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We have already looked at TOP 100 Coursera Specializations and today we will check out TOP 9 Business specialization to build a foundation of core business skills in marketing, finance, accounting, and operations.
Coursera Specialization is a series of courses that help you master a skill. To begin, you can enroll in the Specialization directly, or review its courses and choose the one you’d like to start with. When you subscribe to a course that is part of a Specialization, you’re automatically subscribed to the full Specialization. You can either complete just one course, or you can pause your learning or end your subscription at any time.
Quick Snapshot
There are 4 Courses in this Specialization
It is no longer acceptable for organizations to focus entirely on financial success if they are to be competitive on the global stage. As corporate scandals continue to make headlines, you will expand your strategic thinking beyond your organization’s competitive financial environment to consider its broader impact on society. You will grapple with the conflicting outcomes of maximizing financial return and societal impact as you develop the skills to create a balance that is sustainable. Through structured learning activities (video lectures, quizzes, discussion prompts, and written assessments) you will gain an appreciation of how important sustainability will be for every organization in the future – and how to achieve it.
There are 4 Courses in this Specialization
In 2016, this was one of the top 10 specializations in terms of enrollments. INC Magazine rated the first course, Marketing in a Digital World, as one of The 10 Hottest Online Classes for Professionals in 2015. In addition, this course was also ranked in the top five courses across multiple MOOC providers. Finally, the Digital Marketing Certificate was the top coveted certificate on Coursera in 2015.
There are 7 Courses in this Specialization
Learn the introductory theory and strategy behind marketing analytics that provides marketers with the foundation needed to apply data analytics to real-world challenges they confront daily in their professional lives.
This course builds on the theory and foundations of marketing analytics and focuses on practical application by demystifying the use of data in marketing and helping you realize the power of visualizing data with artful use of numbers found in the digital space.
The digital revolution has led to a titanic shift in the landscape of marketing communication, while also creating new opportunities for businesses to reach and engage consumers through smart, social, and mobile media technologies. In this course, you will learn about the impacts of digital technologies on marketing communication strategies and practices. By understanding the underlying processes of marketing communication and the core features of new media technologies, you can strategically select the appropriate channels to deliver the right marketing message to the right audience at the right moment.
The proliferation of digital technology gives businesses a diverse new set of tools to reach, engage, monitor, and respond to consumers to an unprecedented degree. The aggregated and voluminous digital data can also be leveraged to better target specific consumer segments. Following the Digital Marketing Channels: The Landscape, this course aims to give you a deeper understanding of core processes of planning a digital marketing campaign and the role of various digital channels in integrated marketing communication.
Our new Digital World is dramatically changing the way in which products are created, promoted, distributed, and consumed. Although these changes have been revolutionary, we still live in an Analog (or physical) World. For example, even today, over 90% of all sales are still conducted in Analog stores. Thus, both marketers and consumers must simultaneously navigate both the Analog and Digital Worlds on a daily basis. Although the Digital Revolution has received considerable attention in recent years, the impact of this revolution upon the Analog World has been largely ignored. This course examines this issue by asking, “How has the Digital Revolution impacted Marketing in an Analog World?
This course will begin with an exploration of the key differences between the Analog and the Digital and then examine four ways in which the Analog World has been affected by the Digital Revolution: Domination, Resistance, Synergy, and Transformation.
This course will contain several examples of each of these concepts and explore their implications for both marketers and consumers. This course will also employ a variety of learning techniques, including video lectures, case studies, hands-on exercises, and interviews with leading marketing scholars. The learning approach will be highly interactive; you will have the opportunity to engage in a variety of hands-on activities and be a member of a rich learning community. I hope you will join us in this educational adventure.
The Capstone is the culminating project in the Digital Marketing Specialization. The corporate partner for the specialization is W.W. Grainger(http://www.grainger.com/). They are the largest supplier of Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO) products. Millions of businesses and institutions worldwide rely on Grainger for pumps, motors, hand tools, janitorial supplies, fasteners, and much more. In 2017, they had sales of US Dollar 10.4 Billion, and about 60% of orders originated online. You will be working on a problem specified by the Digital Marketing team at Grainger, to develop a channel strategy to increase sales of Bosch power tools on Grainger.com. You will have the opportunity to combine the tools and techniques obtained through all the courses in this specialization and apply them to a real business problem. The Capstone project will be 6 weeks long. You must take the Capstone project class after taking all the other courses in this Specialization.
