We launched our first cohort of HBX CORe in June 2014. Two years later, we checked in with a few members of our pioneer cohort to see how CORe has made a difference in their lives.

Opening Doors in the Building Industry

Akinade

I study Architecture, Construction Engineering and Management at Illinois Tech in Chicago. I also work as a design and construction intern at the Duchossois Group. CORe was instrumental in my decision to study construction management and helped me to better understand the potential roles I could play within the building industry.

A plethora of possibilities started to open up after taking the course. Previously, I had only truly imagined myself practicing the technical aspects of my education but CORe helped me see and start to work towards my place as a leader within the building and infrastructure industry.

Economics for Managers was influential in helping me understand how leadership within various industries could make strategic decisions to create value. It was incredibly fascinating to finally understand the constant balance of proactive and reactive decisions and strategies business leaders used to understand markets and as a result people.

Rounding Out Liberal Arts Educations 

Jackie

CORe enabled me to become more business-focused; I always knew that I wanted to enter the business world, but coming from a liberal arts background I needed to expand upon my experience to understand what that really meant. Competing against undergraduates from business institutions can be intimidating, but understanding even basic terminology can help put your mind at ease.

CORe gave me the background and confidence to pursue a business career after college. It even helped shape an independent study that I conducted during my senior year at Bowdoin, looking at Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives at four major banks in the United States. I do not think I would have applied this interest to corporate banks had I not had an introduction to the foundations of the business world from HBX CORe.

As I began interviewing for full-time positions during my senior year, HBX CORe definitely helped me stand out among my peers. I truly understand the value of a liberal arts education, and that is something that I would never replace. However, coming out of a liberal arts institution with some sort of an introduction to the business world is unbelievably valuable.

Since HBX CORe was still so new when I completed the program, I really caught the eye of many interviewers and companies interested in learning more about it. The knowledge that I gained helped me tremendously as I interviewed and looked into different companies to join upon graduation.

I know that CORe has set me up well for a future in the business world and I would love to pursue an MBA in the future.

Giving Engineers a Competitive Edge 

Oyin   

When I took HBX CORe, I was in my sophomore year of college and had begun actively thinking about my future career. I had heard of all of the great advantages of having both a science and business background but I was worried that I would struggle if I took business classes in school.

CORe really broke down all of the business concepts I had vaguely heard of and introduced new material in the clearest way with unique examples. My experience with the CORe program gave me the confidence to pursue my Business Administration minor and I plan to apply for an MBA in the future.

Having CORe listed on my resume has really helped me stand out to potential employers. Every internship interview I have had since participating in this program has involved me explaining this program and its benefits. Most employers are surprised to find an engineering student with a background in business so it usually makes me seem more impressive and gets me closer to getting through the door.

I plan to become an Industrial Engineer and explore how to improve complex systems and processes. I know that pursuing knowledge of business with my background in engineering will shape my career path in unexpected ways.

Instilling Confidence to Pursue Careers in Financial Consulting

Dan   

CORe helped me solidify my knowledge of financial analysis and introduced me to the world of business analytics. Coming from a primarily non-finance background, HBX definitely provided me with the confidence needed to continue pursuing a career in financial analysis and consulting.

HBX has been discussed in every single interview I’ve had since completing the program and I’m fairly certain that the HBS brand helped me land a few of those interviews. A few times the program has been met with skepticism, but when you begin to explain how the structure of the program and the platform itself are unique compared to traditional online coursework people begin to warm up to it and ask more questions. It really boils down to it being the best online replication of a real-life classroom that I’ve ever experienced. When I reflect upon the experience, it actually feels like I was in a real classroom.

Creating Relevant Conversations with Prospective Employers

Valentina

I took CORe for an introduction into the language of business that would complement my STEM education. I was doing mostly technical classes at school, but I was interested in business as well. After the program, I realized I wanted to pursue a career in technical management and business.

I actually decided to apply for my upcoming position partly because of CORe. I got interested in Amazon after the case study about them in one of the program modules. Learning about some of the principles behind their operations motivated me to do in-depth research about the company.

