Learning Objectives

The main objective of the course is to help you develop a business mindset, and to offer you an overview of the core business topics, together with a set of basic principles and tools–think about them as a sort of map–that will guide your learning journey during the next years at IE University. The course has three specific objectives: first, to understand what is the economic environment that a firm faces; second, to understand what a firm is, with a particular emphasis on how it is structured, governed, and on the role played by managers at several levels; third, to dig deeper inside the firm, by understanding its main functional areas and how each of these works. The course will also introduce some basic concepts of business and corporate strategy, ethics and corporate social responsibility, and platform competition in the digital era. Moreover, the course will give you the opportunity to put your knowledge into practice through the discussion of case studies and a final group-project and presentation on a real company. During the course, you will be guided by IE professors with many years of experience in the academic and business world.