Kevin A. Bryan

Teaching Summary

My teaching mentality is simple: when students come to research universities, especially those that claim to be among the top in the world, every class should have a base in frontier research. I do not teach with textbooks. Feel free to reach out if you would like to build on any of the materials not shared here.

In 2023, I developed a series of AI-based "Virtual TAs" for my classes. These have been very heavily used (in our core MBA Strategy course in 2023, we had 12,500 queries generating over 5000 pages of single-spaced responses to students). The quality of responses is, in our experience, better than the modal TA, and the cost is roughly $2 per student per semester. A writeup and updated code is forthcoming.

PhD-level material on the Economics of Innovation

NBER Innovation Boot Camp, jointly organized with Benjamin Jones, Heidi Williams, Ina Ganguli and Kyle Myers.

[Slides and Syllabus, Summer 2023, NBER]

[Slides and Syllabus, Summer 2022, NBER]

A series of video lectures and slides produced in 2021 with Heidi Williams as part of the AEA Continuing Education series. These are intended for use both in graduate courses on innovation and for one-off lectures in courses on IO, labor, and growth.

[Webcasts, January 2021, AEA]

[Editable slide decks, January 2021, AEA]

Syllabus/Reading List from a third iteration of this PhD course (previously taught at Rotman, and jointly at Duke Fuqua with Wes Cohen).

[Syllabus, Spring 2021, Toronto Rotman]

[Handout on Intro and Early Growth Models]

MBA Seminar - Core Strategic Management

A novel way to teaching MBA-level strategy. Everything we teach has a formal economic theory behind it, and the goal is give students a "toolbox" of methods for generating supernormal profits even when others can see what you are doing and can react. The basic idea is that it is unusual for any such strategy to work: if you are making money doing something, then either others should do the same thing and compete your price down, or buyers and suppliers should squeeze any margin you have remaining. So it needs to be the case that other actors either can't or don't want to do so even when they see what you are doing. The course gives nine strategies that work: strategic fit, differentiation, firm boundaries others can't or don't want to match, formal incentives other can't or don't want to match, relational incentives others can't or don't want to match, economies of scale and scope, network effects, collusive mechanisms, and learning curves. We also discuss what these strategies mean for firms who want to enter and compete with strong incumbents. Please contact me for teaching notes and slides.

[Syllabus, Fall 2023, Toronto Rotman]

[Theory of the Firm Notes, Fall 2023, Toronto Rotman]

[Value Capture Theory Notes, Fall 2023, Toronto Rotman]

MBA Seminar - Creative Destruction Lab Advanced

Graduate level course in entrepreneurship, taught with Mara Lederman as part of Rotman's famed Creative Destruction Lab. Slides and lecture notes available on request; occasional topics class for 2nd year MBA students in an intensive course working with science-based startups. Individual classes cover the basics of practical startup finance, testing/experimentation, scaling, and pricing (especially in 2 sided, enterprise, and other unusual settings). The guiding principle of the class is that startups are different from advanced firms because of uncertainty with highly-skewed payoffs, which must be investigated despite highly constrained firm resources. We make no claim that creativity or diligence or cleverness can be taught - but it is possible to teach students how to properly think about the option value of various paths to a final business, and what that means for how the startup should grow. For slides and teaching material, some of which is also available in French, please contact me directly.

[Handout of Startup Financing Models, 2023]