Course curriculum

A complete sequence for starting and running a business, and for leading an established company. Five focused lessons, one case, and one review in every seven-lesson cycle.

18 modules588 lessons · 20–30 minutes a day
Start with Lesson 1

Search the curriculum

Published lessons are linked

Business foundations and managerial judgment

Lessons 001–021 · 21 available

Explain how a business works, frame decisions, and write a clear recommendation.

001
Customers, problems, and value
Identify a customer's problem, the alternative they use today, and the benefit that could justify paying for a solution.
Read lesson
Concept
002
Business models and the flow of money
Map who pays, what they buy, how often they pay, and the main resources and activities needed to deliver it.
Read lesson
Concept
003
Revenue, profit, and cash
Calculate revenue and a simple profit, then explain why the business can show a profit while its bank balance falls.
Read lesson
Concept
004
The business as a connected system
Trace how a change in sales affects operations, staffing, cash needs, and the customer experience.
Read lesson
Concept
005
Owners, managers, employees, and other stakeholders
Identify the different interests and decision rights of owners, managers, employees, customers, and lenders in one business.
Read lesson
Concept
006
Fictional case: Cedar Home Services
Use a small owner-operated service company's facts to draw its business model and identify the constraint most likely to limit growth.
Read lesson
Case
007
Cumulative review: Value, money, and business systems
Reconstruct a business model from memory and solve a new revenue, profit, and cash example while naming the stakeholder affected.
Read lesson
Review
008
Markets, industries, and the customer's alternatives
Define a market from the customer's perspective and distinguish direct competitors, substitutes, and the option of doing nothing.
Read lesson
Concept
009
Strategy as a set of choices
State which customers a company serves, how it will win, and one trade-off that makes its strategy more than a growth target.
Read lesson
Concept
010
From goals to operating decisions
Translate a broad goal into a measurable outcome, a practical action, and an explicit assumption linking the two.
Read lesson
Concept
011
Organizations, authority, and accountability
Assign decision rights for a cross-functional business problem and identify when a manager should decide, consult, or escalate.
Read lesson
Concept
012
Evidence, metrics, and the limits of dashboards
Distinguish activities, leading indicators, and business outcomes, and identify one metric that could improve while the business gets worse.
Read lesson
Concept
013
Fictional case: Northstar Industrial Products
Recommend a response to a manufacturer's sales-growth target using its capacity, customer-service, and cash constraints.
Read lesson
Case
014
Cumulative review: Strategy and the business model
Connect customer value and money flows from week 1 to market definition, strategic trade-offs, decision rights, and useful metrics.
Read lesson
Review
015
Define the decision before solving the problem
Turn a vague business concern into a decision with alternatives, success criteria, constraints, and a deadline.
Read lesson
Concept
016
Opportunity cost, sunk cost, and marginal thinking
Compare alternatives using what changes and what is forgone, excluding past costs that the decision cannot recover.
Read lesson
Concept
017
Assumptions, uncertainty, and AI as a thought partner
Challenge a decision's assumptions, using AI when helpful, while independently verifying claims, protecting confidential information, and choosing a reversible next test.
Read lesson
Concept
018
Bias, incentives, and ethical judgment
Identify a likely bias or incentive conflict in a recommendation and propose a safeguard that improves the decision.
Read lesson
Concept
019
Writing a decision memo for your audience
Write a concise recommendation for a named audience, with alternatives, evidence, assumptions, principal risk, next action, and a useful supporting chart.
Read lesson
Concept
020
Fictional case: Willow Market's second location
Choose whether a retailer should expand now, test a smaller format, or wait, using opportunity cost and clearly stated assumptions.
Read lesson
Case
021
Cumulative review: The first management decision
Solve a new decision that combines value creation, profit versus cash, strategic trade-offs, opportunity cost, and evidence quality.
Read lesson
Review

Quantitative methods and decision analytics

Lessons 022–063 · 25 available

Use spreadsheets, probability, statistics, experiments, forecasts, and optimization to make better decisions.

022
Units, rates, and orders of magnitude
Convert a business question into a calculation with consistent units and use an estimate to catch an implausible result.
Read lesson
Concept
023
Percent changes, percentage points, and margins
Calculate growth, margin, markup, and percentage-point changes and explain why the denominators differ.
Read lesson
Concept
024
Weighted averages and changes in mix
Calculate a weighted average price or margin and distinguish changes within a category from changes in the sales mix.
Read lesson
Concept
025
Equations, ratios, and sensitivity
Rearrange a simple business equation to solve for a missing variable and show how one input changes the result.
Read lesson
Concept
026
Growth rates and compounding
Calculate multi-period growth and a compound annual growth rate, distinguishing a compounded result from an arithmetic average.
Read lesson
Concept
027
Fictional case: Harbor Software's growth report
Audit a division's claims about revenue growth, customer mix, and margin using the correct units and denominators.
Read lesson
Case
028
Cumulative review: Numbers behind a recommendation
Solve mixed percentage, weighted-average, and growth problems, then revise a week 3-style decision memo when a calculation changes.
Read lesson
Review
029
Model structure: Inputs, calculations, and outputs
Lay out a small business model with separate assumptions, formulas, and decision outputs, using clear units and time periods.
Read lesson
Concept
030
References, formulas, and reusable calculations
Use relative and absolute references, sums, and conditional formulas to build a monthly revenue and cost model.
Read lesson
Concept
031
Data tables, lookups, and aggregation
Join a small sales table to a price or category table and summarize results while checking for missing and duplicate records.
Read lesson
Concept
032
Scenarios and sensitivity analysis
Compare coherent base, downside, and upside scenarios and test one important assumption without hiding dependencies.
Read lesson
Concept
033
Model checks and responsible AI assistance
Add reconciliation checks and inspect an AI-suggested formula against a hand-worked example before relying on the model.
Read lesson
Concept
034
Fictional case: BrightPath Repair's staffing choice
Build a compact spreadsheet comparing two staffing plans and identify the sales assumption that changes the owner's decision.
Read lesson
Case
035
Cumulative review: Audit the model
Find planted errors involving units, percentage denominators, formula references, and decision assumptions, drawing on weeks 1–4.
Read lesson
Review
036
Events, probabilities, and dependence
Calculate probabilities for simple business events and identify when treating events as independent would distort the result.
Read lesson
Concept
037
Expected value and the shape of risk
Compute expected outcomes for two choices and explain how downside size and cash constraints can change the preferred choice.
Read lesson
Concept
038
Conditional probability and base rates
Use a two-way table to distinguish the probability of a signal given an event from the probability of the event given the signal.
Read lesson
Concept
039
Bayesian updating in business
Update a prior probability with new evidence using a simple frequency table and explain what the revised belief means for a decision.
Read lesson
Concept
040
Decision trees and the value of information
Build a small decision tree and estimate the maximum worth of additional information before committing to an uncertain choice.
Read lesson
Concept
041
Fictional case: Meridian Components' quality alert
Use defect base rates, test accuracy, and recall costs to choose a response to a quality signal at a manufacturing division.
Read lesson
Case
042
Cumulative review: Decisions under uncertainty
Combine probability, expected value, spreadsheet scenarios, and opportunity cost to choose between acting now and buying more information.
Read lesson
Review
043
Describing a distribution
Summarize a business dataset using location, spread, percentiles, and a suitable chart, explaining when the average misleads.
Read lesson
Concept
044
Sampling, selection, and measurement bias
Identify how a sample or measurement process could distort a business conclusion and propose a more representative approach.
Read lesson
Concept
045
Estimates, standard errors, and confidence intervals
Interpret a confidence interval for a mean or conversion rate without treating it as a guarantee about one future outcome.
Read lesson
Concept
046
Hypothesis tests and practical significance
Interpret a p-value and distinguish evidence of an effect from the size and business importance of that effect.
Read lesson
Concept
047
Sample size, power, and repeated comparisons
Explain how noisy data, small effects, early stopping, and multiple tests can create misleading apparent winners.
Upcoming
Concept
048
Fictional case: Alder Coffee's customer survey
Assess whether a retailer's customer survey supports a menu change, considering the sample, uncertainty, and likely business effect.
Upcoming
Case
049
Cumulative review: Is the evidence strong enough?
Use distributions, confidence intervals, base rates, expected value, and week 3 decision criteria to assess a new recommendation.
Upcoming
Review
050
Correlation and simple regression
Interpret a scatterplot and a fitted line's slope and intercept while recognizing that correlation does not establish causation.
Upcoming
Concept
051
Multiple regression and confounding
Explain how a third variable can change an apparent relationship and interpret a coefficient conditional on other model inputs.
Upcoming
Concept
052
Model fit, residuals, and misleading extrapolation
Use residual patterns and the observed data range to identify a regression that is unreliable for the intended decision.
Upcoming
Concept
053
Prediction, holdouts, and data leakage
Compare training and holdout performance and identify leakage that gives a prediction model access to information unavailable at decision time.
Upcoming
Concept
054
Causal questions and observational evidence
Sketch a simple causal story, identify a confounder, and assess what additional design or evidence would support a causal claim.
Upcoming
Concept
055
Fictional case: Summit Software's customer-success program
Evaluate whether higher renewal among supported customers demonstrates program impact or reflects customer selection and other confounders.
Upcoming
Case
056
Cumulative review: Predict, explain, or test
Distinguish prediction from causation in examples that also require sampling judgment, confidence intervals, base rates, and spreadsheet checks.
Upcoming
Review
057
Designing a business experiment
Specify a randomized test's unit, treatment, outcome, guardrail, duration, and decision rule while identifying contamination risks.
Upcoming
Concept
058
Interpreting experimental results
Turn an estimated treatment effect and its uncertainty into a business recommendation using implementation cost and practical significance.
Upcoming
Concept
059
Forecasting with trends and seasonality
Compare a simple baseline forecast with a trend or seasonal forecast using time-ordered validation and a suitable error measure.
Upcoming
Concept
060
Simulation and ranges of possible outcomes
Use a supplied spreadsheet simulation to estimate the chance of missing a target and identify the assumption driving that risk.
Upcoming
Concept
061
Optimization under constraints
Formulate a small allocation problem with an objective, decision variables, and capacity constraints, then interpret its feasible solution.
Upcoming
Concept
062
Fictional case: Pine Street Meal Prep
Choose a production and promotion plan using a short demand forecast, an experiment result, and kitchen-capacity constraints.
Upcoming
Case
063
Cumulative review: The analytics decision brief
Select among descriptive statistics, probability, regression, experimentation, forecasting, and optimization for several management questions.
Upcoming
Review

Financial accounting and statement analysis

Lessons 064–098 · 0 available

Read and connect financial statements, assess earnings quality, and explain cash needs.

