Blog Masonry 3 Columns No Sidebar

This course critically examines entrepreneurship by providing background understanding of the nature and value of entrepreneurship in economies, and to encourage thinking about ideas, considerations of the commercial world, creativity and innovation.

The course is divided into nine modules. The first two modules of the course explore theories of entrepreneurship and the role of business in the economy and society. The remaining modules in the course consolidate knowledge and understanding of the entrepreneurial process and develop core skills applicable to entrepreneurship, such as team working, communication, initiative, creativity, analysis, problem identification and solving.

A key focus of the course is for students to generate and develop their own business ideas, critically analyse these and investigate feasibility further developing business skills applicable to entrepreneurship, such as opportunity recognition, marketing research and presenting.

Topics include:

• Introduction to Entrepreneurship theories and concepts
• Where is entrepreneurship and what is it for
• Creativity and idea generation
• The external environment
• Industry, markets and competitor analysis
• Intellectual property and business structure
• Operational considerations and resourcing
• Sources of finance and analysis
• Pitching your feasibility study

The Entrepreneurship and Creativity course aims are two-fold: first, it will develop a baseline understanding of the enterprise environment and its value in an economy; second, it will develop skills in creativity, ideas development and refinement and commercial application.

The ability to interpret business data is vital for market success. Not only will this course help you organise and understand the all-important numbers, it will enable you to use those figures to make sound business decisions.

Topics include:

• Simple uses and misuses of statistics.
• School mathematics applied to management.
• Data communication.
• Data analysis.
• Summary measures.
• Sampling methods.
• Distributions.
• Statistical inference.
• More distributions.
• Analysis of variance.
• Regression and correlation.
• Advanced regression analysis.
• The context of forecasting.
• Time series techniques.
• Managing forecasts.

Mergers and acquisitions rarely create shareholder value. Which begs the obvious question: why not? In examining real case studies, as well as innovative theoretical approaches, Mergers and Acquisitions will help executives to make better M&A decisions in the future.

Topics include:

• Strategic focus.
• Why mergers fail.
• Valuation.
• Bid tactics.
• Due diligence.
• The concept of implementation.
• Project management of implementation.
• Developing the implementation plan.
• Executing the implementation plan.

The rationale for this course is straightforward: to provide executives with the tools they need to analyse, control and reduce business risk in volatile financial and commodity markets.

Topics include:

• Risk and the management of the firm.
• The markets.
• Market mechanisms and efficiency.
• Interest-rate risk.
• Currency risk.
• Equity and commodity price risk.
• The behaviour of asset prices.
• Risk assessment.
• Controlling risk.
• Quantifying financial risks.
• Financial methods for measuring risk.
• Qualitative approaches to risk assessment.

In order to transfer and mitigate risk, a company will often turn to financial instruments such as derivatives, including forward contracts, futures, options and swaps. This course will give financial executives an understanding of what derivatives can achieve and how they are priced.

Topics include:

• The derivatives building blocks.
• Terminal instruments.
• Forward contracts.
• Futures.
• Swaps.
• The basics of options.
• Option pricing.
• The Black–Scholes option-pricing model.
• ‘The Greeks of option pricing’.
• Extensions to the basic option-pricing model.
• Using derivatives and hedging.
• Hedging and insurance.
• Using the derivatives product set.

Providing an understanding of the credit process and the management of financial distress. The course will examine credit risk modelling, the assessment and management of credit risk and the problems that companies face during financial distress and bankruptcy.

Topics include:

• Introduction to credit risk management
• Understanding financial statements
• Ratio analysis
• Expert and ratio systems
• Credit scoring and modelling default
• Market-based credit models
• Market default models
• Managing credit risk in a corporate environment
• Financial distress
• Bankruptcy