Core courses
In their second year, Business majors enroll in core courses that provide the foundation for the Business concentrations. They also take electives from core courses offered in other majors.
Business is a powerful driver of economic growth and stability; to do well in business, you must understand consumers, products, and markets. Market Dynamics and Product Analytics is a Major Core course that provides essential foundations for business majors and is a prerequisite for all junior-level business Concentration courses. The objective of B110 is to challenge students to apply marketing methods used by businesses to create value for shareholders and selected customers and consumers. We examine the consumer behavior of individuals, learn how to run, analyze and interpret experiments, and we review business marketing strategies designed to create and capture value.
This Core course provides a foundation for all Business majors and is a prerequisite for all Business Concentration courses. Students learn about the financial and strategic tools managers use to track, evaluate, and improve their business operations for achieving business objectives. Students learn accounting terminology to read financial statements, explore tools used to develop financial models, and analyze case studies of real-world business situations. Key topics include financial and managerial accounting, present value analysis, options, capital structure, strategy, and corporate social responsibility.
This Core course provides foundations for Business majors and is a prerequisite for all junior-level Concentration courses in this major. We analyze the political, regulatory, and societal contexts in which business gets done from a global perspective. We address how organizations can create strategies that address varying cultural biases, labor market conditions, and financial regulations. Overall the goal is to examine how businesses succeed and fail when trying to expand into new markets and new geographies.
This Core course provides foundations for all Business Majors and is a prerequisite for all junior-level Concentration Courses. Students will explore the inner workings of the business enterprise in context of its environment. The focus is on how to formulate and execute organizational strategies to achieve financial and non-financial objectives. Students learn about multiple levels and factors in organizational designs and how to manage tradeoffs in strategic decision making. The role of agents, functions, structures, processes will be analyzed, as well as design, implementation, control and improvement activities. Human behavior, incentives, emergent effects, stakeholder interests and operational efficiency will be considered.
Concentrations Courses
In their third year, Business majors select a concentration, begin taking courses within it and begin work on their capstone courses. They also take electives chosen from other Minerva courses (other concentration courses in Business, core and concentration courses in other colleges).
All Business majors complete a summer practicum, and, in their fourth year, Business majors enroll in additional electives chosen from Minerva’s course offerings within or outside the major. capstone courses conclude during the fourth year as well.
In this course, we will explore different approaches to need identification, product design and development, and market introduction. We will learn how to understand our customers and their needs and learn how to identify the new market potential of existing products. We will delve into the conception, design, planning, and forecasting phases of new product design. Finally, will explore the process of realizing a product in different business settings, and learn how to introduce new products to various markets. To do this, we build on our knowledge of market research, consumer psychology, and creative problem-solving from previous courses.
The overall goal of this course is to bolster your ability to work with scarce resources while balancing growth and profitability. Relying on skills developed in B111, you will build “muscle memory” so you can raise capital and effectively interface with stakeholders in future business creation and growth. We will analyze new ventures and projects from readings, real-world illustrations, case studies, a location-based assignment, and your own business plan. We also will discuss how entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers can move the needle in order to bring about more equal access to entrepreneurial capital and support socially and ecologically responsible investments. As potential entrepreneurs, you will discover how to raise capital and effectively interface with investors, board members, employees, and other stakeholders in order to maximize positive outcomes.
Study the entrepreneurial process from inception through early growth stages and the unique operational challenges of competing with highly constrained resources. Integrate financial planning, organizational design, product development, market penetration and operations management concepts while addressing risk-reward tradeoffs. The focus is on the utilization of business practices to transform inputs into goods and services as efficiently as possible to enable sustainable growth.