Growth - Managing Your Firm

The objective of this course is to provide you with insights into the problems and opportunities involved in managing growth in entrepreneurial ventures. This course is given in English. The course is designed to introduce a series of concepts, frameworks, and heuristics that enable people to manage entrepreneurially in organizations of all sizes and types. The course focuses on the decisions and actions owner-managers take in recognizing and choosing opportunities, obtaining and allocating resources, challenging and directing personnel, and adapting personal goals and corporate strategies to changing personal and business conditions. In this process, the course examines management challenges that are typical of different stages in the business’s development – start-up, growth, change of direction, etc. Using this framework, the course will discuss issues of particular importance to rapidly growing firms such as developing networks, managing with limited resources, cash planning, delegation, and professionalizing the business as it grows, dealing with crises, while at the same time being careful to avoid stifling the entrepreneurial spirit as the organization becomes larger and more complex.