This is an archived copy of the 2015-2016 catalog. To access the most recent version of the catalog, please visit http://coursecatalog.bucknell.edu.

Markets, Innovation and Design (MIDE)

Major Requirements

The Markets, Innovation, and Design (MIDE) program will expose students to the orchestration, design, logic and strategy underlying organizations’ key marketing practices. The MIDE program will highlight the complex interplay that takes place between market research/analysis of consumer-product relationships and the strategic management of the marketing mix or brands. Students pursuing the MIDE program will augment their core understanding of management functions with an interdisciplinary examination of some of the creative, analytical, and technical processes that combine to generate ideas and transform them into images, products, and services which powerfully shape our culture.

The MIDE program will foster students developing a deep appreciation for the interdisciplinary roots and connections among creative and technical design, marketing, and innovation. Moreover, the program will enhance creative thinking and acting. In addition to gaining a better understanding of how their surroundings are constructed, students will cultivate a habit of trying to envision how their world can be improved. Students will also learn quantitative, empathic, interpretive, and visual methods in order to assess the relationships between consumers/users and their environments, with a particular focus on remedying unmet needs and filling gaps between current and ideal circumstances. As they learn more about the overall design process, students also will have the opportunity to practice techniques such as role playing, sketching, creative narrative, prototyping, and simulation, which will help them to transform ideas into reality.

BSBA Core Curriculum Requirements

Foundational Literacy Requirements

MGMT 100Management Past, Present and Future.5
MGMT 101Introduction to Organization and Management1
MGMT 102Quantitative Reasoning for Managers1
ECON 103Economic Principles and Problems1

Managerial Literacy Requirements

MGMT 200Foundations Accounting and Financial Management I1
MGMT 201Marketing1
MGMT 203Managerial Finance1

Integrative Literacy Requirements

MGMT 302The Stakeholder Organization1
MGMT 303The Technological Organization1
MGMT 304The Strategic Organization1

All BSBA majors must satisfy the Culminating Experience component of the College Core Curriculum. MIDE majors typically fulfill this requirement by successfully completing MIDE 304 Marketing Management. In addition, all majors will take core curriculum coursework that address the instruction in writing, speaking, and information literacy goals of the College Core Curriculum.  

In the spring of their sophomore year, all BSBA students will, in consultation with their advisers, select a major from among the four specialized programs and will complete the specific major requirements in addition to the BSBA core curriculum requirements. Transferring between programs is possible as long as the student will be able to meet all degree requirements of the new program and still graduate on schedule.

Markets, Innovation, and Design Requirements

Beyond completion of the BSBA core curriculum requirements, all MIDE majors must take the following courses:

MIDE 300Markets, Innovation, and Design1
MIDE 301Understanding Consumers1
MIDE 302Design Realization1
MIDE 303Entrepreneurship1
or MIDE 304 Marketing Management

Beyond these core MIDE courses, all MIDE majors must choose FOUR program-related electives. The MIDE program is designed to be sufficiently flexible to enable students to pursue a wide range of interests and career scenarios, such as work in market research, brand management, marketing management, public relations, communications, product design, global consumer culture, and issues of innovation. Therefore, besides taking the MIDE core (the four courses noted above), students are required to choose, with consultation and approval from their advisers, four program-related electives from courses available elsewhere at the University, outside the School of Management. These choices will depend on what makes most sense given the students’ underlying interests. For example, a student contemplating a career in advertising might select four electives from courses such as Introduction to Visual Culture, Film Production, Popular Culture, Political Economy of Media and Advertising, Digital Photography, or Introduction to Creative Writing. The essential idea behind this loose elective structure is to give students the latitude to delve further into their own intellectual interests in relation to the program’s learning objectives. These program-related electives enable students (with the help of their advisers) to apply a more specialized and individualized signature to their program of study. This feature, too, is part of the creativity and innovation embedded in the MIDE program.

Please see School of Management main page for all management faculty and program chair. Inquiries regarding this program can be directed to the program chair.

  1. They will understand the basic principles of Marketing, Innovation, and Design and how these academic disciplines and fields of practice are related.
  2. They will be able to analyze problems and think strategically from a Marketing point of view.
  3. They will cultivate innovative habits that enable them to detect problems and provide them with the impetus and confidence to solve them.
  4. They will develop a Design mindset that enables them to creatively recast problems in various ways and design novel and effective solutions.