064
The accounting equation and the balance sheet
Classify assets, liabilities, and equity and show how a simple transaction preserves the accounting equation.
Upcoming
Concept
065
Double-entry bookkeeping without the mystery
Record a small set of common transactions with balanced entries and explain the economic event behind each entry.
Upcoming
Concept
066
The income statement and accrual accounting
Construct a simple income statement and distinguish earned revenue and incurred expense from cash receipts and payments.
Upcoming
Concept
067
The cash flow statement
Classify cash movements as operating, investing, or financing and reconcile the beginning and ending cash balances.
Upcoming
Concept
068
How the statements connect
Trace a sale on credit, equipment purchase, and loan through all three statements without counting the same event twice.
Upcoming
Concept
069
Fictional case: Atlas Distribution's monthly close
Complete simplified linked statements for a corporate distribution unit and explain why reported profit differs from cash generated.
Upcoming
Case
070
Cumulative review: From transactions to decisions
Reconcile basic statements, revisit week 1's profit-versus-cash distinction, and apply spreadsheet checks and quantitative reasoning.
Upcoming
Review
071
Revenue recognition and customer contracts
Determine when revenue is earned in straightforward service, product, and subscription examples and distinguish it from invoicing or collection.
Upcoming
Concept
072
Receivables, bad debts, and collection risk
Explain how credit sales and estimated credit losses affect revenue-related balances, profit, and cash.
Upcoming
Concept
073
Inventory and cost of goods sold
Reconcile beginning inventory, purchases, cost of goods sold, and ending inventory and explain how cost assumptions affect reported margins.
Upcoming
Concept
074
Accruals, prepayments, and deferred revenue
Adjust simple accounts for an unpaid expense, prepaid service, and customer deposit and explain the timing differences.
Upcoming
Concept
075
Working capital and the cash conversion cycle
Calculate receivable, inventory, and payable days and estimate the cash tied up by a change in the operating cycle.
Upcoming
Concept
076
Fictional case: Oak & Thread's profitable cash shortage
Diagnose an owner-led retailer's cash shortfall using inventory, payment terms, and seasonal sales rather than profit alone.
Upcoming
Case
077
Cumulative review: Timing changes the story
Use linked statements, growth math, and working-capital calculations to explain why a growing business may need additional cash.
Upcoming
Review
078
Capitalization, depreciation, and impairment
Trace a long-lived asset from purchase through depreciation and a possible impairment, distinguishing book value from market value.
Upcoming
Concept
079
Intangibles, goodwill, and development spending
Distinguish acquired intangibles, goodwill, and internally developed assets and identify why accounting treatment can limit company comparisons.
Upcoming
Concept
080
Debt, interest, and leases
Separate principal repayment from interest expense and explain how debt and lease obligations appear in simplified financial statements.
Upcoming
Concept
081
Taxes, provisions, and contingent obligations
Distinguish tax expense from cash tax and explain when an uncertain obligation is recognized, estimated, or disclosed at a conceptual level.
Upcoming
Concept
082
Equity, dividends, repurchases, and stock compensation
Explain how owner contributions, retained earnings, distributions, and share-based compensation change equity and shareholder claims.
Upcoming
Concept
083
Fictional case: Eastfield Manufacturing's equipment upgrade
Explain how a financed equipment purchase affects profit, cash, assets, and obligations over its first two years.
Upcoming
Case
084
Cumulative review: Read beyond current profit
Combine accruals, working capital, long-lived assets, debt, and equity to reconcile changes across a supplied set of statements.
Upcoming
Review
085
The indirect operating cash flow bridge
Reconcile net income to operating cash flow using noncash items and working-capital changes with the correct signs.
Upcoming
Concept
086
EBIT, EBITDA, operating cash flow, and free cash flow
Calculate common performance measures from supplied statements, state the definition used, and explain what each measure leaves out.
Upcoming
Concept
087
Recurring earnings and unusual items
Assess a proposed earnings adjustment and distinguish a genuinely unusual item from a recurring cost labeled exceptional.
Upcoming
Concept
088
Estimates, accounting policies, and comparability
Identify how changes in useful lives, reserves, capitalization, or revenue estimates could alter reported performance without equivalent cash improvement.
Upcoming
Concept
089
Footnotes, controls, and warning signs
Use selected disclosures and reconciliations to identify a question for management without treating a warning sign as proof of misconduct.
Upcoming
Concept
090
Fictional case: Bluebird Software's adjusted profit
Assess an owner-led software company's earnings presentation using deferred revenue, capitalized development costs, and recurring adjustments.
Upcoming
Case
091
Cumulative review: Can these earnings be trusted?
Reconcile cash to earnings and revisit accounting estimates, sampling caution, incentive conflicts, and evidence-based decision writing.
Upcoming
Review
092
Common-size statements and trend analysis
Normalize statements by revenue or assets and distinguish operating changes from scale, seasonality, and one-off effects.
Upcoming
Concept
093
Margins, asset efficiency, and returns
Calculate and interpret operating margin, asset turnover, return on equity, and a clearly defined return on invested capital.
Upcoming
Concept
094
Liquidity, leverage, and coverage
Use liquidity, debt, and interest-coverage measures to identify financing pressure while recognizing their dependence on business context.
Upcoming
Concept
095
Peer comparisons and the DuPont relationship
Decompose return on equity into margin, turnover, and leverage and explain why a higher return does not necessarily mean a stronger business.
Upcoming
Concept
096
An integrated financial diagnosis
Prioritize a company's financial strengths, weaknesses, and unanswered questions using statements, ratios, and business-model evidence together.
Upcoming
Concept
097
Fictional case: Coastline Group's competing divisions
Compare a retail division and a service division using their operating models, returns, cash generation, and financing needs.
Upcoming
Case
098
Cumulative review: Financial-statement analysis checkpoint
Complete a mixed assessment covering accounting links, working capital, earnings quality, ratios, quantitative checks, and management recommendations.
Upcoming
Review

Managerial accounting and performance

Lessons 099–126 · 0 available

Understand costs, unit economics, budgets, incentives, and operating performance.

099
Fixed, variable, mixed, and step costs
Classify costs for a stated time horizon and activity range and explain when a seemingly fixed cost becomes avoidable.
Upcoming
Concept
100
Contribution margin and unit economics
Calculate contribution per unit, customer, or job using a clearly defined cost boundary and distinguish it from gross margin.
Upcoming
Concept
101
Break-even and target-profit analysis
Calculate break-even volume and the sales needed for a target operating profit while stating the assumptions behind the calculation.
Upcoming
Concept
102
Sales mix, capacity, and operating leverage
Assess how a change in product mix or fixed-cost commitment affects profit sensitivity and downside exposure.
Upcoming
Concept
103
Cost estimation from operating data
Estimate a simple cost relationship from data and use operational knowledge to question a model outside its relevant range.
Upcoming
Concept
104
Fictional case: ClearSpace Organizing's service packages
Recommend a package and staffing mix for a service owner using contribution, available labor hours, and a downside volume scenario.
Upcoming
Case
105
Cumulative review: What makes the next sale valuable?
Combine contribution economics with financial-statement margins, regression cautions, weighted averages, and opportunity cost.
Upcoming
Review
106
Relevant costs and make-or-buy decisions
Compare internal production with an external supplier using avoidable costs, quality requirements, and the opportunity cost of released capacity.
Upcoming
Concept
107
Special orders and short-run pricing
Evaluate an incremental order using spare capacity, incremental contribution, and possible effects on existing customers.
Upcoming
Concept
108
Product, customer, and channel profitability
Use activity drivers to identify cost-to-serve differences and explain why an allocated loss does not automatically justify dropping a segment.
Upcoming
Concept
109
Bottlenecks and contribution per constrained resource
Rank feasible work by contribution per bottleneck hour and identify when market demand or another constraint changes the best mix.
Upcoming
Concept
110
Quality costs and process trade-offs
Compare the total cost of prevention, inspection, failure, and rework to evaluate a process-improvement choice.
Upcoming
Concept
111
Fictional case: Riverton Pumps' outsourcing offer
Recommend whether a manufacturer should outsource a component using relevant costs, capacity value, and supplier-performance assumptions.
Upcoming
Case
112
Cumulative review: Allocate scarce resources
Solve mixed make-or-buy, constrained-mix, and customer-profitability problems using contribution, optimization, and sunk-cost reasoning.
Upcoming
Review
113
Budgets, targets, and forecasts serve different purposes
Distinguish a performance target, resource budget, and best-estimate forecast and explain the problems caused by treating them as identical.
Upcoming
Concept
114
Building a driver-based operating budget
Connect sales volume, price, staffing, and operating costs in a small monthly budget with explicit capacity assumptions.
Upcoming
Concept
115
Cash budgets and funding gaps
Convert an operating plan into a cash budget using collection, payment, and investment timing and identify the peak funding gap.
Upcoming
Concept
116
Flexible budgets and price-volume-cost variances
Separate the effect of actual activity from price and efficiency changes using a simple flexible-budget comparison.
Upcoming
Concept
117
Rolling forecasts and management responses
Update a forecast with new evidence and choose an operating response without rewriting the original target or hiding forecast error.
Upcoming
Concept
118
Fictional case: Maple Outdoor Goods' seasonal plan
Revise an owner's seasonal inventory and staffing plan after lower demand creates a cash shortfall despite an acceptable annual profit forecast.
Upcoming
Case
119
Cumulative review: Explain the miss and choose a response
Combine forecasting, working capital, cost behavior, and variance analysis to distinguish a planning error from an execution problem.
Upcoming
Review
120
Responsibility centers and controllable performance
Choose suitable measures for a cost, revenue, profit, or investment center and separate controllable performance from external effects.
Upcoming
Concept
121
Return measures and residual income
Calculate a unit's return and residual income using an explicitly supplied capital charge and explain how ratio targets can discourage worthwhile investment.
Upcoming
Concept
122
Transfer pricing and internal coordination
Explain how an internal transfer price changes divisional behavior and distinguish the company's economic decision from managerial performance allocation.
Upcoming
Concept
123
Balanced measures and incentive design
Build a small scorecard combining financial results, customer outcomes, operational drivers, and a guardrail against metric gaming.
Upcoming
Concept
124
Operating reviews and accountability
Structure a management review that identifies causes, assigns actions, and checks prior commitments without confusing explanation with excuse.
Upcoming
Concept
125
Fictional case: Beacon Services' divisional bonus plan
Redesign a corporation's bonus scorecard after a profit target encourages deferred maintenance and declining customer service.
Upcoming
Case
126
Cumulative review: Management-control checkpoint
Integrate unit economics, relevant costs, budgets, variances, return measures, and incentive conflicts in a short management-control assessment.
Upcoming
Review

Managerial economics and pricing

Lessons 127–154 · 0 available

Analyze demand, competition, incentives, market structure, and pricing choices.

127
Demand, willingness to pay, and customer surplus
Explain how willingness to pay differs across customers and distinguish a movement along demand from a shift in demand.
Upcoming
Concept
128
Supply, marginal cost, and capacity
Use marginal cost and capacity limits to explain a firm's short-run output choice and distinguish it from its long-run investment choice.
Upcoming
Concept
129
Elasticity and revenue response
Calculate an arc price elasticity from two observations and use it to reason about revenue while noting that correlation alone does not establish price response.
Upcoming
Concept
130
Marginal revenue and profit-maximizing choices
Choose among a small set of price-volume options by comparing incremental revenue and incremental cost rather than maximizing sales alone.
Upcoming
Concept
131
Market equilibrium and economic shocks
Use a supply-and-demand diagram to explain the likely direction of price and quantity after a specified demand or supply shock.
Upcoming
Concept
132
Fictional case: Brookside Fitness's membership price
Recommend a price and capacity response for an owner-led fitness studio using customer response estimates, contribution, and uncertain retention.
Upcoming
Case
133
Cumulative review: Price, volume, and profit
Combine elasticity, marginal reasoning, contribution margin, experimental evidence, and working-capital effects in a pricing decision.
Upcoming
Review
134
Competition, differentiation, and market power
Compare how competitive intensity, substitutes, and differentiation affect a firm's ability to earn returns above its economic costs.
Upcoming
Concept
135
Entry barriers, scale, and economic profit
Distinguish accounting profit from economic profit and assess whether scale, access, or switching costs plausibly protect an incumbent's returns.
Upcoming
Concept
136
Game theory and simultaneous choices
Use a small payoff matrix to identify best responses and explain a competitive outcome that neither firm would prefer collectively.
Upcoming
Concept
137
Sequential choices and credible commitments
Work backward through a simple entry or capacity game and distinguish a credible commitment from a threat a firm would not rationally carry out.
Upcoming
Concept
138
Repeated interaction and competitive response
Assess how repeated competition changes incentives and distinguish a firm's independent response from coordination that requires legal scrutiny.
Upcoming
Concept
139
Fictional case: Vertex Materials' capacity expansion
Assess a corporate expansion proposal under alternative competitor responses and identify the commitment that makes the forecast vulnerable.
Upcoming
Case
140
Cumulative review: Anticipate the response
Combine demand and supply, opportunity cost, expected value, capacity constraints, and game-theory reasoning in an entry decision.
Upcoming
Review
141
Cost, competition, and value as pricing inputs
Compare cost-based, competitor-based, and value-based price arguments and identify the evidence missing from each in a given decision.
Upcoming
Concept
142
Segmentation, price fences, and versioning
Design two differentiated offers for customers with different needs and explain how a credible price fence limits self-selection problems.
Upcoming
Concept
143
Bundles, subscriptions, and usage pricing
Compare pricing structures using purchase behavior, consumption variability, customer risk, and the company's cost to serve.
Upcoming
Concept
144
Discounts, the price waterfall, and sales incentives
Reconcile list price to realized contribution after discounts and concessions and identify an approval rule that protects deal economics.
Upcoming
Concept
145
Capacity pricing and disciplined price experiments
Specify a limited pricing test with a contribution outcome, customer guardrail, and method to distinguish price response from changes in customer mix.
Upcoming
Concept
146
Fictional case: FieldNote Software's new packages
Recommend a simple package and discount structure for an owner-led software business using segment needs, usage costs, and retention uncertainty.
Upcoming
Case
147
Cumulative review: Build a defensible price recommendation
Combine willingness to pay, elasticity, contribution, segmentation, experimental design, and metric incentives in one pricing recommendation.
Upcoming
Review
148
Information asymmetry and adverse selection
Identify how hidden information changes participation in a market and design a credible screening or signaling mechanism.
Upcoming
Concept
149
Moral hazard and principal-agent problems
Explain how hidden actions and misaligned incentives affect outcomes and propose a contract or monitoring change with its trade-off.
Upcoming
Concept
150
Transaction costs and vertical integration
Compare market contracting with internal ownership using coordination costs, asset specificity, dependence, and adaptability.
Upcoming
Concept
151
Externalities, public goods, and policy responses
Identify a cost or benefit excluded from a private decision and compare the logic of a price, rule, or collective response.
Upcoming
Concept
152
Labor markets, productivity, and compensation
Assess a staffing or pay decision using worker productivity, labor supply, retention costs, and the limits of individual performance measurement.
Upcoming
Concept
153
Fictional case: Pacific Devices' service partner network
Recommend a partner contract and monitoring approach for a corporate service network facing quality problems and hidden effort.
Upcoming
Case
154
Cumulative review: Economics checkpoint
Integrate marginal choices, market structure, pricing, information asymmetry, transaction costs, and managerial incentives across short cases.
Upcoming
Review

Corporate finance and capital allocation

Lessons 155–203 · 0 available

Evaluate investments, risk, financing, valuation, acquisitions, and the use of capital.

