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MBA Required Curriculum
(FIRST YEAR)
The Entrepreneurial Manager
In order to “educate leaders who make a difference in the world,” the Harvard Company School has actually constantly had basic management as its core instructional arranging framework. The Required Curriculum has historically had a core course in general management and The Entrepreneurial Manager (TEM) supplies an effective context in which to discover general management. TEM seeks to build the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to prosper as an entrepreneurial supervisor. The knowledge, skills, tools, and structures that TEM establishes are built upon the structure of your other RC courses including TOM, LEAD, LCA, FRC, Marketing, Strategy, and Financing, integrate those lessons into an overall framework, and help general managers at all types of companies (e.g., little companies, big companies, non-profits, and public servants) end up being more reliable at improving the value of those organizations.
HBS teacher Ken Andrews explained three roles for the basic supervisor: [1]
- Setting strategic instructions by taking into consideration external opportunities and threats, the availability of internal resources relative to requirements, the goals and worths of senior management, and commitments to stakeholders and society. In the context of TEM, this idea permeates our first module: Defining and Establishing business Model.
- Creating organizational structures and procedures that allocate duties, promote cross-functional integration, recruit/develop/promote staff members, get crucial resources and funding, and budget/monitor monetary efficiency. Andrews' 2nd core idea sets the stage for our 2nd module: Resourcing business Design.
- Leading the company by: 1) making tough tradeoffs when setting strategy, fixing cross-functional dispute, and making hiring/firing decisions; and 2) communicating a vision that motivates employees and protects commitment from other stakeholders. Effectively thought about, this final function of basic management results in our 3rd module: Running the Business Design.
For a lot of you, your careers will progress in the setting of small, entrepreneurial firms. More than half of HBS graduates become business owners at some point in their professions. Recent surveys covering HBS MBA show that 30% of alumni currently work in a company that they founded, 46% have launched at least one business in their careers, and 31% intend to start a company in the future. Amongst the founders, 36% introduced their business at the school or within 4 years of graduation, 34% became founders 5-14 years after leaving HBS, and the balance started companies 15+ years after graduation.
But studying startups and small firms conveys effective lessons about general management for those pursuing careers in other contexts too. We will see that entrepreneurial supervisors in large business along with the general public sector advantage simply as much as a small company's creator from the lessons we will check out. Examining small companies allows us to more totally understand decision-making and incentives at a much deeper level. Unlike executives in large, recognized corporations, founders do not acquire a technique; they should develop one. Also, a start-up has no organizational structure or processes; its creator needs to create them. Lastly, start-ups challenge a demanding environment. Unpredictability is high; resources are constrained. We will find that in TEM, the attitudinal orientation, decision-frameworks, and actions can assist managers at all firms improve the exploitation of worth increasing chances.
Entrepreneurial managers typically deal with an environment in which the importance of general management is vital. In the face of such difficulties, entrepreneurial managers need to have a predisposition for action. TEM teaches you how to disintegrate such complex circumstances, recognize critical choices confronting the business, and make high-risk/high reward decisions with minimal information.