The case study was part of the conversation when I first connected with recruiters during a career fair and CORe also came up during an on-site interview. I explained how the certificate would help me transition from a very technical background into a more business oriented position, and it must have worked because I got the job!

What can CORe do for you?

It's graduation season here in the US! Although commencement speeches are aimed at new graduates entering the real world, they also contain advice that is applicable to all of us. In honor of today's Harvard University Commencement, here are some of the best excerpts from this year's graduation addresses.

"I hope that you live your life -- each precious day of it -- with joy and meaning. I hope that you walk without pain -- and that you are grateful for each step. And when the challenges come, I hope you remember that anchored deep within you is the ability to learn and grow. You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. Like a muscle, you can build it up, draw on it when you need it. In that process you will figure out who you really are -- and you just might become the very best version of yourself."

Sheryl Sandberg to University of California at Berkeley class of 2016

"When life tells you no, find a way to keep things in perspective. That doesn’t make the painful moments any less painful. But it does mean you don’t have to live forever in the pain. You don’t have to live forever in that “no.” Because if you know what you’re capable of, if you’re always prepared, and you keep things in perspective, then life has a way of turning no into yes."

Russell Wilson to University of Wisconsin class of 2016

"If you disagree with somebody, bring them in - and ask them tough questions. Hold their feet to the fire. Make them defend their positions. If somebody has got a bad or offensive idea, prove it wrong. Engage it. Debate it. Stand up for what you believe in. Don't be scared to take somebody on. Don't feel like you got to shut your ears off because you're too fragile and somebody might offend your sensibilities. Go at them if they’re not making any sense. Use your logic and reason and words. And by doing so, you’ll strengthen your own position, and you’ll hone your arguments. And maybe you’ll learn something and realize you don't know everything. And you may have a new understanding not only about what your opponents believe but maybe what you believe. Either way, you win."

President Barack Obama to Rutgers University class of 2016

"At this moment in your life you know fewer limits, fewer taboos and fewer fears than you will ever in the future. So do not squander your ignorance. Go out and do what your teachers and parents thought could not be done -- and what they never thought of doing."

Peter Thiel to Hamilton College class of 2016

Participants in Disruptive Strategy with Clayton Christensen wrote final papers to apply the principles they learned in the course to a real organization. The post below is an excerpt written by Barrett Levesque.

In 2014, Walmart announced plans to create its own healthcare clinics run by nurse practitioners where, in a similar story to its founding mission, prices will be low, primary care services will be comprehensive, and hours will be convenient.

The first lens to examine Walmart’s plans to be the #1 healthcare provider in the country is “what type of innovation is this” lens. Their proposed healthcare organization is both a new-market disruption and a low-end disruption. Primary care visits are important for long-term health, but often missed due to the inconvenience of missing work or identifying a primary care doctor, or the cost of the visit or lack of insurance. A low cost option that is convenient and “good enough” for their primary care could potentially open up health care to a group of people who previously could not afford the time and money for a visit. The clinics would be “low end” because of the “good enough” service from providers such as nurse practitioners.

The second lens to apply is the “job to be done" lens." Walmart executives can look out into the country and see people essentially saying, “help me find low cost, convenient, one stop shop primary care." The experience they need to provide for that job is convenient, low cost, good enough healthcare. To meet this goal, Walmart has buildings that are frequently visited in convenient locations with convenient store hours. Walmart needs to integrate its physical buildings, store hours, and choice of healthcare providers to meet this task. Advice to the CEO: Walmart will need a healthcare brand to rally around this task, analogous to the CVS MinuteClinic. Consider “Wal-Care."

The next lens to consider is RPP: Resources, Profit Formula, and Processes. Walmart will need a separate business unit with resources including healthcare IT, healthcare workers, administrators, and insurance “office managers." Processes will need to be established around availability of medical tests, efficient pharmacies, and methods to implement best care and regulatory guidelines. Their profit formula is going to need to focus on “good enough” primary care. Relationships with hospitals and specialists will also need to be prioritized. These hospital relationships must be cost effective and convenient. The choice of what conditions are covered is going to be a key one for the company.