155
Why timing changes value
Calculate future and present value for a single cash flow and explain the roles of time, opportunity cost, and risk.
Upcoming
Concept
156
Discounting a sequence of cash flows
Draw a cash-flow timeline and calculate the present value of several dated payments using a rate matched to the period.
Upcoming
Concept
157
Annuities and loan amortization
Calculate a level-payment loan's payment and separate interest from principal in an early payment period.
Upcoming
Concept
158
Perpetuities, growth, and terminal assumptions
Value a level or growing perpetuity under valid assumptions and explain why small changes in the growth-rate gap can dominate the result.
Upcoming
Concept
159
Nominal versus real rates and effective borrowing cost
Compare financing or savings alternatives using consistent effective rates and distinguish nominal cash flows from inflation-adjusted cash flows.
Upcoming
Concept
160
Fictional case: Stonebridge Dental's equipment payment terms
Compare an owner's cash purchase and installment offer by placing their payments on a common timeline and using an explicitly stated comparison rate.
Upcoming
Case
161
Cumulative review: Put every cash flow on the timeline
Combine compounding, loan payments, accounting-versus-cash distinctions, and opportunity cost in a timed-cash-flow comparison.
Upcoming
Review
162
The counterfactual and incremental project cash flow
Define the no-project alternative and identify incremental revenue, operating costs, cannibalization, opportunity costs, and irrelevant sunk costs.
Upcoming
Concept
163
Taxes, capital expenditure, and working capital
Build a small project cash-flow schedule that includes investment, cash taxes, depreciation's tax effect, and changes in working capital.
Upcoming
Concept
164
Net present value and the investment decision
Calculate project NPV with a supplied, explicitly provisional discount rate and interpret the result relative to the no-project alternative.
Upcoming
Concept
165
IRR, payback, and their limitations
Calculate or interpret IRR and payback, and explain why scale, timing, or unconventional cash flows can make them conflict with NPV.
Upcoming
Concept
166
Residual value, sensitivity, and break-even assumptions
Include a justified terminal cash flow and identify the price, volume, or cost assumption that makes the project's NPV zero.
Upcoming
Concept
167
Fictional case: Lakeside Logistics' warehouse automation
Recommend whether a corporate logistics unit should fund automation using incremental after-tax cash flows, NPV, and a downside case.
Upcoming
Case
168
Cumulative review: Audit an investment proposal
Correct a proposal that mixes sunk costs, accounting profit, allocated overhead, working capital, and discount-rate timing using earlier accounting and costing lessons.
Upcoming
Review
169
Risk, diversification, and required return
Distinguish diversifiable risk from market-related risk and explain why an owner's concentrated exposure can differ from a diversified investor's exposure.
Upcoming
Concept
170
The cost of debt and the cost of equity
Estimate illustrative debt and equity costs from supplied inputs, explaining the CAPM intuition and the uncertainty in risk estimates.
Upcoming
Concept
171
Weighted average cost of capital
Calculate a simple WACC using market-value weights and a stated tax assumption and identify which cash flows it can appropriately discount.
Upcoming
Concept
172
Project risk, hurdle rates, and consistency
Evaluate whether a corporate hurdle rate suits a particular project and explain why no single percentage is a universal investment standard.
Upcoming
Concept
173
Risk analysis without double counting
Distinguish downside scenarios, expected cash-flow adjustments, and discount-rate adjustments, and identify when risk has been counted twice.
Upcoming
Concept
174
Fictional case: Juniper Foods' adjacent-market expansion
Assess an owner's investment using a range of defensible required returns and separate business downside, financing constraints, and personal concentration risk.
Upcoming
Case
175
Cumulative review: Does the rate match the cash flow?
Combine probability, NPV, nominal-versus-real consistency, capital costs, and scenario analysis to audit a discount-rate recommendation.
Upcoming
Review
176
Enterprise value, equity value, and the value bridge
Convert between enterprise value and equity value using an explicitly defined treatment of cash, debt, and other claims.
Upcoming
Concept
177
Discounted cash flow valuation
Value a simplified operating business using unlevered cash flow and WACC, with transparent forecast and terminal-value assumptions.
Upcoming
Concept
178
Growth, reinvestment, and returns on capital
Explain why growth creates value only when its economics justify the reinvestment, using a small return-on-capital example.
Upcoming
Concept
179
Trading multiples and comparable companies
Compare a target with peers using a consistent multiple and identify differences in growth, risk, margins, and accounting that limit the comparison.
Upcoming
Concept
180
Valuation ranges and reverse valuation
Present a reasoned valuation range and infer the operating assumptions required to justify a proposed price.
Upcoming
Concept
181
Fictional case: Orion Group's software acquisition screen
Assess a target's asking price with a simplified DCF and comparable-company range, highlighting the terminal and growth assumptions that drive value.
Upcoming
Case
182
Cumulative review: Value is a set of assumptions
Reconcile enterprise and equity value while revisiting accounting quality, return on capital, NPV, cost of capital, and sensitivity analysis.
Upcoming
Review
183
Debt, equity, dilution, and control
Compare debt and equity funding using repayment obligations, ownership dilution, decision rights, and downside exposure.
Upcoming
Concept
184
Capital structure and financial distress
Explain the benefits and costs of leverage and assess how additional debt changes shareholder risk and operating flexibility.
Upcoming
Concept
185
Financing terms, covenants, and repayment capacity
Read a simplified financing term sheet and test debt-service capacity under a downside operating scenario using the lender's stated definitions.
Upcoming
Concept
186
Liquidity planning and treasury risk
Build a short cash runway or liquidity stress test and identify a proportionate response to interest-rate or currency exposure.
Upcoming
Concept
187
Retain cash, distribute it, or repurchase shares
Compare uses of excess cash using investment opportunities, balance-sheet resilience, shareholder objectives, and the price paid for repurchases.
Upcoming
Concept
188
Fictional case: Elm Street Clinics' growth funding
Recommend a financing mix for an owner-led clinic group using expansion cash needs, repayment capacity, ownership preferences, and downside liquidity.
Upcoming
Case
189
Cumulative review: Fund the plan and survive the downside
Combine cash budgets, working capital, valuation, interest costs, capital structure, and incentive trade-offs in a financing decision.
Upcoming
Review
190
Why acquire and where synergies come from
Compare an acquisition with organic investment and distinguish credible revenue or cost synergies from benefits already included in the target forecast.
Upcoming
Concept
191
Due diligence and purchase-price adjustments
Identify how earnings quality, debt-like items, and normal working capital can change the economics of a proposed purchase.
Upcoming
Concept
192
Deal structure, earnouts, and integration costs
Compare cash, shares, and contingent consideration and include transaction and integration costs in a simple buyer cash-flow analysis.
Upcoming
Concept
193
Accretion, returns, and value creation
Explain why higher earnings per share does not prove an acquisition creates value and compare buyer NPV with shareholder return measures.
Upcoming
Concept
194
Leveraged acquisitions and return decomposition
Use a small acquisition model to separate equity returns driven by operating improvement, debt repayment, and changes in the exit multiple.
Upcoming
Concept
195
Fictional case: Meridian Group acquires Delta Maintenance
Recommend a maximum defensible purchase price for a corporate service acquisition after adjusting for synergies, integration cost, debt, and downside performance.
Upcoming
Case
196
Cumulative review: Underwrite the transaction
Combine earnings quality, incremental cash flows, valuation, financing, and managerial incentives to challenge an acquisition investment memo.
Upcoming
Review
197
Comparing mutually exclusive investments
Choose between alternatives with different scale or useful lives using a common decision horizon and consistent assumptions rather than ranking IRRs alone.
Upcoming
Concept
198
Capital rationing and investment portfolios
Select a feasible group of projects under a funding or capacity limit and explain why the highest individual return may not create the most total value.
Upcoming
Concept
199
Real options and staged commitments
Explain the value of waiting, piloting, expanding, or abandoning a project and use a small decision tree to compare staged and immediate investment.
Upcoming
Concept
200
Build, buy, partner, or do nothing
Compare four ways to meet the same business need using incremental economics, execution ability, timing, and dependence on another party.
Upcoming
Concept
201
Investment governance and post-investment review
Design a review that records the original counterfactual, assumptions, decision owner, and evidence needed to continue, adapt, or stop an investment.
Upcoming
Concept
202
Fictional case: Cedar Services allocates its next $500,000
Recommend a limited investment portfolio for an owner-led service company choosing among a new location, software, an acquisition, and cash reserves.
Upcoming
Case
203
Cumulative review: Integrated finance and management checkpoint
Defend a capital decision using strategy, evidence quality, financial statements, unit economics, market response, NPV, financing, and implementation accountability.
Upcoming
Review

Customers, marketing, and growth

Lessons 204–238 · 0 available

Research customers, choose a market, position an offer, and assess acquisition and retention.

