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Winter 2005

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Reality Bytes
Real-time case study puts students on the frontlines of high-tech product launch




	Mark Taylor ’04, Damien Bradley, and Sasha Murshteyn ’05 watch a video of DAFCA president and CEO Peter Levin on the Web site for Professor James Theroux’s real-time case study class. Bradley is a teaching assistant for the class. (photo by Ben Barnhart)

"IS ANYONE GETTING A HEADACHE?” Professor James Theroux asks his students. It’s a Tuesday night and students in room 108 in the Isenberg School of Management are grappling with how to sell a complex new product from a high-tech start-up company called DAFCA Inc. “Hang in there, because it gets easier.”

The marketing challenge the class is studying is enormous, but what makes the discussion so compelling is that at this very moment in Framingham, Mass., principals of Design Automation for Flexible Chip Architecture (DAFCA) are wrestling with this same problem. For them, it’s not passing grades at stake, but their company’s survival.

Unlike traditional business school case studies, which have a historical perspective, this class lacks the luxury of hindsight. “This is the real world,” Theroux tells them. “I wish it were tidy and easy, but there are many pros and cons, trade-offs and subtleties here.”

Professor Theroux calls his innovative course a “real-time case study,” or “reality programming meets business education.” His graduate and undergraduate students dissected DAFCA’s marketing, pricing, capitalization and management strategies throughout the fall semester as the new company raced toward a June 2005 product launch.

To pull off this radically realistic case study, Theroux, the Flavin Family Professor of Entrepreneurship, worked 70-hour weeks June through December preparing multimedia class materials. Students at UMass Amherst and 11 other schools that had signed on for the course used a Web site that included candid video interviews with DAFCA’s managers, slide shows, discussion forums, related readings and links, and a wealth of raw material—such rich inside information that the students signed confidentiality agreements.

During the fall semester, course case-writer Michael Hopkins spent three-and-a-half days a week at the company to bring students even closer to the action. Hopkins’s 20 years in business journalism showed in his perceptive case studies while his breezy blogs provided color commentary. On one such posting he described the DAFCA team: “It’s a Dockers crowd here—Polo shirts, open-necked checkered button-downs, sensible rubber-soled shoes. Occasionally, the marketing guy wears a tie, but you wouldn’t covet it.”

Hopkins shared a small office with DAFCA CEO Peter Levin. “When Peter closed the door to have private conversations, I was inside, eavesdropping,” Hopkins explains. “I’ve written about many, many companies before, but I’ve never had four months to live with a business. It was absolutely fascinating.”

To get the most from this unusual access, Theroux’s students needed three class sessions on electronic design automation and chip design technology before beginning their analysis. Put simply, DAFCA aims to give computer chip designers a cost-effective and reliable way to discover and correct bugs.

This breakthrough could conceivably save the semiconductor industry billions.

The course succeeded because of a reciprocal understanding between Theroux and Levin. While Theroux is a former entrepreneur and venture capitalist, DAFCA’s president and CEO is a former engineering professor. He allowed UMass Amherst inside his company because he believes in the course’s pedagogical mission. He also viewed the students as his consultants. “If I get one fresh way of thinking about one thing, this type of project will be worth it to me,” he says.

Theroux passed along potentially valuable student input, including class papers, to DAFCA. Students interacted directly with managers through online chats. They even e-mailed their ideas for the new product’s name straight to the marketing director. Being inside a start-up high-tech company is dizzying, as the students discovered. “It’s not like The Apprentice, where they’re running something simple everyone can understand, like a restaurant,” said Mark Taylor ’04. “The developments in this company surprised everyone.”

Students come expecting answers to business questions, explains Theroux. “The fact is the company is making it up as it goes along. It’s a big shock to students.”

With the real-time case study, Theroux brings the messiness and complexity of the business world to the classroom. If his students have headaches, they realize that’s nothing compared to what the DAFCA team is feeling out in Framingham.

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