Critical Business Skills for Success

Overview

Get a comprehensive guide to the five disciplines—strategy, operations, finance and accounting, organizational behavior, and marketing—taught in every MBA.

What does it take to reach success in business—the kind of success that lasts? How do you set yourself apart from competitors or venture out into different markets? What does it take to develop streamlined processes, become a stronger team leader, and work your way up the corporate ladder? It all comes down to a solid grasp of the fundamentals of business taught to MBA students in many of the world’s most prestigious business schools.

This fascinating 60-lecture course is designed to give you just that kind of comprehensive, accessible introduction. Here in one place is an authoritative guide to the five key disciplines that everyone, entry-level employees and CEOs alike, needs to master in order to reap rewards in today’s complex 21st-century marketplace.

Bringing together five prestigious and renowned business professors, each 12-lecture part is a detailed look at a particular skill: strategy, operations, finance and accounting, organizational behavior, and marketing. In exploring each skill, you’ll learn about everything from key terms and methodologies to research-backed strategies and case studies involving some of the world’s most influential companies. You’ll come away with a well-rounded education you can use to more firmly establish your own successful path in the business world.

Bringing the MBA experience to you, Critical Business Skills for Success demystifies the secrets of business and provides illuminating, empowering insights that will help you achieve your goals.

Course Structure

Strategy

1. Strategy: Strategy Is Making Choices
   Duration: 32 min
   What do we mean when we talk about business strategy? Start thinking more smartly about strategy with this introductory lecture that covers four key facts about competition and the two drivers of profitability: industry structure and competitive advantage.
2. Strategy: How Apple Raises Competitive Barriers
   Duration: 30 min
   Five essential forces shape any business strategy, and together, they create a framework that can help you better make key strategic choices. Central to this discussion of these five strategic forces: Apple’s meteoric rise to the top of the market.
3. Strategy: The Danger of Straddling
   Duration: 33 min
   Professor Roberto introduces you to the three paths that lead to competitive advantage and four basic competitive strategies. Then, using case studies including JC Penney, IBM, and Dell, he explains both the dangers of straddling between competitive positions.
4. Strategy: What Trader Joe’s Doesn’t Do
   Duration: 31 min
   Passionate customers, tremendous profits, happy employees—the Trader Joe’s grocery chain is a powerful business success story. Discover how their secret for success lies in their use of trade-offs to make it hard for imitators and to mitigate the negative effects of the industry.
5. Strategy: First Movers versus Fast Followers
   Duration: 31 min
   Discover the strengths—and drawbacks—of being a first mover who establishes a market position and fast followers, who can learn from first movers’ mistakes. Along the way, you’ll consider relevant examples from industries including video game systems and social media networks.
6. Strategy: When Netflix Met Blockbuster
   Duration: 30 min
   Netflix’s ultimate domination of the video rental market is a classic example of disruptive innovation: a serious threat to traditional business—and often the hardest to respond to.
7. Strategy: Anticipating Your Rival’s Response
   Duration: 32 min
   Get a stronger grip on competitive dynamics and the importance of understanding your competitor. Professor Roberto guides you through powerful lessons from three situations where new entrants did battle with incumbents.
8. Strategy: Why Did Disney Buy Pixar?
   Duration: 31 min
   Turn now to corporate strategy, which involves determining where to compete, not how. Explore the corporate strategies of horizontal and vertical integration in the context of Disney’s acquisition of Pixar animation studios.
9. Strategy: The Diversification Discount
   Duration: 30 min
   What happens when the whole is worth less than the proposed sum of the parts? You’ve got a diversification discount, common for many unrelated diversifiers in the United States, and one that has led to many corporate breakups.
10. Strategy: Forward and Backward Integration
    Duration: 31 min
    Professor Roberto explains in more detail vertical integration and its two key directions: forward and backward. Does vertical integration make economic sense? Learn about vertical integration’s rationales (and risks) by digging deep into interesting stories.
11. Strategy: Mergers and Acquisitions – The Winner’s Curse
    Duration: 32 min
    Mergers and acquisitions are part of daily life in the business world. Why do some bad deals get done, leaving the acquirer in a trouble spot?
12. Strategy: Launching a Lean Start-Up
    Duration: 33 min
    Professor Roberto concludes this course with a fascinating lecture on the challenges of launching your own business.

Operations

13. Operations: The Power of Superior Operations
    Duration: 35 min
    What exactly is operations management, and how can you make it work to your advantage?
14. Operations: Leaner, Meaner Production
    Duration: 32 min
    Production operations are the greatest value-adding activity in all of business.
15. Operations: Refining Service Operations
    Duration: 30 min
    Turn now to service operations, the successful management of which takes into account the psychology of winning customers through great experiences.
16. Operations: Matching Supply and Demand
    Duration: 32 min
    Sales and operations (S&OP) planning integrates a company’s sales forecasts with the operations plans from the purchasing, production, and logistics departments.
17. Operations: Rightsizing Inventory
    Duration: 32 min
    Master the fundamentals of right-sizing your inventory through inventory management.
18. Operations: Managing Supply and Suppliers
    Duration: 34 min
    Supply management is the one department that accounts for well over half of a company’s total spend.
19. Operations: The Long Reach of Logistics
    Duration: 33 min
    Logistics are responsible for ensuring that the right products are available in the right quantities at the right time to meet customer expectations.
20. Operations: Rethinking Your Business Processes
    Duration: 30 min
    Ways to improve business processes are indispensable to success.
21. Operations: Measuring Operational Performance
    Duration: 34 min
    Why is performance measurement so important to the health of an organization?
22. Operations: Keeping an Eye on Your Margins
    Duration: 33 min
    Obliterate the assumption that all business is good business.
23. Operations: Leveraging Your Supply Chain
    Duration: 33 min
    Among the most pervasive developments in business organization over the past few decades is supply chain management.
24. Operations: Reducing Risk, Building Resilience
    Duration: 35 min
    Professor Goldsby introduces you to the hottest topic in modern business: risk management.

