MBA ASAP Business Strategy
What you'll learn
- Hone new skills online with expert faculty.
- Learn the main concepts and tools of Business Strategy by an Award Winning MBA Professor, business consultant and MBA Graduate of the Ivy League Wharton School.
- Learn to think strategically, create a strategic plan, how to implement your plan, and how to measure strategic perfomance. These are the tools of leadership.
- Strategy is a firm’s answer to the following question: What can we do that is really hard? You will learn how to create competitive advantage.
- Great strategy locates and exploits the fit between market conditions and a firm’s assets.
- Understand business from a strategic perspective. Senior executives routinely share and discuss strategy with other direct reports. Prime your career path.
- This course will help you become a better manager and leader.
- Take your career to the next level!
- Free $16.99 book version of this course!
- Products don't create value, customers do. Learn how to perform customer discovery and qualitative research.
Requirements
- The only requirement is a positive attitude. : )
- There are no prerequisites for this course. If you are able to take this online course then by definition you have enough facility with computers to understand the material. We will talk conceptually about the core concepts and tools of strategic thinking and planning. I start from square one so you don’t need any prior knowledge or experience. To begin, I recommend taking a few minutes to explore the course site and get a feel for the material we’ll cover in each section.
Description
The smartest people invest heavily in their education and skill development, recognizing that their human capital is their most marketable resource.
Skills are the most valuable thing you can acquire in this lifetime because they keep compounding until the day you die.
"The course is easy to understand a provides an elementary framework to understand business strategy. The lecture all convey key information delivered in a clear and concise manner which provides good foundation for the more complex concepts. The added provided additional resources compliment the video lectures nicely. In my situation I had not studied strategy since my undergraduate days in business school which was a long while a go. So this helped to update my knowledge and to understand the latest trends. This course is great for a soon to be undergraduate business student or someone contemplating graduate studies in business. The theory is kept to only relevant levels and an abundance of practical examples are provided to solidify the learning. Once again another quality course in the MBA-ASAP product offering."
Andrew W
The Importance of Strategy
Effective tactics are helpful to have, but without a strategy, they can be useless, like a powerful car without a steering wheel.
“Tactics is knowing what to do when there’s something to do… Strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.”
My many years of advising companies and making value-driven equity bets has made it crystal clear to me that the ascent of great companies is not linear but more a step function.
“To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The importance of strategy is to provide a framework so we can act in accordance with our thinking. It provides a set of tools and techniques to help us achieve those hard things.
We are often told that successful strategy is a matter of boldness, but it is also as much a matter of patience and due diligence as overt action.
Strategy in business is the big picture.
Great strategy navigates between market conditions and a firm’s assets.
Competitive Strategy is a firm’s answer to the following question:
What can we do that is really hard?
It is about picking goals for the enterprise and then figuring out what resources are going to be assembled to achieve those goals. Learn strategic thinking, planning, implementation, management and leadership ASAP with this comprehensive course.
This course comes with my two Business Strategy books, lots of slidedecks, tons of articles from my award winning blog, and over two hours of lectures broken down into segments that address all aspects of Strategy.
Strategy in business is the big picture. Implementing a strategic vision is how a business succeeds and is profitable.
Strategy is about figuring out how to create a sustainable competitive advantage and barriers to entering your markets. Strategy is a firm’s answer to the following question: What can we do that is really hard?
Great strategy locates and exploits the fit between market conditions and a firm’s assets.
Leadership and Management are the key skill sets that rely on strategy. Leadership is doing the right things. Management is doing things right.
Strategic Thinking and vision is the realm of leadership.
Strategic Implementation and executing the strategy is the realm of management.
Strategic Planning brings the skills of leadership and management together.
Business Strategy is about picking goals for the enterprise and then figuring out what resources are going to be assembled to achieve those goals.
Learn strategic thinking, planning, implementation, management and leadership ASAP with this comprehensive course.Achieve more, faster, and reach your full potential.
Are you planning on getting a business degree? An MBA? Want a leg up in your classes and coursework?
Looking for a way to turbocharge your career and level up? Thinking of changing careers or starting a business? Do you aspire to be a manager?
Why take this strategy course? Understand business from a strategic perspective. Senior executives routinely share and discuss strategy with marketing directors, operations chiefs, and other direct reports. But how much do those managers really understand about strategic thinking, planning, implementation, and measurement? A recent investigation into this question concluded most managers don't understand enough about strategy to be useful. Asked to take a basic strategy exam—a test that any CEO or senior manager should easily ace—a representative sample of U.S. managers from C-level executives to supervisors scored an average of only 23%.
Lack of strategic literacy matters and impacts an organization’s ability to optimally perform. Those who can’t speak the language of business can’t contribute much to a discussion of performance and are unlikely to advance in the hierarchy or reach their full potential.
Does a lack of strategic literacy matter? From a managers’ point of view, it surely does. Those who can’t speak the language of business can’t contribute much to a discussion of performance and are unlikely to advance in the hierarchy. People don’t tell their bosses that they don’t understand strategy. It’s the usual human reluctance to admit ignorance. In a survey, managers were asked what happens in meetings when people don’t understand strategy. The majority chose answers reflecting that reluctance, such as “Most people don’t ask because they don’t want to appear uninformed in front of their boss or peers.” Don’t let this be you. Take this course and understand Business Strategy.
To reach your full potential you need to master new business and personal skills.
Packed with practical advice the MBA ASAP Series are the primers you need to develop your managerial and leadership skills.
We’re MBA ASAP, our mission is to make advanced, quality business education accessible to capable students everywhere by leveraging technology at scale to deliver inexpensive online programs, courses, and books.
We know that talent is distributed globally, but opportunity is not. We believe all capable and committed students deserve the opportunity to change their lives and to impact their communities.
Education is most effective when educators, and students work together to create pathways for mutual success. Technology makes advanced learning locally available across geographies and enhances outcomes.
I encourage you to take this course. But if you decide not to, please take another class, or read a book.
To know what you don’t know is power. To ask and learn what you don’t know is a superpower.
Investing in learning makes you better at earning.
Who this course is for:
- Anyone interested in learning a skillset that will make you more valuable at your job, help you start something on the side, or let you quit your job and start your own business.
- Anyone interesed in developing their leadership skills.
- If you are thinking about an MBA or are enrolled in a program and are preparing to take leadership, management and strategy courses, this course will prepare you for excelling in your program.
- We know that talent is distributed globally, but opportunity is not. We believe all capable and committed students deserve the opportunity to change their lives and to impact their communities.
- Anyone who wants to be more effective in their life and career.
Instructor
I am the author of Patent It Yourself!, Negotiation Communication Nation, Learn Accounting Fast!, Managing and Leading Organizations and People, Reading and Understanding Financial Statements, MBA ASAP, and nine other books. I am the founder of MBA ASAP which can be found at MBA-ASAP dot com an "online business education community" chock full of business skills and knowledge on the web.
Previously, I was CEO of a biotech company developing innovative cancer diagnostics. I took two companies public and I was the CFO of several public companies for 15 years. For the past decade I have also been teaching business classes at a number of universities and colleges.
Writing these books and creating these courses has been a wonderful opportunity to gather and organize my thoughts and experiences and share them. I have an electronics degree from MIT, a BA from Boston University and an MBA from Wharton.