204
Customer problems and jobs to be done
Separate a customer’s underlying job, current workaround, and desired outcome in one short example.
Upcoming
Concept
205
Research questions and evidence quality
Choose interviews, observation, surveys, or existing data to answer one specific business question.
Upcoming
Concept
206
Interview without steering the answer
Rewrite three leading questions to elicit past behavior, tradeoffs, and evidence of urgency.
Upcoming
Concept
207
Customer journeys and buying decisions
Map the steps, participants, and friction in one consumer purchase and one organizational purchase.
Upcoming
Concept
208
Synthesize findings without overstating them
Group six sample observations into patterns and identify a conclusion the evidence does not support.
Upcoming
Concept
209
Fictional case: Demand for a home maintenance subscription
Interpret supplied customer notes and select the most useful next research question before funding a launch.
Upcoming
Case
210
Review: Customer evidence, sampling, and contribution margin
Retrieve sampling and contribution-margin concepts, then explain how weak research could distort a revenue forecast.
Upcoming
Review
211
Segment by needs and buying behavior
Divide a supplied market into actionable segments using needs, behavior, and ability to serve rather than demographics alone.
Upcoming
Concept
212
Select a target customer
Compare three segments using size, accessibility, willingness to pay, and expected contribution.
Upcoming
Concept
213
Define the competitive alternative
Identify the incumbent, workaround, or decision to do nothing that an offer must displace.
Upcoming
Concept
214
Write a credible positioning statement
State a target buyer, relevant alternative, promised benefit, and reason to believe without unsupported claims.
Upcoming
Concept
215
Match an offer to a segment
Adjust product, service, packaging, and price for a chosen segment while preserving a coherent economic model.
Upcoming
Concept
216
Fictional case: A manufacturer enters the small-business market
Choose between two customer segments using supplied market evidence, channel costs, and production constraints.
Upcoming
Case
217
Review: Segmentation, elasticity, and customer research
Use prior elasticity and research concepts to explain when a large segment may be a poor target.
Upcoming
Review
218
Products as bundles of customer value
Distinguish the core benefit, supporting service, and reassurance a customer receives from an offer.
Upcoming
Concept
219
Brand as expectations and memory
Identify the associations and observable behaviors that would make a brand promise believable.
Upcoming
Concept
220
Product portfolios and brand architecture
Compare one master brand with separate product brands using a small supplied portfolio.
Upcoming
Concept
221
Communicate benefits with evidence
Rewrite a feature-heavy message into a clear benefit supported by a demonstration or verifiable fact.
Upcoming
Concept
222
Plan a focused product launch
Choose one audience, offer, distribution path, message, and learning measure for an initial launch.
Upcoming
Concept
223
Fictional case: A regional food company introduces a premium line
Choose a brand structure and launch message while checking customer fit and potential cannibalization.
Upcoming
Case
224
Review: Positioning, incremental cash flow, and brand credibility
Distinguish incremental demand from shifted demand and test whether a proposed brand promise fits the chosen position.
Upcoming
Review
225
Choose acquisition channels that fit the purchase
Compare search, content, referrals, paid media, events, and outbound activity for two different buying journeys.
Upcoming
Concept
226
Translate a funnel into an acquisition cost
Calculate conversion at each stage and distinguish media-only cost from fully loaded customer acquisition cost.
Upcoming
Concept
227
Set an acquisition budget under uncertainty
Allocate a small budget using expected contribution, learning value, and cash constraints.
Upcoming
Concept
228
Attribution is not incrementality
Explain why a credited conversion may not be caused by a campaign and choose a suitable lift test.
Upcoming
Concept
229
Creative testing and acquisition saturation
Interpret a small campaign table to decide whether to change the message, audience, or spending level.
Upcoming
Concept
230
Fictional case: A training company reallocates its marketing budget
Compare three channels using supplied funnel, lift-test, and margin data, then justify a limited budget change.
Upcoming
Case
231
Review: Experiments, regression, and customer acquisition economics
Revisit confounding and randomization, then distinguish an attributed return from an incremental return.
Upcoming
Review
232
Retention, churn, and cohorts
Calculate retention for two customer cohorts and distinguish customer churn from revenue churn.
Upcoming
Concept
233
Estimate customer lifetime value carefully
Build a simple discounted customer contribution estimate and identify its most sensitive assumption.
Upcoming
Concept
234
Onboarding and time to value
Find the first useful customer outcome and propose one change that could help customers reach it sooner.
Upcoming
Concept
235
Service recovery and customer feedback
Choose a response to a service failure using its cause, customer impact, and cost to resolve.
Upcoming
Concept
236
Expansion without destroying trust
Compare renewal, cross-sell, referral, and loyalty tactics using customer benefit and incremental contribution.
Upcoming
Concept
237
Fictional case: A software business chooses between acquisition and retention
Use supplied cohort and service-cost data to select a limited growth investment and a follow-up test.
Upcoming
Case
238
Review: Lifetime value, discounting, cohorts, and acquisition cost
Recalculate a short customer example and explain why average lifetime value can conceal an unattractive segment.
Upcoming
Review

Sales, distribution, partnerships, and negotiation

Lessons 239–273 · 0 available

Build a commercial system, choose channels, manage accounts, and negotiate sound agreements.

239
B2C and B2B sales motions
Choose self-service, inside sales, field sales, or a hybrid motion using purchase complexity and contribution per customer.
Upcoming
Concept
240
Discovery and qualification
Use a short customer conversation to identify the problem, buying process, fit, and unresolved assumptions.
Upcoming
Concept
241
Pipeline stages and useful evidence
Define entry and exit evidence for four sales stages without confusing completed activities with buyer progress.
Upcoming
Concept
242
Build a proposal around a buying decision
Connect a proposed solution to the buyer’s expected benefit, implementation burden, and decision criteria.
Upcoming
Concept
243
Forecast sales without rewarding wishful thinking
Compare weighted pipeline with stage-conversion and timing evidence to produce a defensible short forecast.
Upcoming
Concept
244
Fictional case: A growing equipment business redesigns its sales motion
Choose a sales model for small and large customers using supplied deal size, workload, and conversion data.
Upcoming
Case
245
Review: Sales forecasts, contribution margin, and funnel conversion
Revisit forecast uncertainty and funnel arithmetic to explain when increased pipeline fails to create profitable growth.
Upcoming
Review
246
Direct, indirect, and hybrid distribution
Compare three channel structures using reach, control, fixed cost, and customer access.
Upcoming
Concept
247
Channel economics and double marginalization
Calculate how manufacturer and intermediary pricing can affect end-customer demand and total channel contribution.
Upcoming
Concept
248
Recruit partners with a reason to participate
Write a short partner value proposition that accounts for the partner’s effort, economics, and existing alternatives.
Upcoming
Concept
249
Channel conflict and account ownership
Choose clear rules for leads, territories, service obligations, and pricing conflicts in a hybrid model.
Upcoming
Concept
250
Digital distribution and platform dependence
Evaluate the economics and exposure of relying on a marketplace, app store, API distributor, or aggregator.
Upcoming
Concept
251
Fictional case: A specialty manufacturer weighs dealers against direct sales
Compare two channel designs using supplied margins, coverage, service requirements, and likely conflict.
Upcoming
Case
252
Review: Pricing, customer journeys, and channel contribution
Revisit elasticity and contribution analysis to distinguish channel revenue from the value a channel actually adds.
Upcoming
Review
253
Map an organizational buying group
Identify the user, sponsor, budget owner, technical evaluator, procurement role, and final approver in a supplied buying scenario.
Upcoming
Concept
254
Make the buyer’s business case
Translate an offer into the buyer’s incremental benefits, costs, implementation risks, and relevant financial test.
Upcoming
Concept
255
Work through procurement and vendor selection
Explain how an RFP, evaluation scorecard, due diligence, and contracting process influence a supplier’s sales plan.
Upcoming
Concept
256
Calculate the true economics of an account
Estimate account contribution after discounts, onboarding, support, payment terms, and customer-specific work.
Upcoming
Concept
257
Grow or exit a strategic account
Choose between expansion, repricing, service redesign, or exit using account economics and realistic switching constraints.
Upcoming
Concept
258
Fictional case: A services firm bids for a national retail contract
Assess the buyer’s criteria and account cash flows, then choose whether and how to bid.
Upcoming
Case
259
Review: NPV, working capital, and customer lifetime value
Explain how payment delays and custom implementation work can make a prestigious account financially unattractive.
Upcoming
Review
260
BATNA, reservation value, and the bargaining range
Calculate a walk-away point from a supplied alternative and identify a possible zone of agreement.
Upcoming
Concept
261
Interests, issues, and value creation
Separate stated positions from underlying interests and identify two terms the parties value differently.
Upcoming
Concept
262
Anchors, offers, and concessions
Plan an opening offer and conditional concessions that fit the evidence and protect a reservation value.
Upcoming
Concept
263
Negotiate more than the headline price
Compare deals with different payment timing, scope, service levels, risk allocation, and contingent terms.
Upcoming
Concept
264
Power, ethics, and difficult tactics
Choose a response to pressure or misleading claims without inventing facts or abandoning a defensible alternative.
Upcoming
Concept
265
Fictional case: A business owner renegotiates a major service contract
Prepare a short negotiation plan and compare two proposed agreements using the supplied interests and alternatives.
Upcoming
Case
266
Review: Negotiation, opportunity cost, and cash-flow timing
Revisit opportunity cost and discounting to explain why the highest nominal price may not be the best agreement.
Upcoming
Review
267
Choose the right form of partnership
Compare referral relationships, reselling, co-development, alliances, and joint ventures using dependence and coordination needs.
Upcoming
Concept
268
Due diligence and mutual commitment
Select a small set of commercial, capability, and reliability checks before committing to a partner.
Upcoming
Concept
269
Govern a partnership through clear decisions
Specify decision rights, obligations, escalation routes, and information sharing for one joint activity.
Upcoming
Concept
270
Manage commercial teams and incentives
Compare quota, commission, and quality measures for unintended effects on margin, retention, and partner behavior.
Upcoming
Concept
271
Review, repair, or end a partnership
Use a balanced scorecard and switching costs to choose whether to invest, renegotiate, or exit.
Upcoming
Concept
272
Fictional case: A software company’s implementation alliance underperforms
Diagnose weak incentives and unclear responsibilities, then recommend a focused repair or exit plan.
Upcoming
Case
273
Review: Channel conflict, account economics, and negotiation
Combine prior commercial concepts to distinguish a relationship problem from a structurally unattractive partnership.
Upcoming
Review

Operations, supply chains, and projects

Lessons 274–315 · 0 available

Design reliable processes, manage capacity and inventory, improve quality, and execute projects.

274
Map the work and the customer outcome
Draw a simple process with inputs, steps, handoffs, outputs, and one clear customer requirement.
Upcoming
Concept
275
Flow rate, flow time, and work in process
Apply Little’s Law to a stable supplied process using average time in the system, distinguish flow time from time between completions, and state the assumptions.
Upcoming
Concept
276
Capacity and bottlenecks
Calculate step capacity and identify the bottleneck in a short service or production process.
Upcoming
Concept
277
Improve throughput before adding resources
Compare reducing rework, changing a handoff, and adding capacity at different process steps.
Upcoming
Concept
278
Choose an operating model
Compare standardization, customization, automation, and human judgment for a given customer promise.
Upcoming
Concept
279
Fictional case: A home-services business cannot meet demand
Use a supplied process map and workload table to identify its constraint and select one improvement.
Upcoming
Case
280
Review: Bottlenecks, contribution margin, and opportunity cost
Calculate the contribution from one additional unit of constrained capacity and explain which work should receive priority.
Upcoming
Review
281
Why high utilization creates long waits
Explain how variable arrivals and service times interact with utilization using a small supplied queue example.
Upcoming
Concept
282
Pool resources or specialize
Compare pooled and dedicated queues using waiting, expertise, customer differences, and coordination costs.
Upcoming
Concept
283
Match staffing to demand
Build a simple two-period staffing plan from arrival rates, service time, and a stated service target.
Upcoming
Concept
284
Use appointments, triage, and self-service
Choose a demand-shaping or routing intervention that addresses the cause of waiting in a service process.
Upcoming
Concept
285
Balance service levels and operating cost
Compare the incremental cost and customer benefit of two service-level targets.
Upcoming
Concept
286
Fictional case: A repair center faces long waits and idle periods
Interpret a supplied demand pattern and choose a combination of staffing, scheduling, and queue design.
Upcoming
Case
287
Review: Variance, Little’s Law, and capacity utilization
Revisit variability and flow measures to explain why average demand alone is insufficient for staffing.
Upcoming
Review
288
Define quality and its economic cost
Separate prevention, appraisal, internal failure, and external failure costs in a short operating example.
Upcoming
Concept
289
Distinguish common-cause and special-cause variation
Interpret a simple control chart without treating every fluctuation as a reason to intervene.
Upcoming
Concept
290
Find root causes without jumping to solutions
Use a process map and supplied observations to test a plausible cause of recurring defects.
Upcoming
Concept
291
Lean improvement and standard work
Identify avoidable work and draft a short standard that preserves necessary judgment.
Upcoming
Concept
292
Run an improvement cycle
Design a small plan-do-study-act test with a baseline, outcome measure, and guardrail.
Upcoming
Concept
293
Fictional case: A distributor ships too many incorrect orders
Analyze supplied defect and process data, then choose a targeted improvement and verification method.
Upcoming
Case
294
Review: Experiments, process variation, and cost behavior
Connect earlier experiment design and fixed-versus-variable costs to evaluating an operational improvement.
Upcoming
Review
295
Why businesses hold inventory
Distinguish cycle, safety, pipeline, and seasonal inventory and explain the working-capital cost of each.
Upcoming
Concept
296
Order quantities and replenishment
Calculate a basic reorder point and interpret the tradeoff behind an economic order quantity.
Upcoming
Concept
297
Safety stock and the cost of shortages
Compare two safety-stock policies using uncertainty, service goals, carrying cost, and stockout consequences.
Upcoming
Concept
298
Forecast sharing and the bullwhip effect
Explain how batching, promotions, and delayed information can amplify upstream demand variation.
Upcoming
Concept
299
Warehouses, transport, and fulfillment
Compare two fulfillment designs using landed cost, lead time, reliability, and returns handling.
Upcoming
Concept
300
Fictional case: A retailer stocks too much and still loses sales
Use a small SKU table to select replenishment changes and a targeted logistics improvement.
Upcoming
Case
301
Review: Forecast error, working capital, and service levels
Connect prior forecasting and cash-conversion concepts to the cost of improving product availability.
Upcoming
Review
302
Source for total cost, not just purchase price
Compare supplier offers including transport, quality, inventory, switching, and administration costs.
Upcoming
Concept
303
Make, buy, or co-produce
Assess a supplied make-or-buy decision using relevant costs, capacity, know-how, and dependence.
Upcoming
Concept
304
Segment suppliers and manage performance
Choose different review and relationship approaches for routine purchases and strategically critical suppliers.
Upcoming
Concept
305
Design for disruption and recovery
Map one critical dependency and compare dual sourcing, buffers, substitution, and recovery planning.
Upcoming
Concept
306
Responsible sourcing and environmental tradeoffs
Evaluate a sourcing change using supplied labor, traceability, emissions, cost, and reliability evidence.
Upcoming
Concept
307
Fictional case: A medical-device producer faces a component shortage
Compare three sourcing responses using provided total costs, quality requirements, and recovery times.
Upcoming
Case
308
Review: Relevant costs, inventory buffers, and scenario analysis
Revisit sunk costs and uncertainty to explain when the lowest expected-cost supplier may be a poor choice.
Upcoming
Review
309
Define success, scope, and ownership
Write a short project charter with an outcome, scope boundary, accountable owner, and acceptance criterion.
Upcoming
Concept
310
Dependencies, critical paths, and resource limits
Find a critical path in a small task network and explain the effect of one resource conflict.
Upcoming
Concept
311
Choose predictive, agile, or hybrid delivery
Match a delivery approach to uncertainty, reversibility, dependencies, and the cost of late changes.
Upcoming
Concept
312
Manage project risk and changing requirements
Rank three project risks and choose a simple rule for evaluating scope changes.
Upcoming
Concept
313
Govern a portfolio and realize benefits
Compare projects competing for a constrained team and specify who will verify benefits after launch.
Upcoming
Concept
314
Fictional case: A growing company replaces its order-management system
Build a small phased plan from supplied dependencies and choose the first milestone that tests a critical assumption.
Upcoming
Case
315
Review: NPV, bottlenecks, and experiment design
Combine financial value, capacity constraints, and learning to explain why project priority is not determined by NPV alone.
Upcoming
Review