Through the courses in this specialization, you will learn the fundamentals to effectively lead people and teams, manage organizations as well as tools to analyze business situations and develop strategies. The Specialization covers the strategic, human resource, and organizational foundations for creating and capturing value for sustainable competitive advantage – including how to manage people and organizations, analyze the competition and develop strategies both within a business and across a portfolio of businesses.
The capstone is a strategic leadership and management plan where you’ll apply what you will learn to an actual business situation with participation by one or more focal companies. The deliverable will be designed to create value from the perspective of potential employers while achieving pedagogical and experiential goals for learners.
This Specialization is part of the University of Illinois Masters of Business Administration degree program, the iMBA. Learn more about the admission into the program here and how your Coursera work can be leveraged if accepted into the program. You can also start with for-credit courses within the Illinois iMBA degree program.
There are 7 Courses in this Specialization
In this course, you will learn about the “head and heart” of everyday leadership, individual decision making, group decision making, and managing motivation. The objectives are to understand why and how leadership skills are so critical to organizational success and learn the foundations of effective leadership skills.
Learners:
This course covers the following topics: negotiation, feedback and coaching, conflict management, and leading change. The objectives are to learn how to use leadership skills to work more effectively with others, how to use leadership skills to organize others to work more effectively together, and to apply the foundations of effective leadership skills to everyday situations faced by leaders.
Learners:
In this course, you will understand how firms are organized, what factors must be taken into account in making critical design decisions, and what role managers play in making these choices. In order to answer these questions, we will first develop a conceptual process model that links business models, external and internal contingencies, and organizational design. Second, we will focus on the fundamental principles of organization design and what alternative design choices are available for managers. Finally, we will apply these concepts and ideas to organizational situations to develop critical insights and decision-making skills to build effective organizations.
Learners:
In this course, you will build a practical framework to understand the critical linkages between organization design and the creation of economic value through execution. We will focus on four critical linkages: 1. How organizational growth and life cycle require design changes to improve execution 2. How managerial decision making can be improved through better organization design 3. How the design of human resource practices shapes the culture of the organization 4. How innovation and change can be facilitated through organization design These linkages are critical in assessing how managers make sure that the organizations they design can execute the strategies they have envisioned under changing environmental conditions.
Learners will be able to answer the following:
In this course, you will learn how organizations create, capture, and maintain value, and how it is fundamental for sustainable competitive advantage. You will be able to better understand value creation and capture, and learn the tools to analyze both competition and cooperation from a variety of perspectives, including the industry level (e.g., five forces analysis), and the firm level (e.g., business models and strategic positioning).
In this course, you will learn how organizations create, capture, and maintain value, and how it is fundamental for sustainable competitive advantage. You will be able to better understand economic value creation and value appropriation, and learn the tools to analyze both competition and cooperation from a corporate level perspective, (e.g., through vertical integration, diversification, and geographic scope decisions).
You will:
The capstone is a strategic leadership and management plan where you’ll apply what you will learn to an actual business situation with participation by one or more focal companies. The deliverable will be designed to create value from the perspective of potential employers while achieving pedagogical and experiential goals for learners.
The capstone project involves an in-depth analysis of an actual business situation in which you will examine the global economic environment of a business. The final project will be a business plan that uses statistical tools and economic theory to create a comprehensive analysis of the microeconomic and macroeconomic environment in which the focal company operates.
This Specialization is part of the University of Illinois Masters of Business Administration degree program, the iMBA. Learn more about the admission into the program here and how your Coursera work can be leveraged if accepted into the program. You can also start with for-credit courses within the Illinois iMBA degree program.
There are 7 Courses in this Specialization
All goods and services are subject to scarcity at some level. Scarcity means that society must develop some allocation mechanism – rules to determine who gets what. Over recorded history, these allocation rules were usually command based – the king or the emperor would decide. In contemporary times, most countries have turned to market-based allocation systems. In markets, prices act as rationing devices, encouraging or discouraging production, and encouraging or discouraging consumption in such a way as to find an equilibrium allocation of resources. We will construct demand curves to capture consumer behavior and supply curves to capture producer behavior. The resulting equilibrium price “rations” the scarce commodity. Markets are frequent targets of government intervention. This intervention can be direct control of prices or it could be indirect price pressure through the imposition of taxes or subsidies. Both forms of intervention are impacted by the elasticity of demand.
