Mastering your thesis

Marc Le MenestrelGert Cornelissen

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Master Thesis

The objective of the course is that students end up their Master with a Thesis that meet high standards and that they are proud of. In this manner, the Thesis experience becomes a journey for students to:

clarify their genuine intellectual interest, learn how to produce a high-quality writing piece that demonstrates this interest, learn a methodology that can be later useful for the development and sharing of other interests, connect with UPF and BSM faculty beyond class attendance, reach a sentiment of intellectual accomplishment.

Website for the course: http://www.econ.upf.edu/~lemenestrel/-UPF-BSM-Mastering-your-Thesis-.html

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Trajectory

First trimester: Finding a Topic

Second Trimester: Preparing the Thesis

Third Trimester: Writing the Final thesis

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Types of theses

Three style of Master Thesis

Academic-Style Paper

Business Case-Study (with a solution)

Business Opportunity

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Choosing a topic

Questions to spur imagination: Is there something you always have been willing to understand about the way

people/companies/society behaves? Is there something you are emotional about regarding the way people/companies/society

behaves? To you, what is they key challenge facing business today? What is the future of the role of business towards society? Are there some things that you think are necessary/essential for you to know before going back

to business life? Is there some event that happened recently and that you found particularly remarkable for its

relation with business? Do you see evidence of current business transformation? What could be a good example of this? What would be needed for business to succeed in the future? What do you imagine will be the needs of consumers in the future? What are opportunities for technological innovation? What are opportunities for social innovation?

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Choosing a topic

Identify keywords that they can use to search for material related to their topic of interest.

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Assignment

Bring to class four copies of one page with a statement of your topic of interest. Consider in particular the following questions:

Why is this topic important to you? And interesting to others?

Next meeting: Wednesday, December 5