In this Specialization, you’ll develop basic literacy in the language of business, which you can use to transition to a new career, start or improve your own small business, or apply to business school to continue your education. In five courses, you’ll learn the fundamentals of marketing, accounting, operations, and finance. In the final Capstone Project, you’ll apply the skills learned by developing a go-to-market strategy to address a real business challenge.

Business Foundations Specialization
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Business Foundations Specialization
Solve Real Business Problems. Build a foundation of core business skills in marketing, finance, accounting and operations.



Instructors: Michael R Roberts
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What you'll learn
Understand branding and go-to-market strategies
Read income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements
Manage people through motivation and reward systems
Analyze and improve business processes in services or manufacturing
Skills you'll gain
- Capital Budgeting
- Corporate Finance
- Financial Statements
- Finance
- Return On Investment
- Operations Management
- Financial Reporting
- Operational Efficiency
- Accrual Accounting
- Strategic Marketing
- Process Analysis
- People Management
- Human Capital
- Process Management
- Financial Statement Analysis
- Marketing
- Financial Accounting
- Peer Review
- Branding
- Project Design
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Specialization - 6 course series
Introduction to Marketing
What you'll learn
Taught by three of Wharton's top faculty in the marketing department, consistently ranked as the #1 marketing department in the world, this course covers three core topics in customer loyalty: branding, customer centricity, and practical, go-to-market strategies.
Skills you'll gain
Introduction to Financial Accounting
What you'll learn
Master the technical skills needed to analyze financial statements and disclosures for use in financial analysis, and learn how accounting standards and managerial incentives affect the financial reporting process. By the end of this course, you’ll be able to read the three most common financial statements: the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows. Then you can apply these skills to a real-world business challenge as part of the Wharton Business Foundations Specialization.
Skills you'll gain

Managing Social and Human Capital
What you'll learn
People are the most valuable asset of any business, but they are also the most unpredictable, and the most difficult asset to manage. And although managing people well is critical to the health of any organization, most managers don't get the training they need to make good management decisions. Now, award-winning authors and renowned management Professors Mike Useem and Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School have designed this course to introduce you to the key elements of managing people. Based on their popular course at Wharton, this course will teach you how to motivate individual performance and design reward systems, how to design jobs and organize work for high performance, how to make good and timely management decisions, and how to design and change your organization’s architecture. By the end of this course, you'll have developed the skills you need to start motivating, organizing, and rewarding people in your organization so that you can thrive as a business and as a social organization.
Skills you'll gain
Introduction to Corporate Finance
What you'll learn
This course provides a brief introduction to the fundamentals of finance, emphasizing their application to a wide variety of real-world situations spanning personal finance, corporate decision-making, and financial intermediation. Key concepts and applications include: time value of money, risk-return tradeoff, cost of capital, interest rates, retirement savings, mortgage financing, auto leasing, capital budgeting, asset valuation, discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis, net present value, internal rate of return, hurdle rate, payback period.
Skills you'll gain
Introduction to Operations Management
What you'll learn
You will learn to analyze processes, optimize flow, and manage variability, driving improvements and achieving excellence in operations management.
Skills you'll gain

Wharton Business Foundations Capstone
What you'll learn
Wharton's Applied Knowledge Capstone Project enables you to apply your analytic skills to real business challenges – including your own. You’ll use your newly earned business skills to thoughtfully evaluate a real situation or opportunity from Wharton-governed companies like Shazam and SnapDeal.
Skills you'll gain
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Frequently asked questions
Time to completion will vary based on your schedule, but we anticipate most learners being able to finish the material in 6 months.
Each course in the Specialization is offered every two months.
No specific background is required—this Specialization is ideal for entrepreneurs, small business owners, managers, consultants, or anyone aiming to hone their core business skills. Knowledge of high-school level math (through pre-calculus) is suggested.
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Financial aid available,








