Harvard Business School Online

Business Analytics is not based on rote memorization of equations or facts but focuses on honing your understanding of key concepts, your managerial judgment, and your ability to apply course concepts to real business problems.

This course begins with basic descriptive statistics and progresses to regression analysis. You’ll learn course concepts in the context of performing A/B testing on a website, using sampling to check warehouse inventory, predicting home video sales based on box office performance, and forecasting staffing needs for a hotel front desk. Throughout the course, you will receive clear guidance on how to implement analytical techniques in Excel. No matter your job function or career aspirations, this course will demystify data analysis and equip you with concrete skills to apply in your work or further studies.... [-]

The Credential of Readiness (CORe) is our primer on the fundamentals of business thinking—a three-course online program designed to prepare you to participate fully in the business world. CORe was developed by HBS faculty members to instill a deep understanding of essential business concepts and problem-solving skills. Mastering the three CORe courses—Business Analytics, Economics for Managers, and Financial Accounting—will give you fluency in the language of business.

This is the program that Harvard Business School offers to incoming students to prepare for the MBA classroom, and it will equip you to contribute to business discussions and decision making, whether you’re looking to advance your current career, considering graduate school, or exploring new career paths.... [-]

Disruptive Strategy with Clayton Christensen will help you:

Disruptive Strategy consists of 30 to 35 hours of material delivered over a six week period with a flexible program structure. There is no set time to log in. You complete the coursework on your own time while meeting regular deadlines. There will be weekly assignments, and a final paper is due at the end of the program.... [-]

Understanding concepts of economics—willingness to pay any price, fixed versus variable costs, economies of scale—is critical to business success. This course starts with the fundamentals of supply and demand—where they come from and why they're central to an understanding of business. You will learn how businesses think about pricing and production and powerful ideas like complements and network effects that firms rely on to generate demand. This course also dives into the functioning of markets, the force of competition, and strategies for differentiation.

In the process of exploring these ideas, you will learn how to develop the beginnings of a competitive strategy that will lead to a business thriving over time.... [-]

Entrepreneurship Essentials introduces you to the entrepreneurial journey, from finding an idea, to gaining traction in the marketplace, to raising capital for your venture. You will learn an overarching framework—People, Opportunity, Context, Deal—to evaluate opportunities, manage start-ups, and finance ventures. This framework has been taught to thousands of Harvard Business School MBA students over the past 30 years.

Entrepreneurship Essentials explains how entrepreneurs run structured experiments to validate ideas and refine business strategy. You will dive deep into the numbers of how entrepreneurs and their investors make financial decisions to create value and grow their operations. Whether you are a current or aspiring entrepreneur or someone who is looking to gain an understanding of how businesses are built, you will walk away from Entrepreneurship Essentials with the ability to:... [-]

This course will teach you the fundamentals of financial accounting. Starting with the basics of recording transactions as journal entries and posting them to T accounts, you will learn how to prepare a balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement.

Equipped with an understanding of the building blocks of financial statements, you will learn how to analyze them and calculate and interpret critical ratios. The course concludes with an introduction to forecasting and valuation where you will learn to prepare forecasted financial statements and make capital budgeting decisions using tools such as Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return calculations.... [-]

Global Business will help you assess opportunities, manage risk, and create and capture value for your organization. Explore the economic, political, and social factors driving change, and learn how decisions affect global markets—and your business.

Global Business consists of approximately 24 hours of material delivered over a four-week period. You can complete the coursework on your own time while meeting regular deadlines.

January 2020

April 2020

Leadership Principles is designed to help new and aspiring leaders unleash the potential in themselves and others, and cultivate high-performing teams. Become a more versatile leader who can mobilize others by immersing yourself in real-world leadership challenges, self-assessments, and 360-degree feedback from colleagues and peers.

The course begins with a two-week prework period in which you’ll be asked to complete a self-assessment and solicit feedback from colleagues, such as managers, peers, and direct reports. The evaluation will take approximately one hour of your time and roughly 30 minutes for each colleague who participates.... [-]

As a business leader, it is critical that you can understand and communicate the financial implications of your decisions. How will you generate value? How will your decisions impact shareholders?

Leading with Finance is an online program designed to provide you with a thorough understanding of the principles of finance – a toolkit for making smart financial decisions and the confidence to clearly communicate those decisions to key internal and external stakeholders.

This program also highlights the importance of incorporating subjective judgments into financial decision-making, empowering you to firmly grasp the bigger picture and become a more effective leader. Participating in Leading with Finance will allow you to:... [-]

Effective management is essential for all teams and organizations to accomplish their goals. But all too often, managers today just don’t have the tools or processes to get the job done efficiently.

Management Essentials is designed to elevate your managerial skills through a distinctive, hands-on approach to management. In the course, you’ll learn to identify, analyze, design, and influence critical organizational processes as a means of getting work done and achieving results. Working through real-world challenges faced by managers across a variety of industries, you’ll focus on four of the essential processes for managers: decision-making, implementation, organizational learning, and change management.... [-]

Negotiation is an essential skill in today’s dynamic workplace. Whether you negotiate with customers, suppliers, or colleagues, your ability to negotiate effectively is vital to the success of your organization.

Negotiation Mastery prepares you to close deals that might otherwise be dead-locked, maximize value creation in agreements you reach, and resolve differences before they escalate into costly conflicts. This program emphasizes preparation of both the “head and heart” before entering a negotiation. This includes an understanding of both analytical tools and interpersonal techniques for dealing effectively with different bargaining styles and tactics. Participating in Negotiation Mastery will allow you to:... [-]

Climate change. Income inequality. Social injustice. These are just three of the big problems of our time. In Sustainable Business Strategy, you will learn how businesses can thrive and grow while simultaneously playing a major role in solving some of these big problems. You will also learn how you as an individual can make a difference.

Through interactive online case studies with leading companies such as Walmart and Unilever, you will learn why purpose-driven firms perform well, and how they can kickstart the wheel of change. You will examine different business models and gain an understanding of the broader landscape including the role of government, investors, and customers. Whether you are just getting started in your career or are already an established professional, you will walk away from Sustainable Business Strategy with the ability to:... [-]