Organizations, leadership, and talent

Lessons 316–357 · 0 available

Hire, motivate, organize, communicate, resolve conflict, and lead change.

316
The manager’s responsibility for results and conditions
Distinguish doing work personally from setting direction, enabling work, and holding people accountable.
Upcoming
Concept
317
Motivation beyond pay
Use autonomy, competence, purpose, fairness, and expected rewards to explain a supplied performance problem.
Upcoming
Concept
318
Set clear goals without narrowing judgment
Rewrite a vague goal into an outcome and guardrail that leave room for sound professional judgment.
Upcoming
Concept
319
Delegate with appropriate support
Choose decision boundaries, check-ins, and escalation conditions for a task based on risk and employee experience.
Upcoming
Concept
320
Coach performance and give useful feedback
Draft a short feedback conversation grounded in observed behavior, its effect, and an agreed next step.
Upcoming
Concept
321
Fictional case: A founder becomes the manager of former peers
Diagnose one performance issue and choose a delegation and coaching response that avoids unsupported assumptions about motivation.
Upcoming
Case
322
Review: Incentives, constraints, and root-cause analysis
Revisit sales incentives and operational diagnosis to separate a motivation problem from a broken work system.
Upcoming
Review
323
Design teams around interdependent work
Identify when work requires a team and choose a suitable mix of roles and expertise.
Upcoming
Concept
324
Create psychological safety with accountability
Distinguish permission to raise concerns from an absence of standards in a supplied team scenario.
Upcoming
Concept
325
Run decisions and meetings deliberately
Choose a decision method, required participants, and communication record for one team decision.
Upcoming
Concept
326
Handle task conflict and relationship conflict
Use a short disagreement to separate facts, interests, interpretations, and behaviors requiring intervention.
Upcoming
Concept
327
Coordinate remote and hybrid work
Draft a simple agreement for synchronous work, asynchronous updates, handoffs, and availability.
Upcoming
Concept
328
Fictional case: A product team and operations team keep missing handoffs
Redesign one shared decision and one communication practice using supplied examples of failed coordination.
Upcoming
Case
329
Review: Decision rights, process handoffs, and coaching
Connect partnership governance and process mapping to a team problem, then choose a focused feedback intervention.
Upcoming
Review
330
Translate strategy into roles and skills
Define the essential outcomes and capabilities of one role before writing a job description.
Upcoming
Concept
331
Select people with structured evidence
Create three consistent interview or work-sample criteria tied to actual job requirements.
Upcoming
Concept
332
Onboard for capability and belonging
Choose the first three outcomes a new employee should achieve and the support each requires.
Upcoming
Concept
333
Compensation, benefits, and internal equity
Compare two compensation packages using total cost, market fit, internal fairness, and likely employee preferences.
Upcoming
Concept
334
Develop, retain, and manage performance
Choose coaching, training, role redesign, or a formal performance response based on supplied evidence.
Upcoming
Concept
335
Fictional case: A regional business hires its first operations manager
Use a supplied scorecard to compare candidates and choose an affordable offer and onboarding plan.
Upcoming
Case
336
Review: Structured evidence, opportunity cost, and motivation
Revisit selection bias and motivation to explain why an impressive interview or higher pay may not predict better performance.
Upcoming
Review
337
Functional, divisional, and matrix structures
Compare three structures using specialization, accountability, coordination needs, and duplication of effort.
Upcoming
Concept
338
Centralize or delegate a decision
Choose where a decision should sit based on local information, scale benefits, speed, and risk.
Upcoming
Concept
339
Span of control and management layers
Assess whether a supplied reporting structure fits task complexity, manager workload, and employee experience.
Upcoming
Concept
340
Incentives and performance measurement
Identify gaming and conflicting incentives in a small set of team measures and propose one repair.
Upcoming
Concept
341
Informal power and organizational networks
Map who controls expertise, resources, access, and trust in a supplied decision without confusing influence with formal authority.
Upcoming
Concept
342
Fictional case: A multi-location company outgrows its founder-led structure
Choose a reporting structure and allocate three key decisions using supplied coordination failures and costs.
Upcoming
Case
343
Review: Principal-agent problems, bottlenecks, and decision rights
Connect economic incentives and process constraints to the design of authority and accountability.
Upcoming
Review
344
Culture as repeated behavior and expectations
Infer actual team norms from what leaders reward, tolerate, and do when someone raises unwelcome information.
Upcoming
Concept
345
Ethical reasoning in ordinary business decisions
Compare consequences, duties, fairness, and stakeholder effects in a supplied management dilemma.
Upcoming
Concept
346
Inclusion and access to contribution
Identify a barrier to participation or advancement and choose a concrete practice that addresses it.
Upcoming
Concept
347
Write and present an evidence-based recommendation
Draft a 100-word recommendation, deliver it aloud in 60 seconds, and answer one skeptical question using supplied evidence.
Upcoming
Concept
348
Communicate through crisis and uncertainty
Prepare a short crisis message separating confirmed facts, unknowns, current actions, and the timing of the next update.
Upcoming
Concept
349
Fictional case: A sales organization rewards behavior that damages trust
Diagnose a gap between stated values and incentives, then present a brief leadership response explaining a specific remedy.
Upcoming
Case
350
Review: Psychological safety, incentives, and negotiation ethics
Use prior team and negotiation concepts to explain how pressure can suppress information and distort conduct.
Upcoming
Review
351
Diagnose the need and readiness for change
Distinguish the business reason for change from assumptions about people’s willingness and ability to adopt it.
Upcoming
Concept
352
Map stakeholders and sources of resistance
Classify concerns about loss, workload, competence, trust, and incentives in a supplied change scenario.
Upcoming
Concept
353
Sequence a change and build sponsorship
Choose a pilot group, sponsor, and initial scope that can test assumptions and build credible evidence.
Upcoming
Concept
354
Measure adoption and sustain new behavior
Define leading adoption indicators and specify the training, reinforcement, and workflow changes required.
Upcoming
Concept
355
Lead transitions and preserve essential work
Draft a brief transition message explaining changing responsibilities, support, and how the team will preserve essential service.
Upcoming
Concept
356
Fictional case: A company introduces an AI-assisted service workflow
Build a limited rollout plan using supplied employee concerns, quality risks, workload, and expected benefits.
Upcoming
Case
357
Review: Experiments, project dependencies, culture, and motivation
Integrate earlier concepts to explain why a technically successful launch may still fail to change daily work.
Upcoming
Review

Competitive and corporate strategy

Lessons 358–392 · 0 available

Make choices about where and how to compete, allocate resources, and implement a strategy.

358
Diagnose whether strategic choices fit together
Audit a supplied strategy for consistency among customer choices, value proposition, capabilities, and exclusions, then identify one contradiction and the evidence needed to resolve it.
Upcoming
Concept
359
Define the market and the relevant competitors
Choose useful market boundaries while accounting for substitutes, complements, and nonconsumption.
Upcoming
Concept
360
Industry structure and profit pressure
Use rivalry, entry, substitutes, buyer power, and supplier power to explain a supplied industry’s economics.
Upcoming
Concept
361
Competitor incentives and likely responses
Assess a competitor’s objectives, constraints, and capabilities before predicting its response to one move.
Upcoming
Concept
362
Diagnose the central strategic problem
Write a short diagnosis connecting customer behavior, competitive pressure, and the business’s own performance.
Upcoming
Concept
363
Fictional case: A regional distributor faces digital competitors
Identify the central strategic problem from supplied customer, competitor, channel, and financial evidence.
Upcoming
Case
364
Review: Pricing, channel economics, and financial returns
Connect prior economics and finance concepts to industry analysis without assuming an attractive market guarantees a successful company.
Upcoming
Review
365
Cost advantage and differentiated value
Compare two businesses using willingness to pay, cost to serve, and the sources of the gap between them.
Upcoming
Concept
366
Activity systems and strategic tradeoffs
Map how a small set of operating choices reinforce one position and identify a tempting choice that would weaken it.
Upcoming
Concept
367
Resources, capabilities, and imitation
Evaluate a claimed advantage using value, scarcity, imitability, substitutes, and the organization’s ability to use it.
Upcoming
Concept
368
Learning effects, network effects, and switching costs
Distinguish three mechanisms that may strengthen a business with scale and identify evidence needed to verify each.
Upcoming
Concept
369
Advantage erosion and strategic renewal
Identify how technology, changing customer needs, imitation, or internal rigidity could weaken an existing advantage.
Upcoming
Concept
370
Fictional case: A successful service company considers rapid expansion
Test whether its advantage depends on local density, founder expertise, repeatable processes, or unsupported assumptions.
Upcoming
Case
371
Review: Scale economies, organizational design, and process capability
Combine prior economic and operating concepts to explain why growing revenue may fail to strengthen competitive advantage.
Upcoming
Review
372
Compare growth paths
Contrast deeper penetration, new products, new customers, and new geographies using risk and capability requirements.
Upcoming
Concept
373
Enter a market with a defensible wedge
Choose a narrow entry point where customer need, access, and the entrant’s strengths align.
Upcoming
Concept
374
Innovate without confusing novelty with value
Evaluate a proposed business-model change using the customer problem, value capture, and operating implications.
Upcoming
Concept
375
Choose a global market and entry mode
Compare export, licensing, partnership, acquisition, and owned operations using supplied distance, control, and resource considerations.
Upcoming
Concept
376
Stage commitments and define exit signals
Design a small market-entry test with an investment limit, success threshold, and a condition for stopping.
Upcoming
Concept
377
Fictional case: A profitable software company considers international expansion
Compare two countries and entry modes using supplied customer evidence, capabilities, unit economics, and operating constraints.
Upcoming
Case
378
Review: Customer research, real options, and channel design
Use earlier research and staged-investment concepts to explain what a low-cost entry test can and cannot establish.
Upcoming
Review
379
Corporate scope and the parenting advantage
Explain what a corporate owner must contribute beyond funding for a group of businesses to create additional value.
Upcoming
Concept
380
Diversification and shared capabilities
Compare related and unrelated expansion using transferable capabilities, risk, complexity, and opportunity cost.
Upcoming
Concept
381
Vertical integration and firm boundaries
Assess whether ownership improves coordination or protection enough to justify capital, rigidity, and management costs.
Upcoming
Concept
382
Allocate capital across business units
Choose a limited set of investments using expected value, strategic fit, risk, and the organization’s capacity to deliver.
Upcoming
Concept
383
Build, partner, acquire, or divest
Compare four routes to changing business scope while explicitly testing synergies and integration requirements.
Upcoming
Concept
384
Fictional case: A business group chooses between acquisition and internal expansion
Use supplied financial and organizational evidence to choose a growth route and identify one assumption that could reverse the decision.
Upcoming
Case
385
Review: Valuation, M&A, relevant costs, and organization structure
Revisit financial evaluation and integration demands to distinguish a cheap asset from an attractive ownership decision.
Upcoming
Review
386
Develop distinct strategic alternatives
Write three alternatives that differ in target customer, value proposition, or activity system rather than only spending level.
Upcoming
Concept
387
Compare alternatives under plausible scenarios
Test two strategies against distinct supplied scenarios without treating scenarios as precise forecasts.
Upcoming
Concept
388
Connect strategy to resources and responsibilities
Translate one strategic choice into a small set of funded initiatives, owners, and necessary tradeoffs.
Upcoming
Concept
389
Build a useful strategic scorecard
Choose leading and lagging measures that connect customer outcomes, operating capability, people, and financial performance.
Upcoming
Concept
390
Set a review cadence and decision triggers
Define when leaders should continue, adapt, or stop an initiative using evidence and pre-agreed thresholds.
Upcoming
Concept
391
Fictional case: A mid-sized company chooses its next three-year direction
Recommend one supplied strategy using financial, customer, operating, and organizational evidence, then answer a simulated board question about a tradeoff.
Upcoming
Case
392
Review: Competitive advantage, NPV, change adoption, and scenario planning
Reconcile strategic fit, financial value, execution capacity, and uncertainty in a short cumulative decision exercise.
Upcoming
Review

