Start-ups are designed to grow quickly, but successful start-ups grow smart. This course is designed to provide you with an understanding of the essential elements of successful scaling, including an overview of demand generation, customer acquisition, adoption, diffusion and forecasting demand. You’ll also learn how to market effectively using best practices of digital marketing, social media, PR, SEO, and pricing. Finally, you’ll cover the nuts and bolts of building a sales process, partnerships and supply relationships, and examine the crucial components of attracting, developing and retaining talent. By the end of this course, you’ll have an outline of an expansion strategy for your idea or enterprise, and also be ready for Entrepreneurship 4: Financing and Profitability
This course is part of the Entrepreneurship Specialization
Entrepreneurship 3: Growth Strategies
Offered By
About this Course
4.7
783 ratings
Skills you will gain
Strategic ManagementGrowth StrategiesMarketingEntrepreneurship
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Week
12 hours to complete
Module 1: Acquiring Customers and Forecasting Demand
This first module focuses on strategies to acquire customers and understand product demand when a start-up is in growth mode. You’ll learn foundational economic concepts in customer acquisition, including customer value over time, customer lifetime value and ROI, and customer equity. You’ll also learn about the key theory of “two-sided markets” and explore how entrepreneurs can build these markets through pricing and subsidization. Even the most exciting and useful new products and services face challenges in convincing people to adopt them, and so you'll explore actionable research and examples that explain the rate of diffusion, the adoption of new products, and ways to attack the challenge of forecasting demand. By the end of this module, you’ll have a solid grounding in the core concerns of start-ups as they move from launch to growth.
5 videos (Total 78 min), 1 reading, 1 quiz
5 videos
Overview of Demand Generation, Customer Acquisition23m
Two-Sided Markets14m
Diffusion and Adoption15m
Forecasting Demand23m
1 reading
Acquiring Customers and Forecasting Demand Slides10m
1 practice exercise
Acquiring Customers and Forecasting Demand Quiz20m
Week
22 hours to complete
Module 2: Marketing and PR
In this module, you'll explore the strategies modern start-ups use to get the word out about new products and services. You'll learn the three primary modes of digital marketing (owned, paid, and earned), and when and how these media options can be utilized by a start-up. You'll also learn how to harness the powers of social media, search engine optimization (SEO), “sponsored” search engine results, display ads and social ads. Finally, you'll understand how to leverage free media and assess the pros and cons of engaging PR firms. By the end of this module, you'll be able to develop digital marketing and pr strategies for your enterprise.
5 videos (Total 69 min), 1 reading, 1 quiz
1 reading
Digital Marketing, Social Media, SEO, Digital Ads and PR Slides10m
1 practice exercise
Marketing and PR Quiz20m
Week
32 hours to complete
Module 3: Cost Structures, Pricing, and Tracking
This module was designed to give you a strong foundation in the economics around growing a start-up, including how to understand and implement cost targets, pricing strategies, and outcome measurement. You’ll learn the math behind creating cost targets and margin requirements (whether your product or service will be sold via retailers or some other channel), the principles that guide pricing of products and services, and how to implement the “four Cs” of pricing while measuring price sensitivity. You'll also explore how to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine whether your business is thriving or failing, how to efficiently grow a customer base through sales partnerships, and how to decide whether to make your own products/components or purchase them from a third party. By the end of this module, you will possess the foundational economic knowledge that informs the cost, price, sales, and production strategies used by successful entrepreneurs today.
5 videos (Total 84 min), 1 reading, 1 quiz
5 videos
How to Price the Product or Service27m
Performance Measurement, KPIs, Dashboard, Reporting11m
Sales Partnerships9m
Make-Buy Decision in Operations14m
1 reading
Cost Structures, Pricing, and Tracking Slides10m
1 practice exercise
Cost Structures, Pricing, and Tracking Quiz20m
Week
42 hours to complete
Module 4: Creating and Scaling Company Culture
This module explores the best approaches for attracting and retaining talent, creating a company culture that is conducive to growth, and how company founders and early employees can learn to delegate authority and manage the people-based growing pains that many start-ups experience. You'll learn how to scale up strategically, and how to you decide whether to expand to different segments once you establish a foothold in your target segment. You'll also examine the differences between vertical expansion and horizontal expansion, and learn how to decide which path to pursue. By the end of this module, you’ll be equipped to make the tough decisions required to manage a start-up’s personnel roster and strategic direction as your business grows.
5 videos (Total 63 min), 1 reading, 1 quiz
5 videos
Building the Right Culture for Growth15m
Scaling the Organization15m
Venture Scope and Expansion Strategy16m
Course Wrap-Up58s
1 reading
Creating and Scaling Company Culture Slides10m
1 practice exercise
Creating and Scaling Company Culture Quiz20m
4.7
82 Reviews83%
started a new career after completing these courses
67%
got a tangible career benefit from this course
38%
got a pay increase or promotion
Top Reviews
Useful techniques to thoroughly introspect one's organization, no matter one is an entrepreneur, a manager in an established firm, or even a college student.
Very Well done course. In its simplicity it is able to provide awesome tips for a such vast and complex subject. The professors are very very good.
Instructors
Kartik Hosanagar
ProfessorWharton School
Lori Rosenkopf
Vice Dean and Director, Wharton Undergraduate DivisionSimon and Midge Palley Professor of Management
David Hsu
Richard A. Sapp Professor of ManagementThe Wharton School
Ethan Mollick
Associate ProfessorAssociate Professor of Management- Wharton School
David Bell
Xinmei Zhang and Yongge Dai Professor, Professor of MarketingMarketing
Karl T. Ulrich
Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship and InnovationThe Wharton School
About University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (commonly referred to as Penn) is a private university, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. A member of the Ivy League, Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and considers itself to be the first university in the United States with both undergraduate and graduate studies.
About the Entrepreneurship Specialization
Wharton's Entrepreneurship Specialization covers the conception, design, organization, and management of new enterprises. This four-course series is designed to take you from opportunity identification through launch, growth, financing and profitability. With guidance from Wharton's top professors, along with insights from current Wharton start-up founders and financiers, you'll develop an entrepreneurial mindset and hone the skills you need to develop a new enterprise with potential for growth and funding, or to identify and pursue opportunities for growth within an existing organization.
Frequently Asked Questions
When will I have access to the lectures and assignments?
Once you enroll for a Certificate, you’ll have access to all videos, quizzes, and programming assignments (if applicable). Peer review assignments can only be submitted and reviewed once your session has begun. If you choose to explore the course without purchasing, you may not be able to access certain assignments.
What will I get if I subscribe to this Specialization?
When you enroll in the course, you get access to all of the courses in the Specialization, and you earn a certificate when you complete the work. Your electronic Certificate will be added to your Accomplishments page - from there, you can print your Certificate or add it to your LinkedIn profile. If you only want to read and view the course content, you can audit the course for free.
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Is financial aid available?
More questions? Visit the Learner Help Center.
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