business strategy course

[jj1428]

Is anyone taking the excelsior business startegy course??? its taking me so long to do the discussion each week.... any advice??

[pixaloop]

I'm taking the course. I don't really have any advice other than to plow through it. What do for the quiz is take it soon after reading the chapter so it's still fresh in your mind.

As for the discussions, Maybe you can wait for others to post before posting yourself. It might inspire some ideas or give you help on how to proceed.

[bkahuna]

I worked all of the dscussions in advance as much as I could. I would recommend that you dont wait until Thursday night to do the posts like many of the students in my class did.

To do this course justice there is a LOT of outside reading, but I was able to draw on companies that I had experience with or knew about through my years of reading the news and working in a brokerage. If you see an example of one of the companies you want to discuss, get the annual report and read the first few 'synopsis' type pages. Though these might not tell you the whole story (i.e. Coca-cola owns no bottlers, but pepsi owns them all), its a good starting place and normally the CEO writes the material.

Reading Annual Reports is an underrated skill. Many people who purchase stock in a company never read those, which is a real shame. They tell you all about what your investment really is and who is running the show.

The purpose of this course really is a marathon rather than a sprint. I would also recommend that you know how each chapter relates to the company in your case study and make notes/drafts of that as you go.