After this course, you will be able to:
This course is part of the iMBA offered by the University of Illinois, a flexible, fully-accredited online MBA at an incredibly competitive price.
In this class, we will derive equilibrium outcomes across a variety of market structures. We will begin by understanding equilibrium under a market structure called Perfect Competition, a benchmark construction. Economists have tools to measure the efficiency of market outcomes. Next consider the polar extreme of a competitive market: a monopoly market. We will determine the monopoly equilibrium price and quantity and efficiency properties. Much economic activity takes place in markets with just a handful of very large producers. To understand equilibrium in these oligopoly markets requires more careful attention to strategic interdependence. To capture this interdependence, we consider collusive arrangements among a small number of rivals as well as the use of simple game theoretic techniques to model equilibrium. Market Failure describes situations where markets fail to find an efficient outcome. Information asymmetries are one fertile form of market failure. Another form of market failure occurs when externalities are present. We will examine one key externality, pollution, and construct a policy prescription to mitigate the negative efficiency impacts of this externality.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
This course discusses how macroeconomic variables affect individuals’ personal, professional, and public activities and lays the foundation for the analysis of the mechanisms that drive macroeconomic variables. It starts in its first module by introducing the key macroeconomic variables and explaining how they are defined and measured in order to enable the students to interpret macroeconomic data properly. In the second module, the course offers a perspective for separating out various parts of the economy driven by different processes and for combining those components to develop a richer view of the whole. In particular, it applies this approach to the analysis of the relationship of the trade deficit with the budget deficit and private savings, offering insights about some key determinants of the balance of payments.
The third and fourth modules focus on the analyses of the foreign currency and money markets to provide fundamental models of the interest rate and exchange rate determination. They also discuss how these variables interact with each other and with the macroeconomic conditions, particularly monetary policy and the expectations about the future trends in the economy. These analyses lay the foundation for more comprehensive models of the macroeconomy in the next course of the Managerial Economics and Business Analysis Specialization.
At the end of this course, you will be able to:
This course examines macroeconomic performance in the short run and the long run based on the economy’s institutional and policy environment. The first module develops a model of macroeconomy in the short run when the price level has its own momentum and does not respond much to supply and demand forces. The model enables one to see how GDP, interest rate, and exchange rate are determined in the short run and how they respond to macroeconomic shocks and policies. The second module starts the analysis of long-run equilibrium by examining the foreign exchange market. It then connects the long-run outcome with expectations about the future trends in the exchange rate at each moment, which constitute a key driver of the spot exchange rate in the short run. The methodology developed for this purpose can be applied to expectations concerning other macroeconomic variables as well. Finally, the long-run foreign exchange model is employed to derive a number of important lessons for the long-run trends in currency values and competitiveness of producers in various countries.
The third module examines the drivers of aggregate output in the long run and the mechanisms of adjustment from the short run to the long run. The model provides insights about why some countries are much richer than others and why some economies grow faster than others over the decades. The analysis also sheds light on why inflation varies across countries or overtime in the same country. The model is employed to analyze the sources of macroeconomic instability and the roles of fiscal and monetary policies in stabilization or destabilization of the macroeconomy. The final module discusses the characteristics of desirable macroeconomic policies and the reasons why actual policies deviate from them. It connects these deviations to country characteristics that one needs to take into account when assessing a country’s long-term macroeconomic environment. The module ends with a discussion of the institutional conditions that help bring about better fiscal and monetary policies.
At the end of this course, you will be able to:
This course provides an analytical framework to help you evaluate key problems in a structured fashion and will equip you with tools to better manage the uncertainties that pervade and complicate business processes. Specifically, you will be introduced to statistics and how to summarize data and learn concepts of frequency, normal distribution, statistical studies, sampling, and confidence intervals. While you will be introduced to some of the science of what is being taught, the focus will be on applying the methodologies. This will be accomplished through the use of Excel and data sets from many different disciplines, allowing you to see the use of statistics in very diverse settings. The course will focus not only on explaining these concepts but also on understanding the meaning of the results obtained.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
This course provides an analytical framework to help you evaluate key problems in a structured fashion and will equip you with tools to better manage the uncertainties that pervade and complicate business processes. The course aims to cover statistical ideas that apply to managers. We will consider two basic themes: first, is recognizing and describing variations present in everything around us, and then modeling and making decisions in the presence of these variations. The fundamental concepts studied in this course will reappear in many other classes and business settings. Our focus will be on interpreting the meaning of the results in a business and managerial setting. While you will be introduced to some of the science of what is being taught, the focus will be on applying the methodologies. This will be accomplished through the use of Excel and using data sets from many different disciplines, allowing you to see the use of statistics in very diverse settings. The course will focus not only on explaining these concepts but also on understanding the meaning of the results obtained.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
The capstone project involves an in-depth analysis of an actual business situation in which you will examine the global economic environment of a business. The final project will be a business plan that uses statistical tools and economic theory to create a comprehensive analysis of the microeconomic and macroeconomic environment in which the focal company operates.
