Business · Intermediate
MBA Core
The eight first-year subjects, reduced to what you must be able to recall.
What you will learn
The 12 topics inside MBA Core
Each topic has its own goal, its own questions and its own mastery score, so you always know which part is still weak.
Business ethics and governance
Evaluate stakeholder trade-offs and governance responsibilities.
Business statistics
Read evidence without over-claiming.
Corporate finance
Value a cash flow and reason about capital.
Entrepreneurship and new ventures
Apply lean startup method and venture financing fundamentals.
Financial accounting
Read the three statements and how they connect.
International business
Analyse cross-border trade, currency exposure and cultural distance.
Managerial economics
Use marginal thinking on real decisions.
Marketing
Segment, position and price deliberately.
Negotiation and bargaining
Apply BATNA, ZOPA and integrative bargaining to real deals.
Operations
Find the constraint and reason about flow.
Organizational behavior
Explain how incentives and structure drive behaviour.
Strategy
Explain why some industries and firms earn more.
Example questions
Real questions from this course
These are taken straight from the course. Pick an answer, then open the explanation to see why it is right.
Sample 01
Why is it flawed to use a firm's current Weighted Average Cost of Capital as an unadjusted discount rate for every new project the firm undertakes?
Show the answer and why
Answer: The discount rate must reflect the specific business risk of the project rather than the average firm-wide risk profile.
Cost of capital must match the specific risk of the asset being acquired, defending against the misconception that WACC is a fixed constant across all project evaluations.
The Weighted Average Cost of Capital reflects the firm's average business risk and financial structure, so applying it indiscriminately ignores differences in project risk. A project with higher systematic risk requires a higher hurdle rate to account for its distinct risk profile.
Sample 02
Which operational environments can validly apply Little's Law to relate inventory, throughput, and flow time?
Show the answer and why
Answer: Any stable process operating in steady state across manufacturing or services.
Learners often incorrectly assume Little's Law only applies to factories. However, it holds universally for any stable process in steady state across both manufacturing and service sectors.
Little's Law applies to any stable process, regardless of whether it is a manufacturing plant, a hospital emergency room, or a software help desk. As long as the system is in steady state, average work-in-process equals throughput multiplied by flow time.
Sample 03
Why do managerial economic models distinguish between pure perfect competition and real-world market structures?
Show the answer and why
Answer: Real markets are dominated by monopolistic competition or oligopoly, giving firms varying degrees of market power.
Perfect competition is a theoretical benchmark rather than a descriptive reality for most industries. This defends against the misconception that most real markets are perfectly competitive.
Pure perfect competition requires conditions like identical products and full information that rarely exist in practice. Instead, most firms operate in markets characterised by oligopoly or monopolistic competition where firms exercise some pricing power.
MBA Core is free with an account, along with every other course in the library.
Start free