The Default Library
Paths / Path 27

Business Administration

How an organisation turns people, money and ideas into something customers will pay for, and keeps doing it.

For: anyone starting the degree or an MBA, anyone running or joining a company, anyone who wants to read a balance sheet.

Shaped by Wharton's undergraduate "Business Fundamentals" core (accounting, statistics, finance, managerial economics, legal studies, management, marketing, operations) and the first-year Required Curriculum at Harvard Business School (finance, financial reporting, leadership, marketing, operations, strategy, entrepreneurship, the global economy).

16readings
3.4 hoursof reading
4stages
15 reads · 1 deep dive
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Stage 1

Year 1 · The language

5 readings · 1 hours
  1. 01ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Accounting: Every Transaction Has Two Sides

    Accounting is the language of business: three statements tell you how a firm is really doing.
  2. 02ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Microeconomics: Why Nothing Is Free and Every Price Is a Message

    Every price, cost and competitor obeys the logic of markets.
  3. 03ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Macroeconomics: The Economy as One Machine, and Why It Stalls

    Interest rates, inflation and the cycle are the weather every business works in.
  4. 04ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Probability & Statistics: Reasoning with Uncertainty

    Forecasts, samples and A/B tests are statistics.
  5. 05ReadInteractiveQuiz10 min

    Calculus I: Slopes, Totals and the Bridge Between Them

    Margins, growth rates and compounding are calculus in disguise.
Stage 2

Year 2 · The functions

5 readings · 1.1 hours
  1. 06ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Corporate Finance: The Price of Time and Risk

    A pound today beats a pound tomorrow; valuing that difference is finance.
  2. 07ReadInteractiveQuiz11 min

    Marketing Management: Finding the Customer, Not Shouting at Them

    Who the customer is, what they value, and how to reach them.
  3. 08ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Operations Management: Where Work Waits

    Every business is a process, and every process has a bottleneck.
  4. 09ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Organizational Behavior & Leadership: People Are the System

    Organisations are people: motivation, teams, decisions and culture.
  5. 10Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min

    Business Law & Ethics: Who Is Allowed to Do What, and Who Pays When It Goes Wrong

    Contracts, companies, liability and the duties managers owe.
Stage 3

Year 3 · Strategy

4 readings · 48 min
  1. 11ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Strategy & Competition: Why Some Firms Keep Their Profits

    Why some firms earn profits for decades and others are competed down to nothing.
  2. 12ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Game Theory: When Your Best Move Depends on Mine

    Competitors, suppliers and negotiators all play games; learn the rules.
  3. 13ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Behavioral Economics: How People Actually Choose

    Customers, employees and managers are predictably irrational.
  4. 14ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Econometrics: How to Find What Caused What

    Did the campaign cause the sales, or did summer? How to tell.
Stage 4

Year 4 · Building

2 readings · 27 min
  1. 15ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    International Trade & Finance: Why Countries Swap, and Why Currencies Swing

    Supply chains, exchange rates and tariffs make every business international.
  2. 16ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Entrepreneurship: How to Be Wrong Cheaply

    Starting something new: the capstone of the degree.
When you finish

Harvard Business School cases (sold individually), MIT OpenCourseWare Sloan courses, free; then the textbooks named at the end of each subject. See also the library's 04 Starting a Business and 03 Personal Finance.

Next path →

Marketing

How people decide what to buy, and how organisations earn a place in their minds honestly.