In this Specialization, you will gain competencies that are critical for managers in any functional area. You will learn to create, model, analyze, and maximize value in accounting, operations, and marketing.
This Specialization is part of the University of Illinois iMBA Program. Each course fulfills a portion of the requirements for a University of Illinois course that can earn you college credit.
When you complete the Value Chain Management Specialization, you will:
There are 7 Courses in this Specialization
In this course, you will learn how to use accounting to facilitate and align decisions made by owners, managers, and employees. You will learn how accountants create, organize, interpret, and communicate information that improves internal processes, and allows organizations to identify and leverage opportunities to create value within the supply chain and with customers.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
In this course, you will explore how to use accounting to allocate resources and incentivize managers and employee behaviors in using these resources. You will also learn how financial and non-financial accounting information facilitates strategic performance measurement and how to integrate this information to continuously improve strategy.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
In this course, you will learn about the role of operations and how they are connected to other business functions in manufacturing- and service-focused organizations. You will learn and practice the use of decision-making frameworks and techniques applicable at all levels, from management-level strategic decisions such as connecting process to the needs of various customer segments to front-line tactical decisions such as choosing between ordering larger quantities vs. ordering more frequently.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
In this course, you will focus on process improvement. You will learn how to set organizational priorities for continuous process improvement, how to execute process improvement projects, and how to sustain the initiative for continuous improvements.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
In this course, you will learn how businesses create value for customers. We will examine the process by which Marketing builds on a thorough understanding of buyer behavior to create value. You will learn the major elements of the marketing mix – product policy, channels of distribution, communication, and pricing – and see how they fit within different analytical frameworks that are useful to managers. This will enhance your understanding of how marketing works in the business world.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
In this course, you will further examine how businesses create value for customers. In Marketing Management I, you learned the major elements of the marketing mix – product policy, channels of distribution, communication, and pricing – and saw how they fit within different analytical frameworks that are useful to managers. In this course, you will complete a more detailed analysis of these elements in order to conduct a thorough strategic analysis of marketing opportunities and communicate marketing decisions. This will enable you to see “marketing in action” in the business world.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
The capstone for the Value Chain Management specialization will provide a learning experience that examines how the various segments of a business integrate to create a value chain. The capstone involves an in-depth analysis of an actual business situation. The final deliverable consists of a plan based on a comprehensive analysis of how accounting, marketing, and operations work together to create a value chain. The plan will propose how value creation in organizations and supply chains can be enhanced using the concepts and frameworks learned in the three courses. This course is part of the iMBA offered by the University of Illinois, a flexible, fully-accredited online MBA at an incredibly competitive price.
The Financial Management Specialization is part of the University of Illinois iMBA Program. Each course in this Specialization also fulfills a portion of the requirements for a University of Illinois course that can earn you college credit.
When you complete the Financial Management Specialization, you will:
· Have a solid foundation in developing an integrated framework for strategic financial decision-making.
· Have a thorough understanding of financial statements and the financial information they provide and be able to critically evaluate and analyze cash flow statements.
· Understand the management and evaluation of portfolios and firm valuation techniques.
· Understand how to incorporate risk and uncertainty into investment decisions and understand how companies make financing and investment decisions.
