Required Curriculum, Term 1 Course Descriptions

Data Science for Managers (DSM)

Recognizing that data-driven insights are critical for modern business decision making, this course equips managers to effectively lead analytics-powered organizations.

Students will gain

  • An understanding of foundational data science concepts and techniques that can inform business insights and decisions.
  • Exposure to R statistical programming language to manipulate, analyze, and visualize data.
  • Knowledge of how modern data science strategies and analytics are used across finance, marketing, operations, and other business functions to create value and solve problems.
  • Ability to set up and manage data science teams, governance policies, and analytics infrastructure.
  • Expertise to prioritize and sequence data science projects based on their feasibility and impact.
  • Skills to critically evaluate data science methodologies, results, and recommendations.
  • Fluency in the vocabulary and logic used by data scientists to drive key organizational decisions.
  • Exposure to emerging technologies like generative AI and foundational concepts within ethical AI, like algorithmic transparency, fairness, privacy, and bias.

Finance 1

This course examines the role of finance in supporting the functional areas of a firm, and fosters an understanding of how financial decisions themselves can create value.

Topics covered include:

  • Basic analytical skills and principles of corporate finance.
  • Functions of modern capital markets and financial institutions.
  • Standard techniques of analysis, including capital budgeting, discounted cash flow valuation, and risk analysis.

Financial Reporting and Control (FRC)

Recognizing that accounting is the primary channel for communicating information about the economics of a business, this course provides a broad view of how accounting contributes to an organization.

Students will gain:

  • An understanding of the concepts and language of accounting so it can be used as an effective tool for communication, monitoring, and resource allocation.
  • Mastery of the vocabulary of financial statements and accounting reports.
  • Familiarity with how modern accounting and control theory is used in evaluating economic conditions and making organizational decisions.

Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LEAD)

This course focuses on how managers become effective leaders by addressing the human side of enterprise.

The first modules examine teams, individuals, and networks in the context of:

  • The determinants of group culture.
  • Managing the performance of individual subordinates.
  • Establishing productive relationships with peers and seniors over whom the manager has no formal authority.

The intermediate modules look at successful leaders in action to see how they:

  • Develop a vision of the future.
  • Align the organization behind that vision.
  • Motivate people to achieve the vision.
  • Design effective organizations and change them to achieve superior performance.

The final module introduces a model for strategic career management.

Marketing

The objectives of this course are to demonstrate the role of marketing in the company; to explore the relationship of marketing to other functions; and to show how effective marketing builds on a thorough understanding of buyer behavior to create value for customers.

Students learn how to:

  • Make marketing decisions in the context of general management.
  • Control the elements of the marketing mix—product policy, channels of distribution, communication, and pricing—to satisfy customer needs profitably.
  • Use this knowledge in a brand management simulation. The course culminates in an examination of the evolution of marketing, particularly focusing on opportunities presented by the Internet.

Technology and Operations Management (TOM)

This course enables students to develop the skills and concepts needed to ensure the ongoing contribution of a firm's operations to its competitive position. It helps them to understand the complex processes underlying the development and manufacture of products as well as the creation and delivery of services.

Topics encompass:

  • Process analysis
  • Cross-functional and cross-firm integration
  • Product development
  • Information technology
  • Technology and operations strategy

Required Curriculum Term 2 Course Descriptions

Business, Government, and the International Economy (BGIE)

This course introduces tools for studying the economic environment of business to help managers understand the implications for their companies.

Students will learn the impact of:

  • National income and balance of payment accounting
  • Exchange rate theory
  • Political regimes

An examination of both the gains and problems arising from regional global integration covers:

  • International trade
  • Foreign direct investment
  • Portfolio capital
  • Global environmental issues

Strategy

The objective of this course is to help students develop the skills for formulating strategy. It provides an understanding of:

  • A firm's operative environment and how to sustain competitive advantage.
  • How to generate superior value for customers by designing the optimum configuration of the product mix and functional activities.
  • How to balance the opportunities and risks associated with dynamic and uncertain changes in industry attractiveness and competitive position.

Students learn to:

  • Develop a mastery of a body of analytical tools and the ability to take an integrative point of view.
  • Use these tools to perform in-depth analyses of industries and competitors, predict competitive behavior, and analyze how firms develop and sustain competitive advantage over time.

Particular attention is paid to competitive positioning; understanding comparative costs; and addressing issues such as cannibalization, network externalities, and globalization.

The Entrepreneurial Manager (TEM)

This course addresses the issues faced by managers who wish to turn opportunity into viable organizations that create value, and empowers students to develop their own approaches, guidelines, and skills for being entrepreneurial managers.

The course teaches students how to:

  • Identify potentially valuable opportunities.
  • Obtain the resources necessary to pursue an opportunity and to create an entrepreneurial organization.
  • Manage the entrepreneurial organization once it has been established.
  • Grow the business into a sustainable enterprise.
  • Create and harvest value for the organization's stakeholders.

Finance II

This course builds on the foundation developed in Finance I, focusing on three sets of managerial decisions:

  • How to evaluate complex investments.
  • How to set and execute financial policies within a firm.
  • How to integrate the many financial decisions faced by firms.

The Finance II course is divided into four blocks of material:

  • Tools of financial analysis (credit market analysis, option pricing, valuation of interest tax shields, weighted average cost of capital)
  • Financial policy choices of firms (whether to finance with debt or equity, distributing cash to shareholders)
  • Financial market imperfections (costs of financial distress, transaction costs, information asymmetries, taxes, agency conflicts)
  • Deals and transactions (mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, hostile takeovers, initial public offerings)

Leadership and Corporate Accountability (LCA)

In this course, students learn about the complex responsibilities facing business leaders today. Through cases about difficult managerial decisions, the course examines the legal, ethical, and economic responsibilities of corporate leaders. It also teaches students about management and governance systems leaders can use to promote responsible conduct by companies and their employees, and shows how personal values can play a critical role in effective leadership.

FIELD Global Immersion (FGI)

FIELD Global Immersion is a semester-long course that requires students to build on what they’ve learned so far in the RC and apply it to real-world business problems. Students are paired with a Global Partner (GP) company with a product or service challenge for students to address. The course culminates in a one-week immersion at the company’s location during which students meet with their GP and local consumers.

Social Purpose of the Firm (SPF)

SPF is a short module designed to explore how, and under what circumstances, private firms can help address some of society’s greatest challenges. Each of the five cases describes a set of leaders trying to “make a difference in the world” – that is, to harness the resources of the firm to tackle massive problems such as climate change, poverty, or economic development. Together, the cases are thus designed to help students think about what it actually means to make a difference, and what it takes. How do would-be leaders identify the problems or challenges they wish to tackle? What enables them to craft solutions that other individuals or organizations have missed? Under what circumstances are private firms a reasonable solution to society’s problems? And when should they cede this role to other players instead?


“I never could have imagined the extent to which the required curriculum (RC) would deliver so much knowledge in nearly every essential aspect of business, from marketing to finance to operations to leadership.”

Stefan Coburn from MBA Voices blog, 29 Aug 2016, "First Year at HBS: A Foundation for Business"