10 Free Business Courses Every Entrepreneur Should Take
Running a business requires one to constantly upskill, read and gather new knowledge and information. Below is a list of 10 Free Business Courses Every Entrepreneur Should Take. These courses are being offered by universities such as Yale and Havard free of charge ! Enjoy!
1.Career Brand Management Specialization
[Approx. 5 months to completeSuggested 3 hours/week]
In the business world, smart organizations use branding and strategic management techniques to differentiate themselves from their competition and to achieve a competitive advantage. In this Specialization, you will learn how to use proven brand management methods and tools for individual career development in competitive job environments. You will gain knowledge and analytical skills for career self-management and learn techniques for career brand building. You will create a robust self-management information system that will help you self-organize and increase your human capital by building high demand employability skills. During each week of the Specialization, you will be practicing various career branding techniques in your custom-built, individual Career Development Lab. The final Capstone Project is designed as a training facility where you will create your evidence-based portfolios, professional development plans, personal self-marketing and branding strategies, presentations, and public profiles.
2.Finance for Everyone Specialization
[Approx. 6 months to completeSuggested 2 hours/week]
The Finance for Everyone Specialization will help you learn the language of finance and understand how the flow of money relates to the most important key social issues influencing our lives and communities. You’ll examine the connections between global and local finance; the flow of assets through businesses, governments, and other institutions; and the commodity, bond, and equity market dynamics that create and destroy financial value. When you complete the Specialization, you’ll be able to better understand both global financial news and your own personal financial decisions.
3.Business Foundations Specialization
[Approx. 7 months to completeSuggested 2 hours/week]
In this Specialization, you’ll develop basic literacy in the language of business, which you can use to transition to a new career, start or improve your own small business, or apply to business school to continue your education. In five courses, you’ll learn the fundamentals of marketing, accounting, operations, and finance. In the final Capstone Project, you’ll apply the skills learned by developing a go-to-market strategy to address a real business challenge.
4.Introduction to Negotiation: A Strategic Playbook for Becoming a Principled and Persuasive Negotiator
This course will help you be a better negotiator. Unlike many negotiation courses, we develop a framework for analyzing and shaping negotiations. This framework will allow you to make principled arguments that persuade others. It will allow you to see beneath the surface of apparent conflicts to uncover the underlying interests. You will leave the course better able to predict, interpret, and shape the behavior of those you face in competitive situations.
In this course, you will have several opportunities to negotiate with other students using case studies based on common situations in business and in life. You can get feedback on your performance and compare what you did to how others approached the same scenario. The cases also provide a setting to discuss a wide-ranging set of topics including preparing for a negotiation, making ultimatums, avoiding regret, expanding the pie, and dealing with someone who has a very different perspective on the world. Advanced topics include negotiating when you have no power, negotiating over email, and the role of gender differences in negotiation. To close out the course, we will hear insights from three negotiation experts: Linda Babcock, Herb Cohen, and John McCall MacBain.
5. Private Equity and Venture Capital
The course deals with the analysis of the private equity and venture capital business. Over the course, students will be provided with a deep understanding of the mechanism underpinning the creation and/or development of a firm and the financial support it can get from the financial system through venture capital investment. The course tries to discover how special financial intermediaries (called private equity investors) finance through equity companies belonging to different stages of their life-cycle, starting from the very beginning (startup and early stage) to a more mature phase (i.e. expansion, mature age, etc.) or also staying into crises and decline. Private equity (named venture capital when the company is in the first phases of its life cycle) deals with very different activities, such as scouting, advisory, deal-making, valuation, and financing as financial intermediaries see it.
6.Financial Markets
An overview of the ideas, methods, and institutions that permit human society to manage risks and foster enterprise. Emphasis on financially-savvy leadership skills. Description of practices today and analysis of prospects for the future. Introduction to risk management and behavioral finance principles to understand the real-world functioning of securities, insurance, and banking industries. The ultimate goal of this course is using such industries effectively and towards a better society.
7. Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills
We all negotiate on a daily basis. On a personal level, we negotiate with friends, family, landlords, car sellers and employers, among others. Negotiation is also the key to business success. No business can survive without profitable contracts. Within a company, negotiation skills can lead to your career advancement.
8. Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand and Behaviour
Professor Nader Tavassoli of London Business School contrasts traditional approaches to branding – where brands are a visual identity and a promise to customers – to brands as a customer experience delivered by the entire organisation. The course offers a brand workout for your own brands, as well as guest videos from leading branding professionals.
9.Introduction to Negotiation: A Strategic Playbook for Becoming a Principled and Persuasive Negotiator
This course will help you be a better negotiator. Unlike many negotiation courses, we develop a framework for analyzing and shaping negotiations. This framework will allow you to make principled arguments that persuade others. It will allow you to see beneath the surface of apparent conflicts to uncover the underlying interests. You will leave the course better able to predict, interpret, and shape the behavior of those you face in competitive situations.
In this course, you will have several opportunities to negotiate with other students using case studies based on common situations in business and in life. You can get feedback on your performance and compare what you did to how others approached the same scenario. The cases also provide a setting to discuss a wide-ranging set of topics including preparing for a negotiation, making ultimatums, avoiding regret, expanding the pie, and dealing with someone who has a very different perspective on the world. Advanced topics include negotiating when you have no power, negotiating over email, and the role of gender differences in negotiation. To close out the course, we will hear insights from three negotiation experts: Linda Babcock, Herb Cohen, and John McCall MacBain.
10. Excel Skills for Business Specialization
This specialization is intended for anyone who seeks to develop one of the most critical and fundamental digital skills today. Spreadsheet software remains one of the most ubiquitous pieces of software used in workplaces across the world. Learning to confidently operate this software means adding a highly valuable asset to your employability portfolio. In the United States alone, millions of job advertisements requiring Excel skills are posted every day. Research by Burning Glass Technologies and Capital One shows that digital skills lead to higher income and better employment opportunities. At a time when digital skills jobs are growing much faster than non-digital jobs, completing this specialization will position you way ahead of others.
In this Specialization, learners develop advanced Excel Skills for Business. Upon completing the four courses in this Specialization, learners can design sophisticated spreadsheets, including professional dashboards, and perform complex calculations using advanced Excel features and techniques. Learners have acquired the skills to manage large datasets efficiently, extract meaningful information from datasets, present data and extract information effectively. In addition, learners have mastered the skills needed to validate data and prevent errors in spreadsheets, create automation, apply advanced formulas and conditional logic to help make decisions and create spreadsheets that help forecast and model data.
