Lally School of Management

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Dean:  Vacant

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs: Chanaka Edirisinghe

Associate Dean for Research: T. Ravichandran

Director, Undergraduate Programs: Christopher Meyer

Director, MBA Program: Shyam Kumar

Director, M.S. in Management Program: Hao Zhao

Director, M.S. in Business Analytics: Pindaro Demertzoglou

Director, M.S. in Quantitative Finance and Risk Analytics: Qiang Wu

Director, M.S. in Supply Chain Management: T. Ravichandran

Director, M.S. in Technology Commercialization and Entrepreneurship: Hao Zhao

Director, Ph.D. Program: Bill B. Francis

Lally School Home Page: www.lallyschool.rpi.edu

The Rensselaer Lally School of Management is focused on developing aspiring business leaders who have a passion for innovation with the ability to work across business functions. Its programs are built around the themes of innovation, entrepreneurship in the global economy, and quantitative approaches to business decision making.

Lally School students will:

• receive an outstanding education in the fundamentals in business.
• learn the specialized skills needed to succeed in the workplace of the future.
• develop the skills to integrate technology across business functions for commercial results.
• acquire “real-world” experience through study that emphasizes hands-on projects and teamwork from day one.
• leverage the resources at Rensselaer to network, learn, and seek a position to capitalize on the business opportunities of tomorrow.

Lally School students have access to the management school’s highly respected international faculty as well as to students and faculty from Architecture, Engineering, Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Information Technology, Science, the Rensselaer Technology Park, and the Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship.

The Lally School offers bachelor’s degrees in Management and Business Analytics along with seven undergraduate concentrations including: Accounting, Business Analytics, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Management Information Systems, Marketing, and Supply Chain Management — and the combined Bachelor of Science and Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in management and law; and minors in Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Finance, or Management.

In conjunction with the Information Technology (IT) program, the Lally School provides three concentrations (MIS, Finance, and Technological Entrepreneurship) for IT majors. Dual-degrees are available with the Schools of Engineering, Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and Science.

The Lally School is fully accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International), the premier accrediting agency for bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs in business.
 

Degrees Offered

Business Analytics B.S., M.S.

Business and Management B.S.

Quantitative Finance and Risk Analytics M.S.

Management M.S., MBA, Ph.D.

Supply Chain Management M.S.

Technology Commercialization and Entrepreneurship M.S.

Research Innovations and Initiatives

Research at the Lally School is characterized by its cross-disciplinary, multiplatform, and international nature. Faculty at the Lally School conduct research in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. While the issues investigated cut across functional areas in a business setting, are longitudinal in scope, and involve a variety of academic disciplines, the objective is to produce rigorously developed theories and empirical studies that are at the frontiers of new management knowledge and that pass the stringent tests of academic peer review.

Research conducted by the Lally School is often featured at conferences sponsored by the Academy of Management, INFORMS, PICMET, Academy of International Business, the IEEE, and ASSA. In addition, the Lally School regularly sponsors international conferences and seminars designed to bring together the best academics globally to focus on emerging areas of new research in order to establish intellectual leadership in a domain of broad interest to the academic community.

The Lally School has four intersecting research categories that are recognized for their leadership position in the academic community. They seek to create new frontiers of managerial thought. The four Lally research categories are as follows:

Innovation Management and New Product Development
In this area, researchers concentrate on understanding the management processes leading to the development of successful new products, technologies, or services. Research topics include managing technological innovation, technology strategy, new product development, distributed innovation, strategic innovation alliances, innovation networks, management of radical innovation, and intellectual property management. Related research focuses on organizational strategies to successfully pursue product or service innovation, those that occur within the boundaries of the organization as well as those that involve other organizations. Given the emergence of global networks of innovation, issues related to inter-organizational alliances and collaboration form a primary focus of research at Lally.

Management Information Systems
This area focuses on the role and use of information technology in organizations and how it transforms the theories and practice of management. The research incorporates theories and concepts from such fields as computer science, economics, psychology, communications, and organization theory. Of particular interest are topics that relate to supply-chain management, business and consumer marketing, virtual collaboration, distributed innovation, and internal organizational capabilities. The Lally School adopts an interdisciplinary approach to researching new business models and the issues that present challenges and opportunities for managers in IT, entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, and innovation.

Technological Entrepreneurship
At Rensselaer, technological entrepreneurship is the process of converting technical ideas into new businesses in startup ventures and established firms. This is the primary research focus for more than 15 faculty engaged in collaborative, multidisciplinary projects. These faculty members examine technological entrepreneurship from many perspectives, including psychology, economics, and sociology. They focus on such problems as opportunity identification, accelerating new-venture creation, intellectual property and governance in high-technology startups, and managing hyper-growth firms. The Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship is the focal point for scholarship in entrepreneurship and serves as a bridge to the Rensselaer Emerging Ventures ecosystem and Rensselaer Technology Park.

Finance
This emerging field of scholarship and practice combines the traditionally distinct disciplines of finance, information technology, and modeling. Formed within this field are three relatively distinct applications. The first application is the impact of technology on the financial management of corporations, financial institutions and markets. This area specifically focuses on the interface between technological shifts and practices in the financial services industry and the overall functioning and productivity of these institutions in the capital markets. The second application pertains to the alternative financing and exit strategies of new technological ventures and business initiatives. This area focuses on the economics and governance of private equity, venture capital funds, traditional bank debts and going public process of individual companies along with the financial implications for regulatory, macroeconomic, and firm specific influences on respective industries and markets. The above two areas of research are further explicated by a third research specialty in computational accounting and finance involving emerging financial products and derivatives.

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