Building and Scaling Successful Companies – the WHU founder lecture - E-(B-ba-m) - Q4

Participation Prerequisites

No prerequisites beyond a Bachelor degree in business-related subjects needed.

Course Content

After setting up a start-up company, founders usually face a series of challenges when developing their start-ups into truly operating organisations that employ an increasing number of people and develop a rising level of complexity as they grow and diversify geographically and in terms of product offering.

While there are many existing lectures on specific managerial functions in a more stable corporate context (Finance, Marketing, Sales, HR, Supply chain management, Accounting, Innovation management, etc) as well as lectures on general challenges of creating a start-up company (Idea origination, Business plan development, Proof of concept development, etc), this lecture aims at teaching insights on deeply functional topics in a rapid growth company context.

The course provides content-driven lectures by WHU alumni that have experienced these challenges as a founder/CEO/COO of a successful growth company (>100 Mio EUR revenue) and that have developed solutions for these functional challenges.

Students will be able to discuss real-world solutions to challenges in growth setups that are best in-class. Central coordination will ensure that lectures are building upon each other without overlaps. 

These lectures will provide students with in-depth knowledge on challenges in growth company setups and how to overcome them by content-driven functional solutions. Moreover, the lecture will foster students’ entrepreneurial mindset as to how challenges and risks can be managed.

Instruction Type

Presence

Form of Examination

Literature

There will be literature recommendations provided at the beginning of the course.