Next steps: The profit model should take into account the many shortcomings of the current primary care model (e-Health record shortfalls, the rising costs of healthcare technology and treatments for an insurer, the lack of motivation for many individuals to see a PCP for preventative care) and prioritize resource allocation which meets their goal of efficient, convenient, low cost health care. This may well include a more efficient e-Health record, integration with services to check for low cost specialists to refer to outside the system, integration/volume deals with hospitals, and hiring additional staff to provide more time for the healthcare providers to focus on the delivery of the “performance enhancing” module.

We sat down with Julie Shackleton, our resident jet-setting legal guru, to learn a little bit more about her and her role here at HBX.

What do you do here at HBX?

I’m a member of the business operations team and manage our legal queue, working with staff members to help identify emerging needs and new business models. I then work with the university's lawyers to meet these needs.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

My colleagues! 

How would you describe yourself? 

An Irish fun enforcer who is an aspirationally fit person who doesn’t spend enough time in one place.

What's your favorite food?

Irish chocolate. Yummmmmmm!

What's your motto?

Onwards and upwards!

Best book you've ever read?

Pride and Prejudice. I could read it on a constant loop and never get tired of it.

Where do you get your news from?

The Daily Pnut and Twitter.

Participants in Disruptive Strategy with Clayton Christensen wrote final papers to apply the principles they learned in the course to a real organization. The post below is an excerpt written by Nitin Solanki.

Tesla Motors designs and produces cars that are a sustaining innovation. Tesla focuses on making better products with higher prices, targeting the upper end of the market, and profiting from high margins where customers are willing to pay a premium. Tesla's vehicles "job to be done" is to provide transportation between two points in a luxurious and efficient manner using advanced technologies and elegant design. Tesla has integrated the Supercharger charging station with the cars providing a convenient way to charge its vehicles with destination charging stations all over the country.

Tesla has done an excellent job of marketing by building its brand for consumers who are environmentally friendly. It started at the high end of the market by building great products and is now moving down the chain. The reason Tesla has been successful thus far with its sustaining innovation is because it has its Resources, Processes, and Profit Formula (RPP) focused only on electric cars.

As the CEO of Tesla, I would be alert of low-end disruptions that would compete with the electric cars. Tesla's current market offering is targeting the high-end consumer with the Model S and Model X. They do plan on offering the Model 3 in a couple of years with a lower price point, but it will leave the door wide open for low-end disruptions.

Incumbents such as General Motors, Nissan, BMW, and Mercedes already have electric cars on the market which are at the lower price point than Tesla. Currently, the models that are offered by BMW and Mercedes would compete against the Model 3. The car companies that will end up competing against Tesla at the current price points will most likely be BMW and Mercedes. The competition for the higher end electric vehicles will get intense in the next couple of years, and there will be more choices for the high-end electric car consumers.

Five HBX CORe students share their advice for leveraging the diverse and supportive CORe community to help you get more out of your online learning experience.

1. Get out of your comfort zone

Holden

Reach out to as many people from as many different backgrounds as possible. Often times, “birds of a feather flock together,” holds true, but that would strip HBX of one of its primary features, the diversity of your fellow cohort members. I shamelessly ‘added’ everyone in my cohort on social media, and don’t regret it, at all. I have been challenged, supported, and enriched by all of them, and I know this will only continue as I maintain and grow these personal relationships.

2. Utilize Peer Help

Bethany

I learned so much from asking and answering peer help questions and engaging in debates with other students both on and off the platform. The students in CORe supported me as I learned new concepts and challenged me to question my assumptions about issues like drug pricing and minimum wage. I am truly grateful for their insight and support.

3. Don’t sell yourself short

Anna

You know more than you imagine. Your insight is very valuable to your peers and with this course, you are able to prove that to yourself and build on new knowledge or refine what you already know. This is the platform where real experiential learning begins.

