Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Leading the Way: Interpersonal & Organizational Strategies for Advancing DE&I introduces and analyzes competing explanations and claims about inequality within US workplaces; reviews evidence regarding the effectiveness of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and policies; and investigates how race, gender, and other identities may affect employees' experience in work organizations. Significant class time is devoted to experiential exercises to develop skills for interacting effectively with diverse others, managing teams and critical conversations, and advocating thoughtfully for change. Weekly assignments include written reflections based on readings and social science research. Restricted to Sloan MBA students.

Leading with Impact introduces skills and capabilities for real-world problem solving to take technology from lab to societal impact: technical and functional exploration, opportunity discovery, market understanding, value economics, scale-up, intellectual property, and communicating/working for impact across disciplines. Students work in multidisciplinary teams formed around MIT research breakthroughs, with extensive in-class coaching and guidance from faculty, lab members, and select mentors. Follows a structured approach to innovating in which everything is a variable and the product, technology, and opportunities for new ventures can be seen as an act of synthesis. Teams gather evidence that permits a fact-based iteration across multiple application domains, markets, functionalities, technologies, and products, leading to a recommendation that maps a space of opportunity and includes actionable next steps to evolve the market and technology.

Diversity as Discovery aims to help students discover who they are as individuals and members of a community. Course operates under two basic assumptions: that we can accomplish more together than alone, and that a significant part of who we are as individuals is left out of most organizational settings. Confronts the lack of tools and frameworks for dealing with the wealth of diversity among populations, and discusses the value diversity could potentially create.