Finance and Accounting

25. Finance and Accounting: Accounting and Finance – Decision-Making Tools
    Duration: 31 min
    This introductory lecture unpacks some key concepts in accounting and finance.
26. Finance and Accounting: How to Interpret a Balance Sheet
    Duration: 31 min
    Using a balance sheet from Intel as your case study, survey the significance of specific items that typically appear on balance sheets.
27. Finance and Accounting: Why the Income Statement Matters
    Duration: 32 min
    Income statements are the statements most widely cited in popular business news.
28. Finance and Accounting: How to Analyze a Cash Flow Statement
    Duration: 31 min
    What makes statements of cash flows the most important financial statements you’ll encounter?
29. Finance and Accounting: Common Size, Trend, and Ratio Analysis
    Duration: 32 min
    Common size analysis. Trend analysis. Ratio analysis.
30. Finance and Accounting: Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis
    Duration: 31 min
    How does breakeven analysis, or cost-volume-profit analysis, work—and how do businesspeople make it work for them?
31. Finance and Accounting: Understanding the Time Value of Money
    Duration: 31 min
    Begin your focus on finance with an insightful look at the time value of money.
32. Finance and Accounting: The Trade-Off between Risk and Return
    Duration: 30 min
    In this lecture on the trade-off between risk and return, Professor Sussman introduces you to several important financial models businesses use every day.
33. Finance and Accounting: How Investors Use Net Present Value
    Duration: 30 min
    What exactly do we mean by “value”?
34. Finance and Accounting: Alternatives to Net Present Value
    Duration: 30 min
    What are some alternatives to evaluating investment opportunities beyond Net Present Value?
35. Finance and Accounting: Weighing the Costs of Debt and Equity
    Duration: 32 min
    Explore the world of trade-offs and learn why issuing debt instead of equity can actually increase the value of a firm.
36. Finance and Accounting: How to Value a Company’s Stock
    Duration: 34 min
    All investors should know how to make value-creating decisions.

Organizational Behavior

37. Organizational Behavior: Achieving Results in Your Organization
    Duration: 32 min
    Start taking control of your professional organizational behavior with this introductory lecture on how to achieve lasting results.
38. Organizational Behavior: The Value of Great Leadership
    Duration: 31 min
    Professor Longenecker explains the most important things he’s learned about leadership.
39. Organizational Behavior: Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
    Duration: 31 min
    What does it take to cultivate great working relationships?
40. Organizational Behavior: The Art of Effective Communications
    Duration: 32 min
    Cultivate stronger communication skills with this engaging lecture that covers three burning communication needs in an organization.
41. Organizational Behavior: The Motivation-Performance Connection
    Duration: 31 min
    Motivation and performance improvement are two of the most researched subjects in the field of organizational behavior.
42. Organizational Behavior: Winning with Teamwork
    Duration: 30 min
    You’ve known about teamwork since elementary school.
43. Organizational Behavior: Coaching – From Gridiron to Boardroom
    Duration: 30 min
    To keep people in an organization more focused, engaged, and productive, you need to recognize the importance not just of coaching, but of tailor-made coaching.
44. Organizational Behavior: Understanding Power Relationships
    Duration: 32 min
    Why is power such a potent aspect of business?
45. Organizational Behavior: Handling Workplace Conflict
    Duration: 33 min
    Much of one’s success in an organization depends on how well one manages conflict with others.
46. Organizational Behavior: Ethics and the Bathsheba Syndrome
    Duration: 32 min
    Learn why ethical standards and policies are so important within an organization.
47. Organizational Behavior: Leading Real Organizational Change
    Duration: 32 min
    The one unavoidable part of an organization: change.
48. Organizational Behavior: Lifelong Learning for Career Success
    Duration: 33 min
    Because the average worker changes jobs between seven and 10 times, workplace relevance and career success depends on lifelong learning and professional development.

Marketing

49. Marketing: What Is Marketing?
    Duration: 32 min
    One of the core tenets of successful marketing is understanding your customer.
50. Marketing: How to Segment a Market
    Duration: 30 min
    The first question in developing a strong marketing strategy is figuring out who your customer is.
51. Marketing: Targeting a Market Segment
    Duration: 28 min
    Make better sense of targeting, the process of selecting the segment your product will best serve.
52. Marketing: Positioning Your Offering
    Duration: 30 min
    Many products fail because marketers fail to communicate their true value.
53. Marketing: Identifying Sources of Sales Growth
    Duration: 28 min
    You’ve mastered segmentation, targeting, and positioning.
54. Marketing: Deriving Value from Your Customers
    Duration: 30 min
    Look at some other sources of value that companies can get out of their transactions.
55. Marketing: Creating Great Customer Experiences
    Duration: 31 min
    Begin exploring the tactics involving in reaching marketing goals.
56. Marketing: The Tactics of Successful Branding
    Duration: 30 min
    What defines a brand? What rules should you follow when building your brand?
57. Marketing: Customer-Focused Pricing
    Duration: 29 min
    One of the most important decisions anyone in marketing will make is how to price your product and service.
58. Marketing: Marketing Communications That Work
    Duration: 29 min
    Add to your “marketing toolkit” some of the principles and strategies of an effective communications plan.
59. Marketing: The Promise and Perils of Social Media
    Duration: 30 min
    Dig into the unique opportunities—and challenges—of social media and word-of-mouth communications.
60. Marketing: Innovative Marketing Research Techniques
    Duration: 32 min
    Research is undoubtedly essential for making responsible, effective marketing decisions.