Courses

MIDE 243. Social Media for Managers. 1 Credit.

Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3
Exposes students to the opportunities and challenges that managers face in using social media tools for internal collaboration, marketing and outreach, and new product development. Prerequisite: seniors and non-management majors must have permission of the instructor.

MIDE 300. Markets, Innovation, and Design. 1 Credit.

Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3
A survey of the relationships among marketing, innovation, and design. Students will practice various approaches to creative and innovative thinking. Prerequisite: MGMT 201 or permission of the instructor.

MIDE 301. Understanding Consumers. 1 Credit.

Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3
A toolbox of research methods for understanding consumer behavior with appropriate exposure to philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of various approaches. Prerequisite: MGMT 201 or permission of instructor.

MIDE 302. Design Realization. 1 Credit.

Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3
Implementation of creative techniques for exploring ideas and transforming ideas into appropriate mediums for communication. Includes creative ideation, sketching, digital and physical modeling. Prerequisites: MGMT 201 and MIDE 300.

MIDE 303. Entrepreneurship. 1 Credit.

Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3
Focuses on how to evolve an idea into an enterprise that generates economic, social, or aesthetic value in society.

MIDE 304. Marketing Management. 1 Credit.

Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3
Integrating learned knowledge, students practice making marketing-related decisions through case analysis of various business scenarios. The predominant emphasis is on drawing together disciplinary experiences and providing a more coherent appreciation of the major's academic discipline. The educational goals of the class focus on critical, analytical, and synthetic thinking.

MIDE 305. New Product Development. 1 Credit.

Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3
Study and application of innovation in product development. Learning is tied to a semester project which explores opportunities, value, brand, positioning, market and customer needs. Prerequisite: MGMT 201 or permission of the instructor.

MIDE 310. Independent Study in Markets, Innovation, and Design. .5-2 Credits.

Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:Varies; Repeatable
Individual study or projects, supervised by instructor. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor.

MIDE 315. Special Topics in Markets, Innovation, and Design. .5-1 Credits.

Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:Varies; Repeatable
A seminar on selected topics in marketing, innovation, and design. Prerequisites: MGMT 201 and permission of the instructor.

MIDE 330. Innovating Organizations. 1 Credit.

Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3
Looking at cases of success and failure, we will examine innovation's many inputs and innovations from standard managerial and corporate policies. How do organizations become innovative? Are there attractive or worthwhile practices or organizational structures that current companies overlook? Prerequisite: MGMT 101 or permission of the instructor.

MIDE 343. IS Project Management: If We Can Build It, Will They Come?. 1 Credit.

Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3
Investigates the methods, tools, and techniques used to analyze and develop organizational information systems. Experiential focus includes feasibility analysis, identifying and modeling business requirements, and managing the systems development life cycle.

MIDE 375. Should We Start This Company?. .5 Credits.

Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:2
Project centered course in entrepreneurship, generating new business ideas, and product or service design and development through business planning. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor. Crosslisted as CHEG 475 and CHEG 675 and UNIV 375.

MIDE 382. Data Mining for Managerial Decision Making. 1 Credit.

Offered Alternate Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:3
Study and application of analytical methods for large scale datasets. Topics include clustering and classification methods, and association rules. Prerequisite: MGMT 102 or equivalent.

MIDE 383. New Product Development. 1 Credit.

Offered Occasionally; Lecture hours:3
Study and application of innovation in the product development process. Learning is tied to a semester-long project which explores identifying opportunities, value analysis, brand strategy, product positioning, market needs, customer needs, and team management. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor.

MIDE 387. Impact! Exploring Innovation. 1 Credit.

Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:4
The goal of innovation is POSITIVE CHANGE, to make someone or something better. This class will examine innovation from an interdisciplinary and integrative perspective. We will explore both what makes something innovative and how innovation happens. Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. Crosslisted as MECH 480 and UNIV 380.

MIDE 390. Honors Course in Markets, Innovation, and Design. 1 Credit.

Offered Either Fall or Spring; Lecture hours:Varies; Repeatable
Special and independent studies for Markets, Innovation and Design majors selected under the guidelines of the school and the University Honors Council. Honors thesis required. Prerequisites: nomination by the school and permission of the instructor.