Product, technology, and data management

Lessons 393–420 · 0 available

Manage products, technology sourcing, platforms, data, privacy, and cybersecurity.

393
Product management and the business model
Identify a product manager’s decision rights and connect one product outcome to customer value and business economics.
Upcoming
Concept
394
Test usability and real customer behavior
Interpret a supplied prototype test to separate usability failures, weak demand, and unsupported customer claims.
Upcoming
Concept
395
Separate desirability, feasibility, and viability
Identify one customer, technical, and economic assumption in a proposed product and choose the next test.
Upcoming
Concept
396
Prototypes, MVPs, and learning milestones
Choose the cheapest credible test of one risky assumption and set a decision threshold before seeing results.
Upcoming
Concept
397
Prioritization and product measurement
Rank three product bets using expected impact, effort, uncertainty, and a primary metric with guardrails.
Upcoming
Concept
398
Case: A service company considers a customer app
Use supplied customer interviews and cost estimates to choose between a manual service, prototype, and full app.
Upcoming
Case
399
Review: Product discovery meets marketing and experiments
Use customer segmentation, contribution margin, and experimental design to correct an overconfident product proposal.
Upcoming
Review
400
How software systems fit together
Label interfaces, APIs, databases, and external dependencies in a simple supplied system diagram and explain one failure path.
Upcoming
Concept
401
Software delivery and managing technical debt
Break a small feature into deliverable increments and assess a debt-reduction task using future change cost and operational risk.
Upcoming
Concept
402
Reliability, service levels, and incident economics
Interpret a service-level objective and estimate business losses from a supplied outage without assuming every interrupted transaction is lost.
Upcoming
Concept
403
Build, buy, or partner
Compare three options using total lifecycle cost, integration effort, switching costs, differentiation, and vendor dependency.
Upcoming
Concept
404
Cloud, API, and software unit economics
Calculate cost per completed transaction using usage charges, retries, support, and fixed engineering costs.
Upcoming
Concept
405
Case: A business needs a new ordering platform
Use a supplied three-year cash-flow table and architecture sketch to recommend a build, buy, or partner option.
Upcoming
Case
406
Review: Technology investment meets finance and operations
Reconcile the chosen option’s NPV, capacity assumptions, and service risks, then state what evidence could reverse the decision.
Upcoming
Review
407
Pipeline businesses and platform businesses
Identify who supplies value, who consumes it, and what a platform must coordinate in a supplied business model.
Upcoming
Concept
408
Network effects and scale economies
Distinguish same-side effects, cross-side effects, and ordinary cost advantages using three business examples.
Upcoming
Concept
409
Marketplace liquidity and matching quality
Calculate match rate, time to match, repeat use, and local density from a small supplied marketplace dataset.
Upcoming
Concept
410
Solving the initial participation problem
Choose a narrow launch segment and design a supply-and-demand activation experiment with a spending limit.
Upcoming
Concept
411
Platform pricing, rules, and dependency
Compare take rates, subsidies, access rules, and multihoming while accounting for participant incentives and concentration risk.
Upcoming
Concept
412
Case: Launch an expert marketplace or a managed service
Use supplied acquisition, fulfillment, and repeat-purchase data to choose a launch model and estimate contribution margin.
Upcoming
Case
413
Review: Network strategy meets economics and negotiation
Explain how pricing, bargaining power, and marketplace quality change under three competitor or participant responses.
Upcoming
Review
414
Data as an operating asset
Map the collection, use, sharing, retention, and deletion of one business dataset and name accountable owners.
Upcoming
Concept
415
Data quality, definitions, and lineage
Find conflicting metric definitions and trace a supplied dashboard error back to its source.
Upcoming
Concept
416
Privacy in product and process design
Reduce unnecessary data collection and identify purpose, consent or other authorization, access, and retention questions in a supplied workflow.
Upcoming
Concept
417
Cybersecurity as business risk
Rank phishing, access misuse, ransomware, and supplier compromise scenarios using exposure, business impact, and existing controls.
Upcoming
Concept
418
Third-party security and incident readiness
Choose evidence to request from a software supplier and write the first five actions for a suspected data incident.
Upcoming
Concept
419
Case: A growing company shares customer data with vendors
Use a supplied data map and vendor list to prioritize three improvements within a fixed budget.
Upcoming
Case
420
Review: Data controls meet operating metrics and incentives
Repair a flawed growth dashboard while explaining how access controls, employee incentives, and retention choices affect trust and cost.
Upcoming
Review

AI and automation

Lessons 421–441 · 0 available

Evaluate AI capabilities and economics, design useful workflows, and manage adoption and risk.

421
Prediction, generation, and automation
Match classification, forecasting, retrieval, generation, and deterministic rules to five business tasks.
Upcoming
Concept
422
Where model failures come from
Identify plausible fabrication, missing context, bias, leakage, and distribution shift in supplied outputs.
Upcoming
Concept
423
Grounding models in business information
Compare a prompt, retrieval-based approach, and model customization for a task with changing internal information.
Upcoming
Concept
424
Designing an evaluation set
Build a small representative test set with acceptance criteria, edge cases, and costly failure examples.
Upcoming
Concept
425
Measuring quality beyond a demo
Calculate error rates from a supplied evaluation table and choose tolerances based on the consequences of false positives and false negatives.
Upcoming
Concept
426
Case: Can AI review incoming customer requests?
Score supplied model outputs against a rubric and decide which requests can be routed automatically and which require review.
Upcoming
Case
427
Review: AI evaluation meets statistics and quality management
Identify sample bias, uncertain error estimates, and missing process controls in a vendor’s accuracy claim.
Upcoming
Review
428
Map the work before adding AI
Break a supplied process into steps and identify where information, judgment, waiting, and rework consume time.
Upcoming
Concept
429
Human review and exception handling
Design a workflow with explicit escalation triggers, review ownership, fallback behavior, and audit records.
Upcoming
Concept
430
AI cost per completed task
Calculate all-in cost using model usage, retrieval, tools, retries, human review, and maintenance.
Upcoming
Concept
431
From time saved to economic benefit
Separate theoretical capacity, usable capacity, avoided expense, and incremental revenue in a supplied staffing example.
Upcoming
Concept
432
Pilot design, ROI, and adoption
Set a bounded pilot with baseline measurements, adoption measures, incremental cash flows, and stop-or-expand criteria.
Upcoming
Concept
433
Case: Automate proposal preparation
Use supplied task times, quality results, demand, and pricing to calculate savings, bottlenecks, and a three-year investment case.
Upcoming
Case
434
Review: AI investment meets finance and organizational behavior
Recalculate the business case when usage falls, review effort rises, and the saved time cannot reduce staffing.
Upcoming
Review
435
AI procurement and supplier comparison
Compare vendors on measured task performance, total cost, data terms, integrations, observability, and exit options.
Upcoming
Concept
436
Data rights, confidentiality, and intellectual property
Identify ownership, permitted-use, retention, training-use, and output-rights questions in a supplied AI contract summary.
Upcoming
Concept
437
Agents, tools, and bounded authority
Define permitted actions, spending limits, approval points, and rollback paths for a tool-using AI workflow.
Upcoming
Concept
438
Monitoring after deployment
Select indicators for quality drift, cost changes, user overrides, security events, and business outcomes.
Upcoming
Concept
439
Accountability, workforce change, and governance
Assign product, process, technical, and risk owners and plan role changes, training, and escalation responsibilities.
Upcoming
Concept
440
Case: An AI assistant makes unauthorized customer promises
Use supplied incident facts to contain the problem, identify the control failure, and decide whether to restart the workflow.
Upcoming
Case
441
Review: AI governance meets contracts, incentives, and strategy
Defend an AI operating policy against a speed-versus-control scenario and explain which decisions remain with accountable people.
Upcoming
Review

Entrepreneurship and business ownership

Lessons 442–476 · 0 available

Validate, launch, finance, buy, operate, grow, and eventually transition a business.

