Representative Electives

Team taught by Dean Moshe Zviran and Professor Eyal Benjamin, this course delves into the Israeli ecosystem through theory, guest lectures, and site visits.

Ecosystems are dynamic entities, responding to widely varying conditions and events. To understand the Israeli model, students study its historical context, its structural health, and its limitations. This course seeks to answer: How does Tel Aviv penetrate the global market so successfully? What makes U.S. and EU-based investors fund over 70% of the deals? What is unique about public-private partnerships?​ 

Students become familiar with the key factors and characteristics that are unique to the Israeli innovation ecosystem and that have transformed the country into a high-tech superpower. They interact with leading Israeli entrepreneurs, investors, and advisers who join as guest lecturers. Through company visits, the course reaches beyond theoretical concepts and enables students to develop practical perspectives into Tel Aviv’s entrepreneurial world.

As one student said, "The Dean's class gave me a brand new perspective. I saw that, in the Israeli ecosystem, everything is not just communicable, but also negotiable. This is different from other economies where whatever the authority figure says is final.  For a student, this Israeli way is really exciting and challenging.  Everything is changeable. I really think this is what the next generation of global business elites need to learn."

This course brings together Sofaer students with design students from Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art. Invoking business skills and design thinking, students develop innovative services aimed at solving social challenges. Within a studio environment, students utilize real data to engage in solving a real social challenge, thus creating meaningful impact. Students prototype tangible venture ideas with potential paths towards market.

Taught by Head of Sofaer Dr. Leslie Broudo, this course aims to bring greater clarity and specificity to the overall business model of each venture. Students learn tools and frameworks to enable student-led businesses to grow and thrive. Each year, students with already existing businesses or with business ideas are encouraged to present their venture, assemble a team, identify their key question, and develop or refine their financial model. The industry-specific weekly readings and discussions are customized to the student businesses, and teams are encouraged to learn from one another and offer insights and best practices. 

The end result is meant to be continued greater understanding of next steps, starting with hypothesis validation and extending into execution where possible.

Taught by Head of Sofaer Dr. Leslie Broudo, this course aims to support students to bring theory to practice. It is one thing, for example, to do an “industry analysis” in the classroom, where data and case materials are provided.  But what happens when one must conduct due diligence analysis for a company in an industry that does not even yet exist? What happens if one needs to develop a marketing plan for an industry in which the competitors are opaque. Where does one get the data? How does one synthesize and integrate it? How does one use their synthesis to connect to data-based decision-making in the workplace? Penultimately, how does one lead change, from a range of bureaucratic roles and power?

To answer these and related questions, this class will help students harness the tools and frameworks they are already learning and apply them fluidly and draw conclusions tied to action in an opaque, complex, and dynamically changing workplace. 

This course brings together outstanding students from across the Coller School of Management to help real clients define key strategic questions and build the background research and on-the-ground research needed to create an effective and implementable strategic plan. To be selected for this intensive program, students must demonstrate knowledge and understanding of target markets.

The results of each project include mapping out the market, analysis of the value chain, analysis of competitors and of trends. The recommendations will be presented upon completion of the project and provide a a solid foundation upon which to make management level decisions. Read more about GBS here. 

This course aims to enable students to mature new concepts to be accelerator or pre-seed investor ready. Students in the Delta pre-accelerator course gain the opportunity to prototype early-stage, student-driven ventures within a supportive and action-oriented environment. Together with students from the wider Coller School of Management, students tighten their venture, strengthen their leadership skills, build prototypes, and develop their pitch through workshops, prototyping rounds, and mentoring.

Students gain skills in design thinking as a systematic decision making method, client retention oriented product design, storytelling, video creation, UX, rapid prototyping, and presentation.

Student ventures demonstrating excellence will be selected to participate in “Demo Day”, in which they pitch to a panel of judges comprised of accelerator managers and investors. Students in this course have gone on to create ventures such as Ezor a social network for new immigrants; Eat.it, which is like Netflix for food; Diabody, which helps patients and their loved ones better deal with diabetes, and more.

This course aims to provide students with a deep understanding of the venture finance industry and financing types along the funding continuum. Modeling off the US market while highlighting the idiosyncrasies of the Israeli market, students gain a 360 perspective through analyzing various types of funding including angel investing, venture capital, and private equity funds from the viewpoint of an entrepreneur, fund or general partner manager, and limited partner. This view will include fund structure and fund-raising, the relationship between general and limited partners, operational issues, evaluating opportunities and investment decisions, post investment activities and value creation, and value realization (exit). Particular attention will be paid to understanding valuation issues, cap tables, funding rounds, and term sheets, the foundation of the actual investment.

For the entrepreneurs among us, you will receive insights into the VCs perspective that will help guide you in more successfully understanding the fundraising process and thus help you to more successfully raise capital. We will also examine the nature of the relationship between investors and entrepreneurs to better understand how to ensure the proper and successful alignment of interests.

Lastly, integrated into the venture material are several essential and fundamental legal topics including, founder’s agreements, fund structure, term sheets, valuation, cap tables, and due diligence

This course aims to enable students to understand the conceptual framework of M&A, analyze key aspects of the acquisition business process, and understand current practices, especially in the Israeli context, including the key tools, techniques and trends embraced by the modern deal maker.

The acquisition, possibly the most difficult strategic activity a firm can undertake, plays a major part of global business and can be viewed from many different perspectives. This course takes a strategic perspective, with a focus on how acquisitions can be used as a strategic tool by managers.

The course will provide a broad overview of the acquisition process, an understanding of the conceptual framework and a review of empirical evidence. The course builds on prior basic courses in Strategy, Finance, and Accounting. The goal of the course is to cover key aspects of the acquisition business process from corporate strategy, to target evaluation, to deal negotiation, close, and integration. Students focus on current practices, especially in the Israeli context, including the key tools, techniques and trends embraced by the modern deal maker. 

Taught by Adacemic Head of Sofaer Professor Shai Danziger, this course aims to enable students to understand the information processing model of consumer behavior, outline a consumer based market research project, conduct consumer research, and strategically influence consumer behavior. 

Understanding what drives consumers, how they think, what they like (or avoid), and how they learn, is key for the development of successful products or services. Despite substantial heterogeneity between people and between acquisition situations, some psychological and behavioral processes are common to most consumers, such as the tendency to defer choice, to purchase the middle option, or to avoid risks. The course will focus on selected topics in the study of consumer behavior. In each session we will discuss a particular topic in consumer behavior, such as persuasion, biases in judgment and decision making, or learning, and discuss how they may be applied to develop an effective marketing strategy.