Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses (Free Jan 2013)

[santa]

After the great standford thread, I was amazed at what was available but a little gutted that at the moment I had other priorities that would mean for now it wasn't the right time.
But it got me wondering what else was out there. I had a little google and came across several other companies and universities who run various courses-it's amazing! It's extraordinary what can be learned for free these days even in structured settings from respected organisations/univerisities.

One of the first I came acrosss was coursera who list courses from loads of american universities (https://www.coursera.org/courses ), they are running several business related courses too (https://www.coursera.org/category/business)

This one in particular stood out as something many here might be interested in, https://www.coursera.org/course/growtogreatness
"The only prerequisite for this Course is an interest in learning about how privately-owned entrepreneurial businesses grow." Erm.. yes please!

I personally like the fact it's case study based with real businesses/entrepreneurs. Week 3 is all about an entrepreneur and his business that turns over $300m! For those who would eventually like to scale this could be invaluable.
It's not until January, but it gives me time to set aside space for it.

(P.S. If anyone else is interested maybe we could even set up a little study group about the things we've learnt and so on?)

Most entrepreneurship courses focus on how to start a business. Few focus on the next big entrepreneurial inflection point: how do you successfully grow an existing private business? This is the focus of this Course. It is based on the instructor's research and thirty years of real-world experience advising private growth companies.

This Course will challenge how you think about growth; give you tools to help you plan for growth, assess the preconditions to grow, and manage the risks of growth. You will study stories of how five different private businesses faced their growth challenges.

Growth, if not properly managed, can overwhelm a business, destroying value and in many cases even causing the business to fail. However, the research shows that every growth business faces common challenges. You can learn from others' experience—you do not have to "reinvent the wheel".

The Course format is case based. Each case tells a compelling story. You will learn from Julie Allinson, Susan Fellers, Dave Lindsey, Parik Laxinarayan and Eric Barger. In addition, each week, we will discuss a different content theme. In Weeks and 2 and 5, you will engage in Workshops where you will be asked to use and apply the Course tools and concepts to create growth strategies for two different real-life businesses. You will have the opportunity to create a Course Community of fellow-students to learn from each other as the Course progresses.

I also think the gamification course https://www.coursera.org/course/gamification could be interesting too. It's a great tool (MJ uses it here too to an extent with the rep system etc) and possibly this princeton course may have some good insights for half a dozen of its 20 questions potentially https://www.coursera.org/course/friendsmoneybytes

 

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[FastNAwesome]

If anyone else is interested maybe we could even set up a little study group about the things we've learnt and so on?

Interesting idea

 

[santa]

2 months to go!!!!!!!!!!!

Edit;

2 months and 27 days to go!!!!

 

[MenFromIpanema]

I'll take this course. I would be interested in a study group. I will start studying this week. Good idea, santa.

 

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[Big Daddyhoo]

You know.. he wrote a book by the same name.