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Description of  Critical Business Skills For Success (The Great Courses)

Critical Business Skills For Success (The Great Courses) WMV Video: 640x360 Audio: WMA, 44.1Khz , 2ch Duration: 31 hours Language: English 25.3 GB Everyone wants to know: What does it take to reach success in business-the kind of success that lasts? It all comes down to a solid grasp of the fundamentals of business-the same kind that are taught to MBA students in many of the world's most prestigious business schools. Full Description Quote: Our comprehensive five-part, 60-lecture course, Critical Business Skills for Success, is designed to give you just this kind of integrated, accessible introduction. Bringing together five prestigious and renowned business professors from some of America's top business schools, each of this course's five parts is a detailed look at a particular skill: strategy, operations, finance and accounting, organizational behavior, and marketing. Here in one place is an authoritative guide to the five essential disciplines that everyone, entry-level employees and CEOs alike, needs to master in order to reap rewards in today's complex marketplace. In each part, 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. This kind of well-rounded business education is useful to anyone who works in a company of any size. Whether you're in a leadership position, just starting out, or somewhere in between, these skills will help you understand all of the functions of a business, not just your area of specialty. It's also a great resource to have even if you already have an MBA, as you can return to this course again and again for advice and clarification. Bringing the MBA experience right to you, Critical Business Skills for Success demystifies the secrets of business and gives you insights that will help you achieve your goals. Part One: Strategy Where, and with whom, will your business compete? What will you do, and not do, as a company? How will you create advantages that put you ahead of the competition? You can have the world's greatest product and the most effective marketing for selling that product, but if you don't have an effective strategy underlying your business or organization, a template for how it should run, you'll find it hard to stay on top of the business world. Why is a crystal-clear strategy an essential piece of the business puzzle? In the words of popular Great Courses Professor Michael A. Roberto of Bryant University, it's because businesses can't do everything. "And so you have to be very clear about how you're going to use your resources in the most efficient way possible, both to serve the customers you intend to serve and to serve them better than anyone else." Now you can learn straight from an award-winning business instructor the secrets to developing, executing, and managing powerful business strategies with Critical Business Skills: Strategy. Award-winning Professor Roberto's 12 lectures provide you with a research-based framework for understanding how strategy works and how to apply it. Get Two Angles on Business Strategy Business strategy is one of the business world's most crucial activities. It's the template for how your organization should run, and comes before anything else. Throughout these lectures, you'll explore strategy from two fundamental angles: You'll examine the world of business unit strategy, focusing on how particular companies use strategic frameworks to beat their rivals in a particular product market. You'll also take a step back and explore the concept of corporate strategy, and how multi-business units and diversified companies strategically operate in a variety of product markets. But most important are the many specific strategies you'll learn how to formulate, wield, and apply to your own unique business situations. Take On Tomorrow's Business Challenges Professor Roberto, using his years of experience in the business world and his piercing insights into business strategy, includes in each lecture of Critical Business Skills: Strategy stories of real-world successes (and failures) involving major companies of the past decade, including J.C. Penney, the Walt Disney Company, Target, and AOL Time Warner. An eight-time winner of Bryant University's prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award, he knows how to make this subject, and the research behind it, undeniably captivating and essential for any well-rounded understanding of how great businesses succeed and how poor businesses fail. Part Two: Operations Some people think of operations as a specialized aspect of business, usually overshadowed by a focus on corporate strategy and marketing. But without effective operations, which work hand-in-hand with the other core business disciplines, you have no goods or services. In short, you can't deliver on your promise to your customers, your employees, and your shareholders. Operations Demystified Part Three: Finance and Accounting To succeed as a businessperson in today's fast-paced, global marketplace, one of the essential business skills you need to master-whether you're a top-level manager, an investor, or an entrepreneur-is a firm grasp of how finance and accounting work. Accounting is the language in which organizations communicate their performance. Finance translates this language into smart, savvy business decisions. And no matter how honed your corporate strategy, how intricate your operations, or how ethical your organizational behavior, if you don't know about the business side of money, you cannot dream of building or growing a business. Knowing the fundamentals of finance and accounting-key terms, concepts, methodologies, real-world examples, and applications-is knowledge that can make all the difference in making wise decisions, whether you're looking to raise capital for a bold new venture, value once-in-a-lifetime stocks, or build a better investment portfolio. These 12 informative lectures make a seemingly intimidating topic accessible to learners from all backgrounds, and will help you hone the critical skills you need to finally master the fundamentals of business. With the guidance of award-winning Professor Eric Sussman, a senior lecturer in accounting at the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as a licensed CPA and business consultant, you'll soon discover the confidence to understand, interpret, and learn from the vital financial data in your professional and personal life. Part Four: Organizational Behavior You have your product, you've developed your business plan for selling that product, and you've spent invaluable time and money securing the top talent to help you reach your goals. It's all smooth sailing from here, right? Unfortunately, it turns out that some of the costliest mistakes within an organization stem from a critical misunderstanding of how organizations work, and how to operate effectively within them. If you don't have a workforce that's operating smoothly to accomplish your organizational goals, there's no way you'll succeed in business. What makes a team or department so productive? Why are some initiatives received enthusiastically, and others met with apathy? Professor Longenecker delivers powerful lectures that explore in depth what he calls "power factors" that can help you achieve better results for your organization. Effective leadership: Effective leaders can impact innovation and creativity, productivity and efficiency, workplace motivation and job satisfaction, and other important performance variables. Emotional intelligence: By recognizing your own emotions and those of others, you can better cultivate productive relationships in the workplace. Teamwork and cooperation: Failing to leverage cooperation in a business setting is essentially a failure to utilize a source of competitive advantag