442
Founder fit and business selection
Score three opportunities against skills, available time, capital, customer access, and desired owner involvement.
Upcoming
Concept
443
Find a painful, reachable customer problem
Define a narrow customer and purchasing situation using supplied interviews and observed workarounds.
Upcoming
Concept
444
Size an accessible market from the bottom up
Estimate reachable customers, annual purchase frequency, and plausible spending without treating total market size as attainable revenue.
Upcoming
Concept
445
Test willingness to pay
Design an ethical offer, deposit, paid pilot, or other behavioral test and distinguish commitments from compliments.
Upcoming
Concept
446
Set evidence thresholds and stop rules
Specify what would justify continuing, changing the offer, or abandoning a business idea after a limited test.
Upcoming
Concept
447
Case: Choose among three owner-operated businesses
Use supplied customer evidence, startup costs, and operating constraints to choose an initial opportunity and test.
Upcoming
Case
448
Review: Opportunity selection meets strategy and statistics
Challenge a promising idea using opportunity cost, selection bias, competitive response, and contribution margin.
Upcoming
Review
449
Define an offer customers can understand
Write an offer with customer, problem, scope, price, exclusions, and evidence of value using a supplied business brief.
Upcoming
Concept
450
Choose a revenue model and pricing test
Compare one-time, recurring, usage-based, and outcome-based pricing against customer value, delivery cost, and collection risk.
Upcoming
Concept
451
Build the initial delivery process
Map order-to-delivery steps, owner responsibilities, quality checks, and a realistic weekly capacity.
Upcoming
Concept
452
Forecast startup cash and runway
Build a short cash forecast including deposits, receivables, equipment, founder pay assumptions, and a contingency.
Upcoming
Concept
453
Plan the first ten customers
Choose one initial acquisition channel and estimate outreach, conversion, delivery, and follow-up requirements.
Upcoming
Concept
454
Case: Launch a local service with limited cash
Use a supplied offer, demand test, and cost sheet to set price, launch capacity, and a go-or-delay decision.
Upcoming
Case
455
Review: Launch design meets marketing, operations, and accounting
Resolve a conflict between strong bookings, inadequate capacity, and a cash shortfall without confusing revenue and cash.
Upcoming
Review
456
Bootstrap, borrow, or raise equity
Match financing sources to cash-flow predictability, growth needs, risk, and the founder’s ownership goals.
Upcoming
Concept
457
Equity and capitalization tables
Calculate pre-money value, post-money value, new shares, and ownership percentages in a simple priced round.
Upcoming
Concept
458
Options, dilution, and convertible instruments
Trace the ownership effect of an option pool and a supplied convertible instrument using explicitly stated simplified terms.
Upcoming
Concept
459
Term sheets and investor rights
Identify how board rights, protective provisions, liquidation preferences, and participation affect control and payout.
Upcoming
Concept
460
Funding milestones and investor communication
Connect requested capital to measurable milestones and write a concise update that reports cash, progress, and material risks.
Upcoming
Concept
461
Case: Two funding offers for the same business
Use supplied term sheets and exit scenarios to compare founder ownership, investor proceeds, runway, and control.
Upcoming
Case
462
Review: Venture financing meets valuation and agency theory
Reconcile a cap table and payout waterfall, then explain why the highest headline valuation may not offer the best outcome.
Upcoming
Review
463
Choose an acquisition target and sourcing approach
Define target size, industry characteristics, operating role, financing limits, and disqualifying risks.
Upcoming
Concept
464
Normalize earnings and test cash conversion
Adjust supplied owner-operated financials for documented owner compensation, unusual expenses, capital needs, and working capital.
Upcoming
Concept
465
Commercial and operational due diligence
Prioritize questions about customer retention, concentration, supplier dependence, employee capability, and owner reliance.
Upcoming
Concept
466
Deal structure and acquisition financing
Compare supplied asset-versus-equity deal summaries, seller financing, earnouts, and debt service under base and downside cases.
Upcoming
Concept
467
Transition and the first hundred days
Sequence seller handover, employee communication, customer continuity, cash monitoring, and essential control changes.
Upcoming
Concept
468
Case: Acquire a profitable but owner-dependent company
Use a compact financial pack and diligence findings to set a price range, conditions, and a buy-or-pass recommendation.
Upcoming
Case
469
Review: Acquisition entrepreneurship meets accounting and negotiation
Identify unsupported add-backs, test debt coverage, and choose which diligence findings require price changes, protections, or withdrawal.
Upcoming
Review
470
The owner’s weekly management routine
Choose a small set of cash, customer, delivery, and people measures and set an agenda for a weekly operating review.
Upcoming
Concept
471
Delegation and management layers
Assign decision rights and escalation limits to remove a founder bottleneck while retaining accountability.
Upcoming
Concept
472
Standardize before expanding
Select which processes need documentation and quality checks before adding a second team, location, or market.
Upcoming
Concept
473
Cash allocation and responsible growth
Compare reinvestment, owner distributions, debt reduction, and reserves using supplied return estimates and downside cash needs.
Upcoming
Concept
474
Succession, transferability, and exit readiness
Identify dependencies that reduce transferability and compare management succession, family succession, sale, and continued ownership.
Upcoming
Concept
475
Case: A growing company outpaces its owner
Use supplied workload, margins, service quality, and cash data to choose an operating redesign and pace of expansion.
Upcoming
Case
476
Review: Ownership meets strategy, controls, and leadership
Build a balanced response when growth improves revenue but damages cash, staff retention, and customer service.
Upcoming
Review

Macroeconomics and global business

Lessons 477–504 · 0 available

Interpret economic conditions, trade, currency exposure, institutions, and international expansion.

477
Output, employment, productivity, and the business cycle
Interpret a supplied economic dashboard and distinguish growth rates, levels, nominal measures, and real measures.
Upcoming
Concept
478
Inflation, disinflation, and purchasing power
Separate price-level changes from changes in inflation and calculate the effect on a business’s real prices and costs.
Upcoming
Concept
479
Interest rates and monetary policy
Trace how a hypothetical rate change could affect borrowing costs, investment, demand, and asset values.
Upcoming
Concept
480
Fiscal policy and public-sector demand
Map how government spending, taxation, and deficits could affect a supplied company through several competing channels.
Upcoming
Concept
481
Leading indicators and forecast uncertainty
Compare leading and lagging indicators and convert conflicting forecasts into a range of planning assumptions.
Upcoming
Concept
482
Case: Budgeting during an economic slowdown
Use a supplied macro dashboard and customer mix to revise volume, price, working-capital, and financing assumptions.
Upcoming
Case
483
Review: Macroeconomics meets unit economics and capital budgeting
Explain why a favorable headline economic indicator can still coincide with deteriorating economics for a particular business.
Upcoming
Review
484
Why countries trade and why firms cross borders
Apply comparative advantage and transaction costs to a simple sourcing and production example.
Upcoming
Concept
485
Trade barriers and policy changes
Calculate the landed-cost impact of a supplied tariff or customs change and identify who may bear the economic burden.
Upcoming
Concept
486
Read exchange rates and measure transaction exposure
Convert a foreign-currency invoice and calculate the cash effect of a specified exchange-rate movement.
Upcoming
Concept
487
Translation, economic exposure, and natural hedges
Distinguish reporting effects from cash effects and identify operating choices that offset currency exposure.
Upcoming
Concept
488
Financial hedges and their limits
Compare an unhedged position, a supplied forward quote, and a supplied option contract using simple cash-flow scenarios.
Upcoming
Concept
489
Case: A domestic company begins importing and exporting
Use supplied orders, currencies, payment terms, and hedge quotes to choose a pricing and exposure-management approach.
Upcoming
Case
490
Review: International finance meets cash management and pricing
Reconcile currency effects with margins, payment timing, competitive response, and hedge costs.
Upcoming
Review
491
Select a foreign market
Compare two supplied markets by institutional reliability, channel access, local competitive structure, and operating constraints, building on the earlier market-entry analysis.
Upcoming
Concept
492
Choose how to enter a market
Evaluate control rights, profit sharing, knowledge transfer, and exit difficulty across two plausible international entry structures.
Upcoming
Concept
493
Local adaptation and global consistency
Decide which product, brand, staffing, and process choices should be standardized and which require local adaptation.
Upcoming
Concept
494
Lead cross-cultural teams
Diagnose a supplied communication conflict using individual evidence and working norms without relying on national stereotypes.
Upcoming
Concept
495
Geopolitical, sanctions, and country exposure
Map dependencies and identify information and specialist reviews needed before acting on a hypothetical restriction or political disruption.
Upcoming
Concept
496
Case: Expand internationally with a local partner
Use supplied market, partner, and operating data to select an entry approach and define governance and exit conditions.
Upcoming
Case
497
Review: Global business meets strategy and organizational design
Defend local-versus-central decision rights while considering economics, partner incentives, and country risk.
Upcoming
Review
498
Forecasts, scenarios, and stress tests
Distinguish expected forecasts from plausible scenarios and solvency or continuity stress tests.
Upcoming
Concept
499
Build a small scenario matrix
Choose two material uncertain drivers and develop coherent business assumptions for four combinations.
Upcoming
Concept
500
Translate scenarios into cash and capacity
Calculate revenue, gross margin, working capital, and cash needs from a supplied scenario table.
Upcoming
Concept
501
Preserve flexibility with staged commitments
Compare an irreversible expansion with a staged pilot using decision trees, switching costs, and information gained.
Upcoming
Concept
502
Set triggers and contingency actions
Choose observable indicators and predetermined actions for hiring, inventory, capital spending, and financing.
Upcoming
Concept
503
Case: Invest when rates, demand, and supply are uncertain
Use supplied scenarios and project cash flows to recommend a full investment, staged investment, delay, or rejection.
Upcoming
Case
504
Review: Uncertainty meets finance, operations, and strategy
Separate sensitivity, scenario, and probability analysis and identify where the investment decision is robust or assumption-dependent.
Upcoming
Review

Business law, governance, ethics, and risk

Lessons 505–532 · 0 available

Identify legal issues, govern responsibly, handle competing interests, and manage enterprise risks.

505
Business entities and authority to act
Compare ownership, control, liability, tax questions, and administrative requirements across supplied entity options in a stated jurisdiction.
Upcoming
Concept
506
How commercial contracts allocate obligations
Identify parties, deliverables, payment, acceptance, term, and termination rights in a short supplied agreement.
Upcoming
Concept
507
Allocate contractual risk
Compare supplied indemnity, liability-limit, warranty, dispute, and insurance clauses and explain their business consequences.
Upcoming
Concept
508
Intellectual property and commercial use rights
Distinguish copyright, trademark, patent, trade-secret, and license issues in a supplied product-development scenario.
Upcoming
Concept
509
Negotiate a practical agreement
Rank five contract issues by business impact and draft a plain-language negotiation position with acceptable alternatives.
Upcoming
Concept
510
Case: Sign a strategically important supplier agreement
Use supplied contract excerpts and business requirements to identify decision-critical issues and recommend conditions for signing.
Upcoming
Case
511
Review: Contracts meet operations, finance, and bargaining power
Connect scope, service levels, payment timing, remedies, and exit rights to the operating model and negotiated economics.
Upcoming
Review
512
Hiring, classification, pay, and termination
Identify jurisdiction-specific questions raised by a supplied staffing plan and distinguish factual employment practices from job labels.
Upcoming
Concept
513
Fair treatment, complaints, and workplace process
Design a fair fact-gathering and escalation process for a supplied workplace complaint while protecting relevant records.
Upcoming
Concept
514
Competition and commercial conduct
Spot competition-law questions in hypothetical competitor communications, exclusivity terms, bundling, and market-power scenarios.
Upcoming
Concept
515
Customer promises and consumer protection
Review supplied advertising, subscription, refund, and product claims for evidence gaps and potentially misleading presentation.
Upcoming
Concept
516
Privacy obligations in everyday business decisions
Identify applicable-jurisdiction, individual-rights, security, retention, and cross-border questions in a supplied data-use proposal.
Upcoming
Concept
517
Case: A fast-growing business changes staffing and pricing
Use a supplied launch plan to flag the most consequential issues, propose business alternatives, and prepare a focused adviser brief.
Upcoming
Case
518
Review: Legal issue spotting meets incentives and customer economics
Find how compensation, growth targets, and poorly designed customer processes can produce recurring disputes and business losses.
Upcoming
Review
519
Owners, boards, and management
Map the distinct roles, information needs, and decision rights of owners, directors, and executives in a supplied company.
Upcoming
Concept
520
Agency problems and incentive design
Identify how a proposed bonus plan could encourage short-termism, hidden risk, or distorted reporting and redesign one measure.
Upcoming
Concept
521
Board information and consequential decisions
Build a short board decision pack with alternatives, economics, risks, assumptions, and a specific requested decision.
Upcoming
Concept
522
Ethical reasoning when rules are insufficient
Evaluate a business choice through consequences, duties, fairness, and affected stakeholders, then explain the tradeoffs.
Upcoming
Concept
523
Conflicts, speak-up systems, and accountability
Design disclosure, recusal, reporting, investigation, and anti-retaliation steps for a supplied conflict-of-interest scenario.
Upcoming
Concept
524
Case: Growth targets conflict with customer interests
Use supplied incentive terms and customer outcomes to recommend a board response and changes to management accountability.
Upcoming
Case
525
Review: Governance meets accounting, strategy, and leadership
Explain how oversight could detect and correct an attractive strategy supported by misleading metrics and harmful incentives.
Upcoming
Review
526
Risk appetite and enterprise risk assessment
Distinguish strategic, operating, financial, and compliance exposures and define practical tolerances for three supplied risks.
Upcoming
Concept
527
Internal controls and fraud prevention
Find weaknesses in a supplied purchasing-and-payments process and add segregation, authorization, reconciliation, and review controls.
Upcoming
Concept
528
Insurance and other ways to finance risk
Compare avoidance, reduction, retention, reserves, contractual transfer, and insurance using supplied deductibles, limits, and exclusions.
Upcoming
Concept
529
Business continuity and recovery priorities
Set recovery priorities for people, systems, facilities, and critical suppliers based on the business impact of downtime.
Upcoming
Concept
530
Crisis leadership and communication
Write a first-day response plan with verified facts, decision owners, stakeholder messages, and a schedule for updates.
Upcoming
Concept
531
Case: A business faces suspected fraud and a service outage
Use supplied incident evidence to prioritize containment, continuity, investigation, and financial decisions.
Upcoming
Case
532
Review: Risk management meets finance and operations
Test whether proposed controls, reserves, and insurance address the actual loss scenarios rather than only the most visible risks.
Upcoming
Review

Sustainability and business resilience

Lessons 533–546 · 0 available

Evaluate environmental and social effects, measure credible progress, and plan for long-term disruptions.

