Get a stronger grip on competitive dynamics and the importance of understanding your competitor. Professor Roberto guides you through powerful lessons from three situations where new entrants did battle with incumbents: NutraSweet with Holland Sweetener Company; British Airways and Aer Lingus with Ryanair; and another perspective on Blockbuster versus Netflix.

Add to your marketing toolkit some of the principles and strategies of an effective communications plan, with a look at some successful (and unsuccessful) ad campaigns, including the California Milk Processor Board's famous Got Milk" campaign. Also, get tips on how to command consumers' attentions without turning them off.

Production operations are the greatest value-adding activity in all of business. Whether you're making the product yourself or through others, explore the decisions involved in successful production operations, and get a glimpse at developments to look for in the future, including 3-D printing and reshoring.

Sales and operations (S&OP) planning integrates a company's sales forecasts with the operations plans from the purchasing, production, and logistics departments. Learn how qualitative and quantitative forecasts are used to gather and share information; how the principles of S&OP can help you better match your supply and demand; and more.

Begin your focus on finance with an insightful look at the time value of money. Along with basic concepts and terminology (including risk and present/future value), you'll learn about the five types of cash flows that should be in the business student's toolkit, including lump sums, annuities, and perpetuities.

You've mastered segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Now learn how to grow and increase your sales using the 2x2 Ansoff matrix-one of the most powerful ideas in marketing. In the process, you'll learn piercing insights into the interactions between customers (current and new), product development, diversification, and more.

Five essential forces shape any business strategy, and together, they create a framework that can help you better make key strategic choices. Central to this discussion of these five strategic forces: Apple's meteoric rise to the top of the market.

Passionate customers, tremendous profits, happy employees-the Trader Joe's grocery chain is a powerful business success story. Discover how their secret for success lies in their use of trade-offs to make it hard for imitators and to mitigate the negative effects of the industry.

Turn now to service operations, the successful management of which takes into account the psychology of winning customers through great experiences. From the Service Quality Scale to the details of process improvement, find out how to seize the movement where services are increasingly dominating the 21st-century business landscape.

This introductory lecture unpacks some key concepts in accounting and finance; dispels some common myths about accounting; and gives you a helpful overview of three essential statements companies routinely prepare to communicate critical financial data to shareholders and owners.