4. Leverage Facebook and other social channels

Richard

The closed Facebook group really maximized my experience. Since you will be in a worldwide cohort, there will always be someone online to chat with or ask a question.

5. Meet up in person

Liz

Meet up with other members of your cohort, if possible. One of the coolest things about this program is participating and networking with people from all over the globe. But the tricky part is that you typically only know each other virtually. So if there's a meet up in your area, definitely check it out (or plan one yourself!). I have now met several people from my cohort. It's nice to talk to people that are going through the same unique experience as you.

Want to learn the fundamentals of business while engaging with a community of learners from across the globe? Check out HBX CORe, an interactive online program from Harvard Business School! 

When you sign up for CORe, you join a group of motivated learners from around the globe. The process of peer-to-peer learning that is so effective in the Harvard Business School classrooms comes to life on our interactive online platform where participants help support one another throughout the program.

What does social learning looks like in CORe?

• Engage with your cohort. Check out the CORe map and read the profiles of your learning network.
• Stuck on a particular concept? Post a peer help question and receive insightful responses.
• Read about your peer’s reflections to course concepts as you progress through the modules.
• See who’s online and schedule a Skype call with your new study buddy on the other side of the world.
• Post topical articles and network through the cohort’s closed Facebook group.
• Not the only student in your area? Host or attend an in-person meetup to help deepen the bonds that are made on the platform.

We hear it all the time – the community in CORe, with participants from all possible backgrounds and geographies, is truly tremendous.

HBX Faculty Chair Bharat Anand recently spoke with Sramana Mitra from One Million by One Million where he shared his views on what makes the HBX approach to online learning so different. Read the interview HERE.

For two years, HBX Disruptive Strategy with Clayton Christensen has empowered thousands of leaders from diverse industries to bring insight to their most complex challenges. With industry-high consumer ratings, Disruptive Strategy is driving impact all over the world.

Regarding the content of Disruptive Strategy, Professor Christensen says,

“There are times at which it is right not to listen to customers, right to invest in developing lower-performance products that promise lower margins, and right to aggressively pursue small, rather than substantial, markets. This derives a set a rules, from carefully designed research and analysis of innovative successes and failures…that managers can use to judge when the widely accepted principles of good management should be followed and when alternative principles are appropriate.

These rules, which I call principles of disruptive innovation, show that when good companies fail, it often has been because their managers either ignored these principles or chose to fight them.

Managers can be extraordinarily effective in managing even the most difficult innovations if they work to understand and harness the principles of disruptive innovation.”

Six HBX CORe participants share study tips to help incoming students get the most out of their learning experience.

1. Supercharge your learning environment

Richard

I had three screens up when on the HBX platform: one for the closed Facebook group, one for the HBX platform, and one for taking notes (take lots of notes)!

2. Organize and prioritize

Jim

Identify deadlines for quizzes and writing assignments, and make sure to pay attention to "max effort" weeks with multiple deadlines.

3. Take notes

Dan

Get three notebooks (one for each course) and make drawings, conceptualize things, and re-write the notions you have learned with your words. Writing down the material with your own language will force you to understand and increase the odds you'll remember the thing you learn in the long run.

4. Use peer help

Mary

Use that tab for peer engagement! As a philosophy major who graduated all the way back in 2011, having the "extra help" of some seriously smart and engaged students was invaluable. At times, it also was reassuring that I was not the only one struggling with certain elements of the classes.

5. Understand why you're taking CORe

Gaurang

You can complete the coursework quickly if you wish, or you can instead spend a good amount of time going through the material. The entire value lies in completely immersing yourself in the coursework so that once you have completed the course, you're equipped with the right toolkit to tackle the business problems in your life.

6. Apply your knowledge

Nupur

Learn in CORe and try to apply that knowledge in the real world. It will help you in your learning and will also give you new and interesting insights. Don’t shy away from extra assignments you may get in CORe, you will see the benefits.