There are 7 Courses in this Specialization
In this course, you will learn the foundations of financial accounting information. You will start your journey with a general overview of what financial accounting information is and the main financial statements. You will then learn how to code financial transactions in financial accounting language. In the meantime, you will learn about the most important concept in contemporary financial accounting: accrual accounting. You will then critically analyze how firms recognize revenues. Finally, you will finish the course with an analysis of accounting for short-term assets where you will go into detail on how firms account for accounts receivables and inventories.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
In this course, you will explore advanced topics in financial accounting. You will start your journey with accounting for assets with more than one-year of life. You will learn in detail how firms account for fixed assets. You will then move to finance of assets and discuss accounting for liabilities. The course will continue with an in-depth exploration of shareholders’ equity. Finally, you will critically evaluate the preparation, components, and analysis of the cash flows statement.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
In this course, we will discuss the fundamental principles of trading off risk and return, portfolio optimization, and security pricing. We will study and use risk-return models such as the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and multi-factor models to evaluate the performance of various securities and portfolios. Specifically, we will learn how to interpret and estimate regressions that provide us with both a benchmark to use for security given its risk (determined by its beta), as well as a risk-adjusted measure of the security’s performance (measured by its alpha). Building upon this framework, market efficiency and its implications for patterns in stock returns and the asset-management industry will be discussed. Finally, the course will conclude by connecting investment finance with corporate finance by examining firm valuation techniques such as the use of market multiples and discounted cash flow analysis. The course emphasizes real-world examples and applications in Excel throughout. This course is the first of two on Investments that I am offering online (“Investments II: Lessons and Applications for Investors” is the second course). The over-arching goals of this course are to build an understanding of the fundamentals of investment finance and provide an ability to implement key asset-pricing models and firm-valuation techniques in real-world situations.
Specifically, upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
This course was previously entitled “Financial Evaluation and Strategy: Investments” and was part of a previous specialization entitled “Improving Business and Finances Operations”, which is now closed to new learner enrollment. “Financial Evaluation and Strategy: Investments” received an average rating of 4.8 out of 5 based on 199 reviews over the period August 2015 through August 2016. You can view a detailed summary of the ratings and reviews for this course in the Course Overview section.
In this course, you will start by reviewing the fundamentals of investments, including the trading off of return and risk when forming a portfolio, asset pricing models such as the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and the 3-Factor Model, and the efficient market hypothesis. You will be introduced to the two components of stock returns – dividends and capital gains – and will learn how each are taxed and the incentives provided to investors from a realization-based capital gains tax. You will examine the investment decisions (and behavioral biases) of participants in defined-contribution (DC) pension plans like 401(k) plans in the U.S. and will learn about the evidence regarding the performance of individual investors in their stock portfolios.
The course concludes by discussing the evidence regarding the performance of actively-managed mutual funds. You will learn about the fees charged to investors by mutual funds and the evidence regarding the relation between fees charged and fund performance. Segments of the portfolios of mutual funds that may be more likely to outperform and examples of strategies designed to “earn alpha” will also be introduced. Learners are welcome to take this course even if they have not completed “Investments I: Fundamentals of Performance Evaluation,” as the first module contains a review of investment fundamentals and regression analysis to get everyone up to speed.
Also, the course contains several innovative features, including creative out-of-the-studio introductions followed by quick-hitting “Module in 60” countdowns that highlight what will be covered in each module, four “Faculty Focus” interview episodes with leading professors in finance, and a summary of each module done with the help of animations!
In this course, you will learn how to use key finance principles to understand and measure business success and to identify and promote true value creation. You will learn how to use accounting information to form key financial ratios to measure a company’s financial health and to manage a company’s short-term and long-term liquidity needs. You will also learn how to use valuation techniques to make sound business investment and acquisition decisions. Finally, you will learn how to incorporate risk and uncertainty into investment decisions and how to evaluate the performance of existing investments.
Upon successful completion of this course you will be able to:
This course was previously entitled Financial Evaluation and Strategy: Corporate Finance. The course received an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 based on 177 reviews over the period of September 2015 through August 2016. A detailed breakdown of ratings and reviews received for the prior version of the course, which is identical in content to the current course, is provided in the course orientation page.
In this course, you will learn how companies decide on how much debt to take, and whether to raise capital from markets or from banks. You will also learn how to measure and manage credit risk and how to deal with financial distress. You will discuss the mechanics of dividends and share repurchases, and how to choose the best way to return cash to investors. You will also learn how to use derivatives and liquidity management to offset specific sources of financial risk, including currency risks. Finally, You will learn how companies finance merger and acquisition decisions, including leveraged buyouts, and how to incorporate large changes in leverage in standard valuation models.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
The Financial Management capstone will provide a learning experience that integrates across all the courses within this specialization. You will analyze a situation taking the vantage point of a company and develop a financial management plan (for instance, a global company working in a specific geography chosen by students’ region or country of residence, or other consideration). You will design a deliverable to create value from the perspective of potential employers while achieving pedagogical and experiential goals.
