Bitcoin causing a stir in MBA teaching

MBA leaders are bringing the “cryptocurrency” Bitcoin into the classroom, according to BusinessBecause.

 

And it’s the world’s most prestigious universities that are leading the way, with Duke University incorporating Bitcoin into its MBA curriculum.

 

The university’s Fuqua Business School is set to begin a new course focusing on Bitcoin in terms of entrepreneurship and innovation later this year.

 

The course will be entitled “Innovation and Cryptoventures” and will look into the currency’s disruptive technology whilst aiming to “assess its implications on how business will be conducted in the future”, according to BusinessBecause.

 

Course director, professor Campbell Harvey, told the website that the course will be “focused on the future.”

 

He added that “There are at least 500 Bitcoin related start-ups with approximately 10,000 people working full-time. I expect venture funding to double in this space in 2015.”

 

Elsewhere, New York University’s stern School of Business already offers a course that focuses on the currency, as well as on other alternative payment methods.

 

Finance Professor and course creator David Yermack believes that such courses help aid students’ imaginations and assist them in the creation of new products to help the consumer.

 

Bitcoin is a currency that is traded through “untraceable digital transactions.”

 

According to BusinessBecause large-scale Bitcoin events have also been held at Berkeley’s Hass School of Business, Harvard Business School, USC’s Marshall School of Business and Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School.

 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where students can use Bitcoin to pay for goods on campus, will also run an expo on the currency in May this year, according to the website.