Complete MBA For Dummies

433 Pages·2000·8.26 MB·English

by  Peter Economy

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Complete MBA
FOR
DUMmIES
‰
2
ND EDITION
by Kathleen Allen,PhD,
USC Marshall Business School
and Peter Economy
Coauthor,Managing For Dummies,2nd Edition,and
Building Your Own Home For Dummies
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Complete MBA For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
111 River St.
Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published simultaneously in Canada
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About the Authors
Kathleen R. Allen, PhD,is the author of Entrepreneurship and Small Business
Management,3rd Ed.,Launching New Ventures,5th Ed., Bringing New Technology
to Market,and Growing and Managing an Entrepreneurial Business,as well as
several other trade books. As a Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Lloyd
Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, based in the Marshall School of
Business at the University of Southern California, Allen has helped hundreds
of entrepreneurs start their ventures. At USC, she’s also director of the Marshall
Center for Technology Commercialization, where she works with scientists
and engineers to help bring their inventions to market. As an entrepreneur
herself, Allen has co-founded four companies and is presently the co-founder
and president of N2TEC Institute, which is dedicated to technology-based
economic development in rural areas of the United States (www.n2tec.org).
Allen holds a PhD from USC, an MBA, and a master’s degree in Romance
Languages.
Peter Economy(La Jolla, CA) is Associate Editor for the Apex Award–winning
magazine Leader to Leader,a member of the National Advisory Council of the
Creativity Connection of the Arts and Business Council of Americans for the
Arts, a member of the board of directors of SPORTS for Exceptional Athletes
(www.s4ea.org), and bestselling co-author of The SAIC Solution: How We
Built an $8 Billion Employee-Owned Technology Company. He has also worked
on more than 30 other books, including Managing For Dummies,2nd Ed., The
Management Bible,Enterprising Nonprofits: A Toolkit for Social Entrepreneurs,
andWriting Children’s Books For Dummies.Peter invites you to visit him at his
Web site: www.petereconomy.com.
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Dedication
To the visionary business people who are infusing the entrepreneurial spirit
into organizations –– here, and around the world.
Authors’ Acknowledgments
We would like to give our sincere thanks and appreciation to our talented
publishing team at Wiley –– particularly Joyce Pepple, Stacy Kennedy, Chad
Sievers, and Josh Dials. Kathleen would like to thank her husband John and
kids Rob, Jaime, and Greg, who have always been champs about putting up
with an author in the house. Peter would like to thank his wife Jan and kids
Peter, Sky, and Jackson, for being a constant source of wonder, love, and
amusement, as well as his mother Betty Economy for helping to pay for his
MBA courses. Will the circle be unbroken?
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Publisher’s Acknowledgments
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online registration
form located at www.dummies.com/register/.
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Composition Services
Development
Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees
Project Editor: Chad R. Sievers
Layout and Graphics: Reuben W. Davis,
(Previous Edition: Tim Gallan) Melissa K. Jester, Barbara Moore,
Christine Williams
Acquisitions Editor: Stacy Kennedy
Anniversary Logo Design:Richard Pacifico
Copy Editor: Josh Dials
Proofreader: Tricia Liebig
(Previous Edition: Tina Sims)
Indexer: Broccoli Information Management
Editorial Program Coordinator:
Erin Calligan Mooney
Technical Editor: Matthew Will, PhD, MBA
Editorial Manager: Michelle Hacker
Editorial Assistants:Joe Niesen,
LeeAnn Harney
Cartoons: Rich Tennant
(www.the5thwave.com)
Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies
Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher, Consumer Dummies
Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director, Consumer Dummies
Kristin A. Cocks, Product Development Director, Consumer Dummies
Michael Spring, Vice President and Publisher, Travel
Kelly Regan,Editorial Director, Travel
Publishing for Technology Dummies
Andy Cummings,Vice President and Publisher, Dummies Technology/General User
Composition Services
Gerry Fahey,Vice President of Production Services
Debbie Stailey,Director of Composition Services
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Contents at a Glance
Introduction.................................................................1
Part I: The New, Improved World of Business..................7
Chapter 1: The MBA in a Nutshell....................................................................................9
Chapter 2:Today’s Hottest Business Trends................................................................19
Chapter 3:Entrepreneurship for Everyone...................................................................31
Chapter 4: Global Business: Fun and Profit in Katmandu...........................................51
Chapter 5:Polish Your Crystal Ball for Some Strategic Planning...............................69
Part II: Managing a Business in the New World............91
Chapter 6:Managing Is Hard; Leading Is Even Harder................................................93
Chapter 7: Carrots and Sticks: The ABCs of Motivating Employees........................113