Upon completion of this specialization, you will be able to:
There are 7 Courses in this Specialization
This course focuses on understanding subsistence marketplaces and designing business solutions for the billions of people living in poverty in the global marketplace. To develop an understanding of subsistence marketplaces, we use exercises to enable participants to view the world from the eyes of subsistence consumers and entrepreneurs, facilitate bottom‐up understanding generated by participants, and provide insights from extensive research. More broadly, the course uses the context of extreme resource constrained contexts to learn about the bottom-up approach pioneered through the Subsistence Marketplaces Initiative, and apply it in any context. The course will involve virtual immersion in subsistence contexts, emersion of unique insights, bottom-up design, innovation, and enterprise. A parallel project will focus on understanding a specific need in a subsistence marketplace and designing a solution and an enterprise plan.
Upon successful completion of this course you will be able to:
This course will explore current challenges and opportunities facing firms in the area of environmental sustainability. It will begin with an introduction to sustainability, with a particular focus on how environmental sustainability is relevant to business. Topics such as unsustainable consumption/consumer behavior, market research sustainable product design, sustainable value chains and communications will be covered. The bottom-up approach in terms of immersion, emersion, and design as applied to sustainable business enterprise will be covered. The course concludes with a summary of insights on global challenges in business, with particular focus on poverty and the environment, and on the unique approach employed here in terms of bottom-up immersion, emersion, design, innovation, and enterprise.
Upon successful completion of this course you will be able to:
Starting in the late 1990s, “globalization” became a buzzword to describe the apparent integration of markets in the world economy. Many authors and pundits claimed that the world was converging towards a market-friendly democratic place, while gurus and consulting firms were not short of formulae and advice on how to make profits out of the global economy. Decades later, new realities show that globalization does not mean political, cultural, and economic convergence and that forces against it are strong. This course seeks to help you understand the forces of globalization and how cross-cultural management and the relationship of a multinational organization to various host countries is becoming more and more critical in today’s global economy. This course begins with the discussion of these issues and global relationships and delves into a deeper understanding of business strategy in today’s global business marketplace.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
This course explores the ways firms overcome challenges when operating globally. The global economy is characterized by its high complexity and uncertainty. Corporations trying to succeed in the global economy need to develop different types of strategies depending on where they are conducting business or what type of business they are in. Students taking this course will learn how to determine the best strategy to follow when expanding globally, the advantages and disadvantages of those strategies, and the appropriate responses to external pressures.
Globalization has brought dramatic changes to the marketplace. A proliferation of global brands brings diverse cultures to a consumer population that is also growing culturally diverse. This course enables students to understand how globalization changes consumers at a psychological level, and provides tools for imbuing brands with cultural meanings—creating iconic brands—that can resonate with global consumers. The focus is on understanding that culture exists in the mind (e.g., values and beliefs) as well as in the environment (e.g., objects, brands, and institutions), and that globalization creates multi-cultural spaces in contemporary societies. Consumers can use the cultural meaning of a brand to build their identities (i.e., assimilate the brand cultural symbolism) or reject the brand’s cultural meaning(s) (i.e., exclusionary reactions). The course will help students identify when assimilation vs. exclusionary reactions are more likely to occur, as well as devise strategies for imbuing brands with cultural meanings that can elevate them to the status of cultural icons.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
Global business ethics is the study and analysis of how ethics and global business are connected. How we should treat each other and our organizations in global and local contexts is the topic of this course. Business ethics and corporate responsibility are inherent in global commerce. Commerce is about markets, and markets entail exchanges between people and groups of people. So commerce is about human relationships, and indeed, it could not be otherwise. One of the important challenges in global business is working out the extent of these obligations in the interrelationships between businesses and the particular local cultures in which that business operates. The ethical issues arising from these engagements, the kinds of values-based considerations out of which an organization negotiates with local concerns, and how an organization can be both an enabler of economic value-added while respecting cultural differences will be topics of this course.
Upon successful completion of this course you will be able to:
The capstone for the Global Challenges in Business specialization will provide a learning experience that integrates across all the courses within that specialization. It will involve analysis of a situation concerning an actual business with a view to work toward a global stakeholder engagement business plan for the introduction of a new product. Students will analyze a situation taking the vantage point of a global company and develop a global stakeholder engagement plan for a specific geography (chosen by students’ region or country of residence, or other consideration).
