Value and Business Decision Making

The Specialization is part of a program designed for an audience interested in working for, or creating, social businesses and anyone who wants to use modern frameworks and tools to understand how value is created for an individual, a company and social business. Since social businesses take on inherently more complex missions - by design, they are set up to address social issues - the task of understanding and evaluating opportunities aimed at addressing social issues requires a deeper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of modern frameworks and tools. Arguably, all businesses try and impact society. This is the main reason why the Specialization has both analytical rigor and real-world applicability. My hope is that by the end of the Specialization we will be ready to evaluate, understand, and even create social businesses. This is a journey that will start with value to an individual and then gradually understand value created by regular businesses and, finally, tackle value creation by a social business. We will however not wait till the end of the Specialization to start thinking seriously about how social businesses are distinct from regular businesses. The good news is that you have already been exposed to a great course on social business – with world-known experts sharing their views, followed by an engaging and framework-based approach to consider how to identify a social problem and then develop an approach to addressing it using a multi-stakeholder approach. To motivate folks to understand the complexity of evaluating a social business, I will start by sharing some publicly available articles on what popular thinking is about social business, on how to measure social value and some real-world examples. I will do so gradually over the four courses, without testing, but with reflection exercises built in at the beginning and the end of each course. I have managed the Social Venture Fund (SVF) at the University of Michigan for over a decade now and we evaluate and invest in social businesses. I also recently launched the International Investment Fund (IIF) in India that evaluates, supports and invests in small- and medium-sized businesses. I will share cases written by me and my students related to this work, but please do not distribute them. The purpose of the reflection exercises is meant for you to gradually gain exposure to the complexities of social businesses and measuring social value. You are not expected to be able to value the businesses described in the cases, but to keep them in mind and reflect on the frameworks and tools you are introduced to and their applicability to decision-making in social businesses. While you will not be tested on specifics in the reflection portions of this Specialization, maintaining a personal journal on important issues throughout the Specialization will really help so you prepare for the challenging work on the project on a social business following successful completion of the Specialization. You will hopefully realize that the framework and tools provided in the Specialization will not only help you in any business, but also are the same for a social business. You will hopefully realize that, at the end of the day, it is all about intent and what you produce/provide and to whom and how. And what is readily measurable and verifiable may be one of the key differences between a regular and a truly social business – everything, eventually, is about quantity times price of what you have to offer. Most businesses focus on producing goods and services that have readily available markets and therefore prices. Perhaps the key difference in understanding and managing a social business versus a regular business is its focus on issues beyond an individual and a desire to provide goods and services that are not priced and therefore rewarded by free markets because they benefit society and cannot be captured by corporations. This, in turn, makes a social business all the more challenging to create and manage.

This module contains detailed videos and syllabi of both the Specialization and the second course. This Specialization has been designed to enable you to learn and apply the powerful tools of modern finance to personal, corporate and social businesses. In fact, this frameworks and tools can be applied to decision-making in any context, including nonprofit and governmental initiatives to tackle the simplest to most challenging issues we confront individually or collectively. The courses within progress linearly and build on each other and it is important for you to get an understanding of why this Specialization may be relevant to any context. Please review the videos and syllabi as they will give you a sense of the Specialization and how this specific course fits within. My teaching style and philosophy are also presented to you (hopefully) in sufficient detail. I believe education is the key to addressing the challenges that we face across the globe. Most importantly, all this content is meant to give you enough information to enable you to make a decision about whether you want to take this Specialization, or this course by itself. To make sure you have the social lens in mind, we have created a course that focuses on social business. This will hopefully make you think about what a social business looks like and, importantly, how it differs from standard business. A deeper realization of this can only occur when you are able to recognize how value is created by regular businesses. This will be a slow process and will start happening after this course and hopefully the understanding will deepen by the end of this Specialization so that you are ready to work on a social business.

There are two building blocks of decision making – time value of money and risk. In this second course, we will use the same framework developed in the first course to evaluate decision-making by entities – businesses – to create value. We will realize how the evaluating value from the lens of multiple stakeholders is inherently more complex. You are also encouraged to think from a societal standpoint because that, ultimately, is the difference between a social and a private business. The societal perspective is the most complex and market prices are typically not available for both the benefits and costs. This module is the beginning of Course 2 of the Specialization and we introduce probably the most powerful frameworks for decision-making, with an emphasis on their strengths and weaknesses.

Having looked at multiple decision criteria last week, we will focus this week on a more deeper and critical analysis of the most widely used Criteria. Again, we will use examples to evaluate all issues. This week will also include the first graded assignment.