Here are answers to some of the top questions we got from prospective HBX CORe students during our Facebook Q&A session last month, including the difference between the non-credit and for-credit versions of CORe, the application process, and financing options. 

 1.  I have no background in business. Will I be able to keep up? Will CORe help me get a job?

We don't expect you to know anything about business going in, but you should have a deep curiosity or interest in it. The course work starts out with the basics and works up to more complex concepts. The diversity and richness of the CORe community is one of the aspects that truly sets it apart from other online courses; here's what a few of our past students shared about their own backgrounds and experience in the program:

2.  I have a degree in business. Is CORe appropriate for me? What will I get out of it?

If you're on the fence, we recommend reviewing the syllabi on the HBX website to see what is covered. Many CORe students who hold undergraduate business degrees have reported finding the program to be quite useful as it serves as a great refresher and focuses on real-world applications of business using a case-based pedagogy, which sets it apart from most undergraduate programs. 

Here's what some of our past students said: 

3.  Will CORe help me prepare for an MBA program or enhance my chances of being accepted?

The CORe curriculum was developed by Harvard Business School faculty as a way to prepare incoming students for the MBA program, and we've had a number of CORe students go on to enroll in an MBA program after earning the credential. A great example is Lauren Hall: http://www.abouthbx.com/student-profiles/lauren.

That said, MBA program applicants (at HBS or elsewhere) will have an opportunity to inform the Admissions Board of non-degree preparatory coursework like HBX CORe. This is one of many application elements and will be considered in the larger context of a holistic selection process.

4.  What is the difference between the non-credit and for-credit options?

For some cohorts, we offer an undergraduate credit option through Harvard Extension School. The next for-credit cohort will be offered in May 2016. When you start your application, you can select whether you are seeking admission for the for-credit or non-credit option of CORe. The course content, deadlines, and grading process are all the same whether you choose to enroll in the undergraduate credit ($3,600) or credential-only ($1,800) version of CORe.

Upon successful completion of the program, all students will receive a Credential of Readiness certificate from Harvard Business School and HBX, and an official transcript will be made available to verify your mastery of the skills. If you enroll in the undergraduate credit option, you will also earn eight undergraduate credits from Harvard Extension School or Harvard Summer School.

Different financing options and needs-based scholarships are available depending on the way you choose to enroll. More information is available at http://hbx.hbs.edu/hbx-core/financing-options.html.

5.   How is CORe different from other online courses, and how do you encourage a high level of interaction between students and professors?

All of the course content was developed uniquely for HBX and does not correspond to courses taught at HBS. The professors continue to be involved in refining and improving the courses but do not regularly interact with students on a day-to-day basis. However, HBX does feature a robust peer-learning model (all students are expected to participate) with a support desk to answer questions that cannot be adequately addressed in the Peer Help system.

6.  What do you look for in the application process?

We look for two things in the application process: aptitude and motivation. For aptitude we ask for your academic background and for you to answer five mathematical skill check questions (in order to get some insight into your ability to be successful in the program).

We also included two short essays - one required and one optional - to give us a window into your motivation to contribute to the CORe learning community and complete the program. The application is free and should take about 20 minutes to complete.

7.  Is CORe really worth it? What financial aid or financing options are available?

We don't want to speak for our students, but many of them have expressed their satisfaction with the course on our blog, in various student profiles, and in our CORe Credential Holders album on Facebook.

US citizens who are currently enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate degree program may qualify for institutional need-based scholarships. The online HBX CORe application features an "Institutional Need-Based Scholarship" section that will assist in determining your eligibility. 

HBX also offers scholarships to students who attend one of our U.S. collaborating colleges. These colleges have entered into agreements with HBX to help expand access to scholarships for their students.

Additional financing options are available through third party lenders: http://hbx.hbs.edu/hbx-core/financing-options.html

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These questions were raised during our Facebook Q&A session on December 11, 2015. To read through the full conversation and get additional insights from past students, visit the event page!

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Ready to apply for the next cohort? 

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