MBA Elective Curriculum
(SECOND YEAR)
| Course Title |
Faculty Call |
Term |
Quarter |
Credits |
| Preventing Startup Failure |
Lindsay Hyde |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Company at the Base of the Pyramid (likewise listed under General Management) |
Natalia Rigol, Benjamin N. Roth |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
| The Coming of Managerial Industrialism |
Tom Nicholas |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Information for Effect: Effect Measurement from Startup to Fortune 500 C-Suite |
Benjamin N. Roth, Natalia Rigol |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Entrepreneurial Financing (likewise listed under Finance) |
Raymond Kluender |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Entrepreneurial Financing (Q2) (likewise noted under Finance) |
Shai Bernstein |
Fall 2024 |
Q2 |
1.5 |
| Entrepreneurial Sales 101: Founder Selling |
Mark Roberge, Lou Shipley |
Fall 2024 |
Q2 |
1.5 |
| Mark Roberge, Lou Shipley |
Spring 2025 |
Q3 |
1.5 |
| Entrepreneurial Sales 102: Structure, Handling, and Scaling the First Sales Team as a Founder, Investor, or Advisor |
Lou Shipley |
Spring 2025 |
Q4 |
1.5 |
| Entrepreneurship in Life Sciences |
Satish Tadikonda |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
| Entrepreneurship Outside the Valley (also noted under Finance) |
Paul Gompers |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Field Course: Business of the Arts (likewise listed under Marketing and General Management) |
Rohit Deshpande, Henry McGee |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Field Course: Entrepreneurship through Acquisition (Application Just) (also noted under Financing) |
Richard Ruback, Royce Yudkoff |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Field Course: Field X (also listed under Financing) |
Randolph Cohen |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
| Field Course: Field Y: Projects in Service Management (also noted under Finance) |
Randolph Cohen |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Field Course: Foundry AI Laboratory |
Thomas Eisenmann, Shikhar Ghosh |
Fall 2024 |
Q1 |
1.5 |
| Field Course: Go to Market Sales Playbook Field Study |
Lou Shipley |
Spring 2025 |
Q4 |
1.5 |
| Field Course: Investing for Effect (likewise noted under Financing and General Management) |
Archie L. Jones, Emily R. McComb, Brian Trelstad, Gerald Chertavian |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Field Course: Life Sciences Venture Production |
Satish Tadikonda |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
| Field Course: Scaling Minority Organizations (also noted under General Management) |
Archie L. Jones, Henry McGee |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
| Field Course: Startup Operations |
Julia Austin |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
| Field Course: Start-up Operations Studio (SOS) |
Julia Austin |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
1.5 |
| Field Course: Venture Capital Journey |
Jeffrey Bussgang |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
| Financial Management of Smaller Firms (likewise noted under Financing) |
Richard Ruback, Royce Yudkoff |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
| The Founder Frame of mind |
Reza Satchu |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
| IFC: India; Development While Decarbonizing – India's Path to Net No (likewise noted under General Management) |
Vikram Gandhi |
January 2025 |
J |
3.0 |
| IFC: Silicon Valley; Disrupting Silicon Valley with AI |
Mark Roberge |
January 2025 |
J |
3.0 |
| Releasing Tech Ventures |
Christina Wallace |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
| Jeffrey Bussgang |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Law, Management and Entrepreneurship (likewise noted under General Management) |
John Batter |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
| John Batter |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Making Difficult Decisions: The General Manager's Task (MDD) (likewise noted under General Management and Technology & Operations Management) |
Amy Edmondson, Tiona Zuzul |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Managing the Future of Work |
Christopher Stanton |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Browsing Your Worth: AI, Settlements, and the Nature of Proficiency |
Zoe Cullen, Shikhar Ghosh |
Spring 2025 |
Q4 |
1.5 |
| Product Management |
Sara McKinley Torti |
Spring 2025 |
Q3 |
1.5 |
| Public Entrepreneurship (also listed under General Management) |
Mitchell Weiss |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
| Dangers, Opportunities, And Investments In The Era Of Climate Change (ROICC) (likewise noted under Accounting & Management and General Management) |
George Serafeim |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Road to the White House 2024, an Economic Sector Point Of View on Presidential Politics |
Robert F. White |
Fall 2024 |
Q1 |
1.5 |
| Scaling Innovation Ventures |
Jeffrey Rayport |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Method for Business owners (also listed under Strategy) |
Rembrand Koning |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Sustainable Investing (also listed under Finance) |
Vikram Gandhi |
Fall 2024 |
Q2 |
1.5 |
| Systems for Scaling Ventures (SSV) (likewise listed under Accounting & Management) |
Tatiana Sandino |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Hard Tech Ventures |
Joshua Lev Krieger, Jim Matheson |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Turnarounds and Improvement (likewise listed under Organizational Habits) |
Ranjay Gulati |
Spring 2025 |
Q3Q4 |
3.0 |
| Venture Capital and Private Equity |
Jo Tango, Archie L. Jones |
Fall 2024 |
Q1Q2 |
3.0 |
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