenges for entrepreneurial decision-making, students will be offered the opportunity to actively engage in an advanced business game simulation; a business game that establishes a link between business management theory and business management in practice. The simulation presents a realistic model of a company and provides participants with the opportunity to quickly gain the lasting effects of practical experience in a risk-free environment. All this provides a valuable learning platform to integrate the increasingly important development of the skills and competences required to identify entrepreneurial opportunities, analyze the future business environment and successfully respond to it by taking systematic decisions, e.g. critical assessment of technological possibilities.
Prerequisites / Notice	Discovering Management is designed to suit the needs and expectations of Bachelor students at all levels as well as Master and PhD students not belonging to D-MTEC. By providing an overview of Business Management, this course is an ideal enrichment of the standard curriculum at ETH Zurich. No prior knowledge of business or economics is required to successfully complete this course.
363-0564-00L	Entrepreneurial Risks	3 credits	2G	D. Sornette
Abstract	-General introduction to the different dimensions of risks with emphasis on entrepreneurial, financial and social risks. -Development of the concepts and tools to understand these risks, control and master them. -Decision making and risks; human cooperation and risks
Learning objective	We live a in complex world with many nonlinear negative and positive feedbacks. Entrepreneurship is one of the leading human activity based on innovation to create new wealth and new social developments. This course will analyze the risks (upside and downside) associated with entrepreneurship and more generally human activity in the firms, in social networks and in society. The goal is to present what we believe are the key concepts and the quantitative tools to understand and manage risks. An emphasis will be on large and extreme risks, known to control many systems, and which require novel ways of thinking and of managing. We will examine the questions of (i) how much one can manage and control these risks, (ii) how these actions may feedback positively or negatively and (iii) how to foster human cooperation for the creation of wealth and social well-being. Depending on the number of students and of the interest, the exam will consist in a project, one for each student or in small groups, focused on the application of the concepts and tools developed in this class to problems of practical use to the students in their varied fields. The choice of the subjects will be jointly decided by the students and the professor.
Content	This content is not final and is subjected to change and adaptation during the development of the course in order to take into account feedbacks from the students and participants to the course. 1- Risks in the firm and in entrepreneurship -What is risk? The four levels. -Conceptual and technical tools -Introduction to three different concepts of probability -Useful notions of probability theory (Frequentist versus Bayesian approach, the central limit theorem and its generalizations, extreme value theory) -Where are the risks for firms? Downside and upside -Diversification and market risks 2-The world of power law risks -Stable laws -power laws and beyond -calculation tools -scale invariance, fractal and multifractals -mechanisms for power laws -Examples in the corporate, financial and social worlds 3-Risks emerging from collective self-organization -concept of bottom-up self-organization -bifurcations, theory of catastrophes, phase transitions -predictability -the hierarchical approach to understanding self-organization 4-Measures of risks -coherent and consistent measures of risks -origin of risks -dependence structure of risks -measures of dependence and of extreme dependences -introduction to copulas 5-Conceptual and mathematical models of risk processes -self-excited point processes of economic and financial shocks -agent-based models applied to collective emergent behavior in organization of firms and societies and their risks 6-Endogenous versus exogenous origins of crises -mild crises versus wild catastrophes: black swans and kings -the dynamics of commercial sales -the dynamics of Youtube views and internet downloads -the dynamics of risks in the financial markets -strategic management and extreme risks 7-Why do markets burst and crash? -collective behavior, imitation and herding -humans as social animals and consequence of risks -bubbles and crashes in human affairs, innovation, new technologies 8-Limits of predictability, of control and of management -the phenomenon of ``illusion of control'' -the world is a whole: irreducible risks from lack of diversification -intrinsic limits of predictability -the concept of pockets of predictability 9-Human-made risks -political, financial, economics, natural risks -elements on theories of decision making -Human cooperation and its lack thereof, mechanisms and design
Lecture notes	The lecture notes will be distributed a the beginning of each lecture.
Literature	I will use elements taken from my books -D. Sornette Critical Phenomena in Natural Sciences, Chaos, Fractals, Self-organization and Disorder: Concepts and Tools, 2nd ed. (Springer Series in Synergetics, Heidelberg, 2004) -Y. Malevergne and D. Sornette Extreme Financial Risks (From Dependence to Risk Management) (Springer, Heidelberg, 2006). -D. Sornette, Why Stock Markets Crash (Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems), (Princeton University Press, 2003) as well as from a variety of other sources, which will be indicated to the students during each lecture.
Prerequisites / Notice	-A deep curiosity and interest in asking questions and in attempting to understand and manage the complexity of the corporate, financial and social world -quantitative skills in mathematical analysis and algebra for the modeling part.
364-1058-00L	Risk Center Seminar Series Number of participants limited to 50.	0 credits	2S	B. Stojadinovic, K. W. Axhausen, D. Basin, A. Bommier, L.‑E. Cederman, P. Embrechts, H. Gersbach, H. R. Heinimann, D. Helbing, H. J. Herrmann, W. Mimra, G. Sansavini, F. Schweitzer, D. Sornette, B. Sudret, U. A. Weidmann
Abstract	This course is a mixture between a seminar primarily for PhD and postdoc students and a colloquium involving invited speakers. It consists of presentations and subsequent discussions in the area of modeling and governing complex socio-economic systems, and managing risks and crises. Students and other guests are welcome.
Learning objective	Participants should learn to get an overview of the state of the art in the field, to present it in a well understandable way to an interdisciplinary scientific audience, to develop novel mathematical models and approaches for open problems, to analyze them with computers or other means, and to defend their results in response to critical questions. In essence, participants should improve their scientific skills and learn to work scientifically on an internationally competitive level.
Content	This course is a mixture between a seminar primarily for PhD and postdoc students and a colloquium involving invited speakers. It consists of presentations and subsequent discussions in the area of modeling complex socio-economic systems and crises. For details of the program see the webpage of the seminar. Students and other guests are welcome.
Lecture notes	There is no script, but the sessions will be recorded and be made available. Transparencies of the presentations may be put on the course webpage.
Literature	Literature will be provided by the speakers in their respective presentations.
Prerequisites / Notice	Participants should have relatively good scientific, in particular mathematical skills and some experience of how scientific work is performed.