Chapter 8:Hiring and Firing: How to Get Good Employees and Keep Them.........131
Chapter 9:One for All and All for One: Building Teams That Really Work.............151
Part III: Money: What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You....167
Chapter 10:All You Ever Wanted to Know about Accounting..................................169
Chapter 11: Working Your Way through Financial Statements.................................191
Chapter 12:Deciphering the Mysteries of Financial Planning and Analysis..........203
Chapter 13:Understanding Stocks and Bonds...........................................................225
Chapter 14: It Takes Money to Make Money...............................................................243
Part IV: Marketing in the New World.........................261
Chapter 15: You Are Nothing without a Customer.....................................................263
Chapter 16: Getting Noticed with Advertising and Promotion.................................285
Chapter 17:Navigating the New World of Selling.......................................................299
Part V: Other Important Stuff....................................315
Chapter 18:Manufacturing and Distribution: It’s a Brave New World.....................317
Chapter 19: The Ins and Outs of Risk Management...................................................335
Chapter 20: In Business, Everything Is Negotiation...................................................351
Chapter 21:Econ 101: The Basics of Economics........................................................365
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Part VI: The Part of Tens...........................................377
Chapter 22: Ten Biggest Mistakes Managers Make....................................................379
Chapter 23:Ten Effective Ways to Market Your Products and Services.................385
Chapter 24:Ten (Or So) Steps to Improve Your Cash Flow......................................391
Index.......................................................................395
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Table of Contents
Introduction..................................................................1
About This Book...............................................................................................1
Conventions Used in This Book.....................................................................2
What You’re Not to Read.................................................................................2
Foolish Assumptions.......................................................................................3
How This Book Is Organized...........................................................................3
Part I: The New, Improved World of Business....................................3
Part II: Managing a Business in the New World..................................4
Part III: Money: What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You........................4
Part IV: Marketing in the New World....................................................4
Part V: Other Important Stuff................................................................4
Part VI: The Part of Tens.......................................................................5
Icons Used in This Book..................................................................................5
Where to Go from Here....................................................................................5
Part I: The New, Improved World of Business ..................7
Chapter 1:The MBA in a Nutshell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Do You Really Need an MBA?........................................................................10
Exploring the New World of Business.........................................................11
What’s so great about change?...........................................................12
Making an entrepreneurial mindset part of your toolkit.................12
. . . And a global perspective wouldn’t hurt......................................14
Managing and Motivating an Engaged Workforce......................................14
One Part of Business Hasn’t Changed: Money...........................................15
Reaching Out to Customers..........................................................................16
The Rest of Your MBA Syllabus....................................................................17
Chapter 2: Today’s Hottest Business Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
The World Really Is Flat!................................................................................19
From outsourcing to insourcing: Listing the flattening factors......20
Hello, neighbor: When did China move in next door?.....................21
Googlevision: Searching everywhere for Waldo...............................21
Turnabout: When little businesses get big businesses
to work for them...............................................................................22
Do It Yourself: User-Generated Everything.................................................23
Tapping the new opinion leaders.......................................................24
Amateurs compete with experts online and over the airwaves......25
Do It for Others: Becoming Socially Responsible......................................25
Doing good is good business..............................................................26
It’s not easy being green......................................................................26