This specialization will be of value to both aspiring and practicing entrepreneurs as well as employees in established firms who are interested in becoming innovative leaders in an interconnected world.
There are 7 Courses in this Specialization
Innovation strategy is about creating unique value for consumers by delivering a great product that satisfies their needs and capturing value back from consumers. At the core of a successful innovation strategy is a great product concept. Product is an all-encompassing term that includes physical goods, intangible services, and even ideas. There are three pillars to a successful product strategy: a clear understanding of (a) the target customers (WHO), (b) the specific elements of the product offering (WHAT) that satisfies consumer needs and dovetails with company capabilities, and (c) the tactical plans to reach end consumers (HOW). The value proposition has to be embedded in a coherent business model in order to create and capture value. But well-laid innovation plans can go awry without a consideration of the business ecosystem that includes competitors, collaborators, including suppliers, distributors, and retailers, or the contextual environment in which the company operates. In an interdependent world, fostering an integrated ecosystem is critically important for companies interested in maximizing the odds of innovation success. Drawing from many years of research, this course will offer a set of frameworks, tools, and concepts in order to develop innovative strategies in a holistic way so as to achieve leadership positions.
You may have noticed that what is new often behaves differently than what has become accepted over time, whether it is in a market, or a technology, or involves people and firms. Much research supports these general ideas, and this course builds on them to help you develop a perspective on managing innovation. That is, you will build your capability to lead and design your organization in effectively implementing innovation initiatives and achieving their strategic intent. To do this, you will learn a set of frameworks, tools, and concepts that can help you address several important challenges in managing innovation. The first challenge regards how to successfully implement innovation efforts within established firms and alongside established businesses. You then investigate the particulars of managing innovation when disruptive technologies are involved. Other topics include leadership of new product development teams, planning, and evaluation of innovation initiatives, and management of innovation across organizational boundaries, as happens with alliances or virtual firms.
Thinking and doing the same things faster and better is not enough; we need creativity. Fortunately, creativity is a skill you can learn. This course will examine when, why, and how we can be creative. It examines the cues that trigger us to consider being creative. It provides a road map of the creative process – the process of changing our perspectives – and the kinds of outcomes that result from creativity. It examines how we can go through the creative process more efficiently and more effectively by examining what is changing about our thinking and how we can make those changes. The end result is more flexible thinking that can be used to recognize and develop new opportunities.
Creativity requires us to collaborate with others. This course is designed to make you a better creative collaborator. Creativity can require us to bring together knowledge from different areas, often known by different people. We need to foster effective collaboration rather than have those differences lead to misunderstandings and conflict. The ideas that we generate, individually or collectively, will be evaluated by others, such as bosses, funders, and customers. These audiences will likely have different concerns when they hear about your ideas and are likely to evaluate ideas differently than you do. We need to pitch our ideas in ways that get others excited about them, rather than bored or confused so that we can expand the group of collaborators in our creative efforts.
This course will explore the earlier stages of the entrepreneurial venture process across four modules. The modules will examine the nature of growth and error in entrepreneurial settings and how to manage resources in those settings. In addition, the modules will explore the emergence and existence of entrepreneurial opportunities, the formulation of ideas in relation to those opportunities, and how those opportunities and ideas influence entrepreneurial phenomena. Finally, the course modules will focus on how business concepts underlie compelling entrepreneurial missions that provide guidance to the evolution of a venture’s business model and future strategic planning.
This course builds on previous concepts and outlines strategies and tactics for forming, financing and launching a new venture. Topics to be addressed will include building the new venture’s initial management team, identifying and reaching out to early customers, developing financial plans, raising startup and initial growth financing, and preparing for and managing rapid growth. Course objectives: Entrepreneurial Team Building: Develop an understanding of the what is required in a new venture Initial Go-to-Market Strategy: Develop a plan to identify and approach your first customers Financial Forecasting: Building financial projections for the new venture Entrepreneurial Financing: Raising Equity Capital for the new venture Growing the Business: Monitoring the new venture’s health and scalability
The capstone for the specialization will provide a learning experience that integrates across all the courses within it. It will involve analysis of a situation concerning a new enterprise – a venture of one’s own or within a larger organization – to develop the current business model and compare against alternative business models so as to identify potential opportunities and challenges.
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