15 Free Online Business Courses You Can Take From Harvard, Yale, MIT and Other Amazing Schools Check out these free online courses from some of the most prestigious schools in the world.
By Dan Bova
Ask any leader or successful entrepreneur, and they will tell you that it is critical to always be learning. It is no coincidence that people like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey ravenously consume dozens of books a year, and that financial giants like Warren Buffett say they devote 6 hours a day to reading and studying.
The great thing about continuing education is that it doesn't have to require taking on massive tuition debt. Books and audiobooks are readily available through free library apps like Libby, and many organizations -- some of the most prestigious in the world, in fact -- offer free online courses for anyone who has the drive and desire to expand their horizons.
What follows are some incredible classes that tie directly to the needs of entrepreneurs. All you need is an internet connection and the will to grow. As the poet W.B. Yeats once wrote, "Education is not the filling of a pot but the lighting of a fire."
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Virojt Changyencham | Getty ImagesFree online course: Introduction to Financial and Managerial Accounting
Offered by: MIT
Course description: "Studies basic concepts of financial and managerial reporting. The viewpoint is that of readers of financial and managerial reports rather than the accountants who prepare them."
Bloom Productions | Getty ImagesFree online course: Inventions and Patents
Offered by: MIT
Course description: "This course explores the history of private and public rights in scientific discoveries and applied engineering, leading to the development of worldwide patent systems. The classes of invention protectable under the patent laws of the U.S., including the procedures in protecting inventions in the Patent Office and the courts will be examined."
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Alexander Kirch | EyeEm | Getty ImagesFree online course: Law for the Entrepreneur and Manager
Offered by: MIT
Course description: "This course provides a basic understanding of legal issues that corporations face during their existence. The course starts by providing the basic building blocks of business law. We then follow a firm through its life cycle from its "breakaway' from an established firm through it going public...The goal of the course is not to impart technical legal skills, but to enhance the judgment which students will bring to their responsibilities as entrepreneurs, managers in established companies, or consultants and advisors."
krisanapong detraphiphat | Getty ImagesFree online course: New Enterprises
Offered by: MIT
Course description: "This course covers the process of identifying and quantifying market opportunities, then conceptualizing, planning, and starting a new, technology-based enterprise. Students develop detailed business plans for a startup. It is intended for students who want to start their own business, further develop an existing business, be a member of a management team in a new enterprise, or better understand the entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial process."
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Westend61 | Getty ImagesFree online course: Entrepreneurial Marketing
Offered by: MIT
Course description: "This course clarifies key marketing concepts, methods, and strategic issues relevant for start-up and early-stage entrepreneurs. At this course, there are two major questions: 1. Marketing Question: What and how am I selling to whom? 2. New Venture Question: How do I best leverage my limited marketing recourses?"
andresr | Getty ImagesFree online course: How To Write a Business Plan
Offered by: Small Business Administration
Course description: "This course explains the importance of business planning, defines and describes the components of a business plan, and provides access to sample plans and resources that can help you develop a very good business plan."
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fizkes | Getty ImagesFree online course: Financing Options for Small Businesses
Offered by: Small Business Administration
Course description: "This self-paced training exercise is an introduction to financing options for your business. Topics include: determining your financial needs, loans, grants, venture capital, angel investors, crowdfunding and other financial options available to small businesses."
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Westend61 | Getty ImagesFree online course: Take Your Business Global
Offered by: Small Business Administration
Course description: "This training program is about international markets and exporting. It is a practical, self-paced course packed with business information as well as real-world examples and helpful tips. The course is intended to be a guide for small businesses to help determine if exporting -- as a business strategy -- makes sense and whether the basic ingredients for export readiness are in-place."
d3sign | Getty ImagesFree online course: Financial Markets
Offered by: Yale University
Course description: "An overview of the ideas, methods, and institutions that permit human society to manage risks and foster enterprise. Description of practices today and analysis of prospects for the future. Introduction to risk management and behavioral finance principles to understand the functioning of securities, insurance, and banking industries."
Pattanaphong Khuankaew | EyeEm | Getty ImagesFree online course: Game Theory
Offered by: Yale University
Course description: "This course is an introduction to game theory and strategic thinking. Ideas such as dominance, backward induction, Nash equilibrium, evolutionary stability, commitment, credibility, asymmetric information, adverse selection, and signaling are discussed and applied to games played in class and to examples drawn from economics, politics, the movies, and elsewhere."
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Hero Images | Getty ImagesFree online course: Contract Law -- From Trust to Promise to Contract
Offered by: Harvard University
Course description: "Learn about contracts from Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried, one of the world's leading authorities on contract law. Contracts are promises that the law will enforce. But when will the law refuse to honor a promise? What happens when one party does not hold to their part of the deal? This version of the course adds new units on Interpretation, Agency, Partnerships, Corporations, and Government Regulation."
Andrey Suslov | Getty ImagesFree online course: Data Science -- Productivity Tools
Offered by: Harvard University
Course description: "A typical data analysis project may involve several parts, each including several data files and different scripts with code. Keeping all this organized can be challenging. Part of our Professional Certificate Program in Data Science, this course explains how to use Unix/Linux as a tool for managing files and directories on your computer and how to keep the file system organized. You will be introduced to the version control systems git, a powerful tool for keeping track of changes in your scripts and reports. We also introduce you to GitHub and demonstrate how you can use this service to keep your work in a repository that facilitates collaborations."
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Pinkypills | Getty ImagesFree online course: Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies
Offered by: Harvard University
Course description: "This business and management course, taught by Harvard Business School professor Tarun Khanna, takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and solving complex social problems. You will learn about prior attempts to address these problems, identify points of opportunity for smart entrepreneurial efforts, and propose and develop your own creative solutions. The focus of this course is on individual agency—what can you do to address a defined problem? While we will use the lens of health to explore entrepreneurial opportunities, you will learn how both problems and solutions are inevitably of a multi-disciplinary nature, and we will draw on a range of sectors and fields of study."
Hiraman | Getty ImagesFree online course: CS50's Computer Science for Business Professionals
Offered by: Harvard University
Course description: "This is CS50's introduction to computer science for business professionals, designed for managers, product managers, founders, and decision-makers more generally. Whereas CS50 itself takes a bottom-up approach, emphasizing mastery of low-level concepts and implementation details thereof, this course takes a top-down approach, emphasizing mastery of high-level concepts and design decisions related thereto. Through lectures on computational thinking, programming languages, internet technologies, web development, technology stacks, and cloud computing, this course empowers you to make technological decisions even if not a technologist yourself. You'll emerge from this course with a first-hand appreciation of how it all works and all the more confident in the factors that should guide your decision-making."
mapodile | Getty ImagesFree online course: Entrepreneurship Through the Lens of Venture Capital
Offered by: Stanford
Course description: "The course explores how successful startups navigate funding, managing, and scaling their new enterprise. This process is explored through guest lectures and mentorship from experienced venture capital investors and seasoned entrepreneurs who manage these issues on a daily basis in Silicon Valley."
