"The Ten Day MBA" by Steven Silbiger

• The basics of MBA knowledge fall into nine disciplines.
• marketing
• ethics
• accounting
• organizational behavior
• quantitative analysis
• finance
• operations
• economics
• strategy
• Determining the buyer as well as the user provides the essential initial insights to create a marketing plan.
• There are five major key competitive factors that constitute the battleground in most industries:
• quality
• price
• advertising
• research and development
• service
• If your company has many products within a category, then you are said to have depth of line.
• If your company has many products in a variety of product classes, you are said to have breadth of product line.
• Positioning begins with the product’s name. The name should be descriptive, to establish the main benefit in the consumer’s mind.
• Reach and frequency are key ;quantitative measurements of media goals. Reach is the percentage of the target market who see and hear your promotion or advertisement. Frequency is the number of ties they saw or heard it.
• You can charge the customer the value provided, regardless of its cost.
• Using cash basis accounting, transactions are recorded only when cash changes hands.
• Accrual accounting recognizes the financial effect of an activity when the activity takes place without regard to the movement of cash.
• There must be reasonable and verifiable evidence to support the transaction, or else it does not get recorded.
• When in doubt, be conservative. Accounting records contain only measurable and verifiable properties, debts, sales, and costs.
• Assets are the resources that the company posses for the future benefit of the business.
• Liabilities are dollar-specific obligations to repay borrowing, debts, and other obligations to provide goods or services to others.
• Owner’s equity is the accumulated dollar measure of the owner’s investment in the company.
• The fundamental equation that rules over accounting balance is: assets (A) = liabilities (L) + owner’s equity (OE).
• Liquidity means the ability of an asset to be converted to cash.
• Owner’s are paid only after all other debt payments are made.
• The goal of an effective MBA is to find the most important problems and solve those first.
• The VCM leadership model proposes that the following three characteristics are part of a leader’s personal profile:
• vision
• commitment
• management skills
• One of the most valuable skills is to be able to really listen. Active listening helps you to gain a clear perception of situations so that you can effectively deal with them.
• Management of the relationship upward is as important as managing your relationship below.
• There are actually five types of power:
• coercive
• reward
• referent
• legitimate
• expert
• Strategy describes an explicit or implicit plan for success in the marketplace.
• Above all, MBAs should think before they act. When MBAs need to take action, they should thoroughly analyze the situation, first from the perspective of the individual and then from an organization vantage point, to create a coordinated and effective action plan.
• A dollar today is worth more than a dollar received in the future.
• There are three basic legal business structure that entities take on in the United States.
• A proprietorship, commonly called a sole proprietorship, is a business owned by an individual or husband and wife.
• When several individuals from a business, they often enter into a partnership.
• In a general partnership active owners, called general partners, have unlimited liability for all business debts.
• Corporations, registered with a state, are legal entities that are separate from the individuals who own them.
• A basic tenant of finance dictates that the return should be commensurate with the risk.
• The efficient market hypothesis (EMH) alleges that to varying degrees the market reflects all current information.
• If two companies decide to join forces to become one company, this is called a merger.
• If one company buys another company, it is called an acquisition. If both parties agree to the purchase, it is called a friendly acquisition; if not, it is called a hostile takeover.
• The guiding principle of financial management is to maximize the firm’s value by financing cash needs at the least cost possible, at a level of risk that management can live with.
• The faster a company can turn out a new product to meet consumer demand, the better the corporation will compete in the market place.
• Rapid cycle times are a competitive advantage and a hot MBA topic.
• Opportunity cost, therefore, is the cost of choice, when output, time, and money are limited.
• If a business has the opportunity to sell even a single additional unit at a profit, it should produce it.
• Utility is a term used to describe the value of a product to a consumer.
• Marginal utility means the usefulness or utility of having an additional unit of a product.
• A comparative advantage of a nation is its ability to produce a product at a lower cost than its trading partners.
• The fives forces that drive industry competition are:
• threat of substitutes
• threat of new entrants
• bargaining power of suppliers
• bargaining power of buyers
• intensity of rivalry among competitors
• The key to efficient and productive research is to know where to seek information.
• Being an effective leader involves having the self-confidence to make decisions, motivation others, and assuming responsibility for your actions.