Lessons from the Yale School of Management

Is a nonprofit simply an organization that doesn’t make a profit? Economist Judith Chevalier, who teaches Yale SOM’s Strategic Management of Nonprofits course, explains when the nonprofit model works better than a for-profit approach, how nonprofits compete, and how nonprofit organizations are reinvigorating old industries.

While the rest of the world races to pour huge amounts of data into AI systems, operations research expert Edward Kaplan is focused on what he calls “little data”: finding the right mathematical model to illuminate a business or public policy problem when you have limited information.

Development economist Mushfiq Mobarak, the Jerome Kasoff ‘54 Professor of Management and Economics, explains how implementing new ideas can be complicated by politics, unintended consequences, and the complexities of human behavior.

Finance isn’t just about making bets on stocks and bonds. It’s a technology that, at its best, opens up the world for commerce and discovery, and allows us to share risk and plan for the future. Prof. Song Ma, an expert in the economics of entrepreneurship, shares lessons from his course Finance and Society, which traces the innumerable ways finance powers modern life.

Leading a successful organization starts with getting teams aligned and working smoothly. But our instincts about teamwork often lead us astray.‌ Prof. Julia DiBenigno, an organizational ethnographer, shares key lessons that Yale MBA students learn in Managing Groups and Teams, a team-dynamics boot camp that kicks off the MBA curriculum.