Student Stories
Find out what it's like to take an HBS Online course from current and past learners.
Find out what it's like to take an HBS Online course from current and past learners.
I’ve found HBS Online's courses to be immediately applicable to my work, and they’ve made me a more productive member of our strategic team.
While I originally enrolled in CORe to determine if I wanted to pursue an MBA, I ended up using the knowledge I gained from CORe to interview for and land my current job.
I really appreciate how Professor Christensen introduced high-level complex theories and broke them down into digestible chunks. When applied to real-world examples, the concepts are brought to life.
CORe goes well beyond the basics, but it isn't overwhelming. The classes are structured in a way that each lesson builds on the lessons before to reinforce everything you've learned. CORe also provides you with real world examples that illustrate the concepts. It's one of the most impressively organized programs I've ever been a part of.
I have also applied what I learned in setting up my own health company, LeadInShape. CORe helped me in interpreting data, researching different markets, and how to do my finances. Also, when I have to make decisions in my work or in business, I think of what I have learned in CORe.
Strategy Execution provides learners with tools and frameworks based on real-life business situations. This directly affects the value of the course, as the takeaways are applicable—not just theories you can learn in other courses.
The course masterfully interwove design thinking theory as a process with helpful tools and outstanding examples from practitioners and companies.
We are at a time in history where we need leaders now more than ever. Someone who has CORe on his or her resume is a leader, in my mind.
As someone who’s worked in a large company for the past 20-plus years, it gave me the foundation and vocabulary to engage more confidently in the venture capital and startup community.
Within five days of finishing the course, I had a plan of action for a major part of our business and presented it to our corporate executive. It applied the theories of the customers' Job to be Done and caused us to re-think our strategy to get the customer to “hire” us over the competition.
The course has given me the confidence to know that my suggestions have a solid business basis.
I will be starting my career this summer in the fin-tech industry and I felt that this course would give me a competitive edge, and help me to better understand some of the decisions and practices that I may need on the job to better gauge my clients’ needs
Mihir Desai was able to bring a relatively dry and inscrutable page of numbers to life in a highly engaging and interactive way. He has a great teaching style: clear, sharp, entertaining, and challenging. Mihir was able to truly engage our leaders of all levels of financial experience on the key levers of performance and how this applies to their own businesses.
A few weeks into the course, accounting terminology came alive as I realized why accounting is the language of business. I can now talk confidently with clients and understand the business aspect of their problems.
I feel like I have an unfair advantage now knowing what I've learned from this course. It has given me confidence and clarity in my decisions, and I can already see the material impact of applying this model and mindset to our business and our culture.
The course provides a blueprint for launching a tech startup. For a founder, an early joiner, or a venture capitalist, it’s like receiving the map and route that enables you to navigate the startup process and adapt to the realities that come up.
Sharing experiences and thoughts with other learners is the greatest value. Having so many smart people in one place with different cultures, habits, jobs, and education is a huge benefit. Take the opportunity to communicate.
Meet Doug, a Leading with Finance participant who took the course to advance his career and deepen his understanding of essential financial concepts.
The real-world examples were the best part of the courses. While going through the examples, I thought a lot about how I would have handled it if I were them. That plays a big role in how I do things now.
Being able to break down real-life scenarios, and look at the management processes within each—what worked and what didn't—provided a unique method of learning, and incomparable to other course offerings available.
The program offers a perfect blend of three fundamental courses.
This is an amazing course. The professor did a fantastic job dissecting the complexities of healthcare into chewable junks that made it easier to understand the complexities.
By learning these essential business skills, I now feel more prepared to advance scientific discoveries; raising capital, leading a team, developing strategic partnerships with established pharmaceuticals, and other crucial activities are now even clearer to me because of CORe.
Learning about concepts through real-life cases was my favorite part of the program. The cases really helped transform abstract concepts into observable situations one could learn from.
HBS Online doesn't teach you knowledge or prescribe to any cookie-cutter solutions to problems. Rather, it teaches you how to think about business problems and arrive at a solution yourself.
Adriel, a graduate of Berklee College of Music, explains how CORe is different from other online courses he's taken and discusses how the fundamental business skills he's learned in CORe have helped him connect the dots between his interests in music, marketing, and live entertainment.
The course content is well designed and helps investors get a basic understanding of what sustainable finance is, its challenges, the path forward, and its key players.
Weekly, I negotiate strategic partnerships for my company, and Negotiation Mastery has given me additional skills that I have put into practice and have resulted in much more successful agreements.
The virtual, interactive platform was unique. I was continuously engaged with the course's material and learned a lot from my peers.
CORe is giving me that extra lens I was missing: how products, services and other contents are created, consumed and exchanged from a business perspective.
The highlight of the program was the content. From the videos with guest business executives to the interactive elements to the way we're continually tested via cold calls, CORe keeps you engaged through and through.
The way Business Analytics blended numbers with the impact on business forecasting and improvement of business processes was simply amazing. The real-life cases from different spheres made the learning more insightful. The subject further helped affirm the power of data/numbers in analyzing and forecasting about a particular business initiative.
I am paying more attention to how my clients perceive the value of my services. I find myself rephrasing their statements to confirm their true needs.
My job is project-based, and I'm currently leading the operational functions of a system-wide IT implementation, a project that affects the daily work of a few thousand employees. Knowing how to read financial statements or look at data sets and understand them has helped me make major decisions on future state reporting.
I found myself constantly considering ways that my own company could immediately adapt and adopt some of those practices [from CORe].
My MBA was great, however, in five weeks we did not cover nearly as much content as with CORe, so this was a quintessential supplement.
I was able to use Business Analytics when a project on truck optimization for my site came up while I was enrolled in the course. I was able to apply the statistical concepts that I learned during the course to create an optimizer tool for truck usage and scheduling at the mine. This tool resulted in significant cost savings, which was highly valued by the site management team.
Economics for Managers gave me a new lens to look at the business world using common economics concepts, such as demand-supply curves, elasticity, equilibrium, markets, and pricing.
This was by far the most interactive course I have ever taken. I loved that the modules and field work put me in real-life situations, and the meetings with my professor and classmates tied it all together. It was a privilege to be part of it.
Whether working with Business Analytics, Financial Accounting, or Economics for Managers, I value the fact that we can apply concepts learned in the course to solving real issues encountered in and out of the workplace.
Now I see how to take control of the financial part of my business and also how I can apply strategy when I enter into a new market.
In Global Business, we learned about currencies, exchange rates, and tariffs, and it helped a lot. It’s one of the reasons Aphrodite supports 50 currencies now.
What I found most valuable were the methods and tools, which were useful and practical. I’ve already applied some of my learning at my job.
This course is excellent for executives and managers who constantly grapple with finding new ways to make their work impactful and useful for their target audience.
The subjects taught in CORe are brand new for me. This first week has been a real challenge. Yet, that is part of the fun.
The course surpassed my expectations…I actually regret not having more time to fully utilize all the optional features!
Meet Holden, a CORe participant who took the program to help with the transition from military to civilian life.
I am applying concepts from the Business Analytics course in my current venture. From designing surveys to hypothesis testing, every aspect of data collection and analysis informs our customer validation process.
This part of the course was exceptionally entertaining, and by putting this human element in place, it enhanced the real life importance of understanding finance at a high level.
If you're looking for more information on how Harvard Business School Online programs can teach you the essential skills you need for success, request more information today.