533
Externalities and business responsibilities
Identify environmental and social costs or benefits outside market prices in a supplied value chain.
Upcoming
Concept
534
Financial materiality and impact materiality
Separate effects on the business from effects of the business and identify where the two interact.
Upcoming
Concept
535
Emissions, resource use, and measurement boundaries
Interpret a simplified inventory with operational and value-chain boundaries and identify omissions and double-counting risks.
Upcoming
Concept
536
Evaluate sustainability investments
Compare supplied efficiency, sourcing, and redesign projects using cash flows, measurable impacts, uncertainty, and implementation constraints.
Upcoming
Concept
537
Credible claims and supplier accountability
Test a supplied environmental or social claim against its baseline, boundary, evidence, and tradeoffs.
Upcoming
Concept
538
Case: A company chooses among three sustainability projects
Use supplied cost, impact, supplier, and customer data to recommend a prioritized investment portfolio.
Upcoming
Case
539
Review: Sustainability meets economics, capital budgeting, and ethics
Explain when an initiative creates private returns, wider benefits, both, or neither, and defend an explicit tradeoff.
Upcoming
Review
540
Physical climate risks and business dependencies
Trace how heat, flood, fire, or water stress could affect a supplied site, workforce, supplier, and customer network.
Upcoming
Concept
541
Transition risks and changing economics
Map how hypothetical policy, technology, financing, and customer changes could alter demand and asset values.
Upcoming
Concept
542
Adaptation and resilient capital allocation
Compare protective investment, relocation, diversification, insurance, and acceptance using supplied scenarios and lifecycle costs.
Upcoming
Concept
543
Supply resilience and the price of redundancy
Quantify the margin and inventory cost of dual sourcing, buffers, or backup capacity against disruption losses.
Upcoming
Concept
544
Long-term decisions under deep uncertainty
Use thresholds, reversible steps, and adaptation pathways when precise probabilities are unavailable.
Upcoming
Concept
545
Case: Protect an operation exposed to recurring disruption
Use supplied site, supplier, and loss scenarios to select a phased resilience plan within a capital limit.
Upcoming
Case
546
Review: Resilience meets risk, operations, and strategy
Stress-test the plan against demand shifts and financing constraints and identify where resilience reinforces or weakens competitive advantage.
Upcoming
Review

Integrated capstones and decision defense

Lessons 547–588 · 0 available

Combine the disciplines in owner and executive decisions, defend a recommendation, and build a practical portfolio.

547
Define the opportunity and evidence standard
Use a supplied fictional service-business packet to state the customer problem, alternatives, launch objective, and evidence required.
Upcoming
Concept
548
Select the offer and initial customers
Use supplied interview excerpts and conversion data to choose an initial segment, offer, price, and acquisition channel.
Upcoming
Concept
549
Reconcile delivery economics and capacity
Calculate contribution per job, break-even volume, and weekly capacity from the supplied staffing and cost exhibit.
Upcoming
Concept
550
Test startup cash and downside survival
Use the supplied forecast template to estimate working capital, runway, and the effect of slower sales or higher rework.
Upcoming
Concept
551
Design a bounded launch
Choose milestones, responsibilities, controls, and stop-or-expand rules using the supplied resource constraints.
Upcoming
Concept
552
Case defense: Invest personal capital or decline
Use a supplied consolidated draft and new competitor information to issue a conditional go-or-no-go memo with the strongest counterargument.
Upcoming
Case
553
Review: Audit the launch decision across disciplines
Reconcile the supplied model and decision memo against marketing, accounting, operations, finance, and strategy; correct the largest inconsistency.
Upcoming
Review
554
Frame the decision and credible alternatives
Use a supplied fictional company brief to define the problem, baseline, alternatives, sponsor, and measurable decision criteria.
Upcoming
Concept
555
Validate customer and channel assumptions
Evaluate supplied research and channel data to separate incremental demand from channel switching and unsupported adoption claims.
Upcoming
Concept
556
Choose the delivery and partnership approach
Use supplied technical and vendor exhibits to compare build, buy, and partner options on cost, timing, reliability, and control.
Upcoming
Concept
557
Evaluate investment returns and attribution
Calculate incremental project cash flows and NPV from a supplied table, avoiding sunk costs and double-counted benefits.
Upcoming
Concept
558
Plan adoption and accountable execution
Use a supplied organizational chart and workflow to assign decision rights, pilot metrics, training, and rollout gates.
Upcoming
Concept
559
Case defense: Present to the investment committee
Use a supplied complete draft and a late budget constraint to recommend scope, funding, conditions, and a response to the strongest objection.
Upcoming
Case
560
Review: Audit the initiative across disciplines
Challenge the supplied investment case using finance, product discovery, incentives, operational capacity, and technology risk.
Upcoming
Review
561
Screen the target and acquisition thesis
Use a supplied fictional target packet to define the acquisition rationale, owner role, non-negotiable criteria, and initial concerns.
Upcoming
Concept
562
Normalize earnings and working capital
Reconcile supplied statements and add-backs to estimate sustainable operating earnings, maintenance investment, and normal working capital.
Upcoming
Concept
563
Assess customer, workforce, and operating dependencies
Use supplied diligence exhibits to rank concentration, retention, key-person, supplier, and control risks.
Upcoming
Concept
564
Set price, financing, and downside limits
Use supplied financing terms and cash scenarios to estimate affordable debt, equity needs, coverage, and a maximum defensible offer.
Upcoming
Concept
565
Structure protections and the transition
Select supplied deal protections and sequence the first hundred days around continuity, controls, and seller knowledge transfer.
Upcoming
Concept
566
Case defense: Renegotiate, proceed, or walk away
Use a supplied consolidated analysis and newly disclosed customer loss to revise the offer or reject the acquisition.
Upcoming
Case
567
Review: Audit the acquisition across disciplines
Find the largest inconsistency among valuation, cash conversion, financing, legal protections, and transition assumptions in a supplied decision memo.
Upcoming
Review
568
Diagnose the business before cutting costs
Use a supplied fictional company packet to separate demand decline, margin erosion, execution failures, and financing pressure.
Upcoming
Concept
569
Build the short-term cash view
Use supplied receivables, payables, payroll, and debt schedules to identify the timing and size of a liquidity shortfall.
Upcoming
Concept
570
Protect value while changing the operating model
Rank supplied pricing, product, procurement, capacity, and overhead actions by cash impact, reversibility, and customer consequences.
Upcoming
Concept
571
Align people, incentives, and communication
Use a supplied organization and stakeholder map to assign responsibilities and prepare clear messages around a proposed operating change.
Upcoming
Concept
572
Create scenarios and a recovery dashboard
Set leading indicators, cash thresholds, contingency actions, and governance using a supplied recovery-plan template.
Upcoming
Concept
573
Case defense: Respond to a lender and board challenge
Use a supplied full recovery proposal and a new disruption to defend priorities, funding needs, and changes to the plan.
Upcoming
Case
574
Review: Audit the turnaround across disciplines
Test the supplied plan for cash-versus-profit confusion, capacity mistakes, unsupported sales recovery, and incentives that encourage harmful shortcuts.
Upcoming
Review
575
Choose a growth path and owner objective
Use a supplied fictional business packet to compare deeper penetration, new locations, adjacent offers, and deliberate slower growth.
Upcoming
Concept
576
Test expansion economics and market access
Use supplied customer, competition, and cohort data to estimate incremental contribution, acquisition payback, and location break-even.
Upcoming
Concept
577
Design the scalable operating system
Choose staffing, process standards, training, quality checks, and technology support from a supplied expansion design.
Upcoming
Concept
578
Choose financing and owner cash allocation
Compare supplied debt, retained-earnings, and equity options against cash needs, ownership preferences, and downside exposure.
Upcoming
Concept
579
Reduce founder dependence and prepare succession
Use a supplied organization chart to delegate decisions, develop managers, and address the two largest continuity risks.
Upcoming
Concept
580
Case defense: Approve a staged expansion
Use a supplied consolidated proposal and conflicting pilot results to select a pace, funding limit, stage gates, and stop rules.
Upcoming
Case
581
Review: Audit the scaling plan across disciplines
Reconcile growth, financing, unit economics, management capacity, and quality in a supplied plan and correct its binding constraint.
Upcoming
Review
582
Compare investments across ownership contexts
Use supplied summaries of a startup, acquisition, corporate initiative, and resilience project to identify comparable goals, risks, and cash needs.
Upcoming
Concept
583
Audit models and competing claims
Reconcile the supplied projects’ cash flows, discounting, unit economics, and evidence quality before comparing their reported returns.
Upcoming
Concept
584
Allocate limited capital and management attention
Choose a portfolio within supplied funding and leadership-capacity constraints while explaining concentration and sequencing tradeoffs.
Upcoming
Concept
585
Stress-test the portfolio
Apply supplied macroeconomic, operational, and technology shocks to identify cash shortages, correlated risks, and contingent actions.
Upcoming
Concept
586
Prepare a decision brief and opposing argument
Write a concise recommendation using a supplied portfolio template and articulate the strongest evidence-based argument against it.
Upcoming
Concept
587
Final case defense: Respond to a skeptical owner and board
Answer supplied challenges on finance, strategy, operations, people, ethics, and uncertainty; revise the recommendation where the evidence warrants it.
Upcoming
Case
588
Final cumulative review and continued practice
Use a supplied cross-functional diagnostic and worked examples to identify weak areas and create a focused 90-day application and review plan.
Upcoming
Review

Business foundations and managerial judgment

Quantitative methods and decision analytics

Sample size, power, and repeated comparisons

Fictional case: Alder Coffee's customer survey

Cumulative review: Is the evidence strong enough?

Correlation and simple regression

Multiple regression and confounding

Model fit, residuals, and misleading extrapolation

Prediction, holdouts, and data leakage

Causal questions and observational evidence

Fictional case: Summit Software's customer-success program

Cumulative review: Predict, explain, or test

Designing a business experiment

Interpreting experimental results

Forecasting with trends and seasonality

Simulation and ranges of possible outcomes

Optimization under constraints

Fictional case: Pine Street Meal Prep

Cumulative review: The analytics decision brief

Financial accounting and statement analysis

The accounting equation and the balance sheet

Double-entry bookkeeping without the mystery

The income statement and accrual accounting

The cash flow statement

How the statements connect

Fictional case: Atlas Distribution's monthly close

Cumulative review: From transactions to decisions

Revenue recognition and customer contracts

Receivables, bad debts, and collection risk

Inventory and cost of goods sold

Accruals, prepayments, and deferred revenue

Working capital and the cash conversion cycle

Fictional case: Oak & Thread's profitable cash shortage

Cumulative review: Timing changes the story

Capitalization, depreciation, and impairment

Intangibles, goodwill, and development spending

Debt, interest, and leases

Taxes, provisions, and contingent obligations

Equity, dividends, repurchases, and stock compensation

Fictional case: Eastfield Manufacturing's equipment upgrade

Cumulative review: Read beyond current profit

The indirect operating cash flow bridge

EBIT, EBITDA, operating cash flow, and free cash flow

Recurring earnings and unusual items

Estimates, accounting policies, and comparability

Footnotes, controls, and warning signs

Fictional case: Bluebird Software's adjusted profit

Cumulative review: Can these earnings be trusted?

Common-size statements and trend analysis

Margins, asset efficiency, and returns

Liquidity, leverage, and coverage

Peer comparisons and the DuPont relationship

An integrated financial diagnosis

Fictional case: Coastline Group's competing divisions

Cumulative review: Financial-statement analysis checkpoint

Managerial accounting and performance

Fixed, variable, mixed, and step costs

Contribution margin and unit economics

Break-even and target-profit analysis

Sales mix, capacity, and operating leverage

Cost estimation from operating data

Fictional case: ClearSpace Organizing's service packages

Cumulative review: What makes the next sale valuable?

Relevant costs and make-or-buy decisions

Special orders and short-run pricing

Product, customer, and channel profitability

Bottlenecks and contribution per constrained resource

Quality costs and process trade-offs

Fictional case: Riverton Pumps' outsourcing offer

Cumulative review: Allocate scarce resources

Budgets, targets, and forecasts serve different purposes

Building a driver-based operating budget

Cash budgets and funding gaps

Flexible budgets and price-volume-cost variances

Rolling forecasts and management responses

Fictional case: Maple Outdoor Goods' seasonal plan

Cumulative review: Explain the miss and choose a response

Responsibility centers and controllable performance

Return measures and residual income

Transfer pricing and internal coordination