The Minority Business Executive Program combines class sessions, discussions, exercises, and other interactive learning. Participants will gain knowledge, tools, and a valuable network to help them achieve their business goals. Some materials and reading assignments will be sent to participants prior to program start.
Understanding Financial Statements & Business Performance Evaluation
You will learn to interpret and use accounting data for planning, decision-making, and financial reporting. This session will enhance your understanding of finance principles and practices, including cash flow analysis, capital budgeting, risk, and return.
Testing Business Ideas
Offering new products, services, or lines of business can substantially impact growth. However, making big bets on the wrong ideas can have disastrous consequences. After this session, you will be able to design an experiment to validate whether a potential opportunity is important to focus on next.
Impactful Communications
Poor or miscommunication in a workplace can often lead to frustration and a loss of productivity. In order to be a better communicator, it is important to first understand your own style and know what your tendencies might be. During this session, you will become more aware of your communication style, and learn some techniques to identify the styles of others. With this understanding, you will be able to craft and adjust your style to communicate more effectively.
Competitive Strategy
During this immersive session on business strategy, we will delve into key concepts essential for sustainable growth and competitive advantage. Through interactive exercises, participants will gain practical insights into customer development, strategic positioning, and innovative approaches to product development and distribution channels. By the end of the session, attendees will emerge equipped with actionable strategies to navigate and thrive in today’s competitive business landscape.
Leadership and Teams
Creativity and innovation is the lifeblood of organizations, and building an idea culture is a key way that leaders can maximize their impact while also engaging their team members. Through a combination of lecture, experiential exercises, and discussion, you will learn evidence-based insights on how leaders can help their employees and teams to generate game-changing ideas, while also navigating potential pitfalls that can stifle creativity.
Emotions, Happiness and Meaning
This module will discuss how emotion is a form of information that can help us make better decisions to maximize our objectives. Two common objectives people have are to be happy and find meaning in their lives. We will discuss some techniques to manage and leverage emotions, as well as to cultivate happiness and meaning.
Negotiation Skills
The goal in these sessions is to help you enhance your negotiation skills. You will be introduced to the various theories and processes of negotiation. We will discuss negotiation principles that are based on research from the fields of psychology, social psychology, sociology, industrial organizational psychology, and organizational behavior. These sessions are designed to be relevant to a broad spectrum of negotiation problems that are faced by employees and organizational leaders. Specifically, you will develop the necessary skills to discover optimal solutions to problems faced in negotiations, and the best means to implement those solutions.
Legal Issues in Business
In this interactive session with experienced panelists, you will gain useful knowledge and sound advice related to:
- Contracting Issues – Given the power differences between a global corporation (and their legal team) and a small business, what can business owners ask of corporate clients? How should business owners approach the legal aspects of contracting from the initial contact to the completion of the contract?
- Merger and Acquisition issues – What are some issues entrepreneurs need to think about during due diligence and during the purchase phases.
- International Business – What are some leading issues that companies face as they go global.
- Business Formation – What are relative merits of being a corporation, LLC or partnership?
- HR – Facing labor shortages, what are some resources to tap into?
Facilitated Sessions with Program Sponsors and Alumni
Learn first-hand what the sponsors of the program value from their suppliers. Hear from program alumni on how they are applying their learning from the program and get advice on how best to leverage class connections and their expanded network.
Patrick Bettin
Associate Teaching Professor of Management
Adjunct Associate Professor, Dept of Psychology
Gregory Bigley
Associate Professor of Management
William Bradford
Professor Emeritus of Finance
Jean Choy
Associate Dean, Executive Education and International Initiatives
Associate Teaching Professor of Management
Emily Cox-Pahnke
Associate Professor of Management and Organization
Lawrence P. Hughes Endowed Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Crystal Farh
Professor of Management
Michael G. Foster Endowed Fellow
Faculty Director of the PhD Program
Andrew Hafenbrack
Associate Professor of Management and Organization
Evert McCabe Endowed Fellow
Jeff Shulman
Professor of Marketing
Lea Dunn
Assistant Professor of Marketing
Elizabeth Umphress
Faculty Director of Minority Business Executive Program
Professor of Management
Michael G. Foster Endowed Professor
Faculty Director of Consulting and Business Development Center
Some circumstances may require a change in the topic and/or faculty and other subject matter experts.
(Subject to Change)