Business & Entrepreneurship
Courses on starting and running a business: strategy, operations, pricing and the mechanics of getting paid.
Verified courses first, then the rest of the category
Illinois on the global forces a business has to operate inside, from its MBA teaching. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
Designing a development intervention, taught as a practical design problem rather than as development theory. Free from The Open University, startable without signing up, with a free statement of participation on completion.
Not independently verified
Google’s project management certificate, covering both traditional and agile approaches and aimed at people entering the discipline.
Not independently verified
GitLab on managing a remote team, published by a company that has operated entirely remotely from the start. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
A human resources certificate from the HR Certification Institute, which is the body that accredits HR professionals rather than a university. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
A short advanced course on equality, diversity and inclusion within the HR function specifically. Free from The Open University, startable without signing up, with a free statement of participation on completion.
Not independently verified
Minnesota on HR for line managers rather than for HR specialists, which is the larger audience. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
Managing the transition to hybrid working, treated as a change management problem rather than a policy announcement. Free from The Open University, startable without signing up, with a free statement of participation on completion.
Not independently verified
The longest course in the hybrid working series, covering how an organisation itself changes shape around distributed work. Free from The Open University, startable without signing up, with a free statement of participation on completion.
Not independently verified
Planning ahead for hybrid working arrangements, part of the same university series. Free from The Open University, startable without signing up, with a free statement of participation on completion.
Not independently verified
The digital skills side of hybrid working, covering the transformation an organisation needs rather than the tools themselves. Free from The Open University, startable without signing up, with a free statement of participation on completion.
Not independently verified
Leading a team that is not in one place, part of the university series on hybrid working. Free from The Open University, startable without signing up, with a free statement of participation on completion.
Not independently verified
Wellbeing and inclusion under hybrid arrangements, addressing the people most easily left out when a team is split. Free from The Open University, startable without signing up, with a free statement of participation on completion.
Not independently verified
Darden and IBM together on digital strategy, pairing a business school with a technology vendor. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
IBM’s marketing certificate built around growth practice and generative AI tooling. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
IBM’s product management certificate, covering discovery, roadmapping and delivery for people moving into the role. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
IBM’s project management certificate, an alternative to the Google programme from a company with a long delivery history. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
An hour of administrator training for organisations deploying Canva across a team, covering account configuration, permissions and rollout rather than any design work itself. Product training from Canva Design School.
Not independently verified
Illinois on taking an idea from creative work through to a venture. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
Case Western on leadership grounded in emotional intelligence research rather than in management fashion. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
Case Western’s emotional intelligence course, from the researchers who did much of the original work. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
A two-hour introduction to business agility, short enough to be an orientation to the idea rather than an implementation guide. Free from The Open University, startable without signing up, with a free statement of participation on completion.
Not independently verified
Wharton’s introduction to corporate finance, covering how firms value decisions and raise money, taught as a university course rather than as investing advice. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
An introduction to environmental, social and governance reporting, from a finance training provider rather than an advocacy organisation. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
About this subject
Courses on starting and running a business, from university programmes in strategy and management through to practical material on launching a venture. This is the broadest subject in the directory, which means it holds two quite different kinds of course: academic teaching that assumes you want to understand how organisations work, and operator material that assumes you want to do something on Monday. Both are useful. Knowing which one you are looking at is the first decision.
Guidance
Verification tells you that a course delivers the material it advertises. It cannot tell you whether the approach it teaches will work for your business. These are the things worth checking yourself.
A graduate strategy course and a founder-led course on getting your first ten customers can both be excellent and are not substitutes. University material tends to give you frameworks that survive changes in fashion and will not tell you which tool to use. Operator material tends to be concrete and specific to a moment, a market and a channel. Read the summary for who the course says it is for, and the level, before the syllabus.
Advice that is right for a company with a hundred employees is often wrong for one person with an idea, and the reverse is equally true. Courses on organisational behaviour, operations and change management assume an organisation already exists. Entrepreneurship courses assume it does not. Neither states this as loudly as it should, so it is worth checking what the examples look like.
Business is a subject where a strong personal story is often presented as a method. One person succeeded once is not evidence that a sequence of steps causes success, and survivorship makes this hard to see. Prefer material that says where its ideas come from, admits what it does not know, and describes conditions under which its advice would not apply. Be wary of anything that promises a specific outcome from a specific process.
Company formation, employment obligations, contracts and tax are national. A course on hiring or business law may be accurate and current and still be about a different legal system from yours. Strategy, operations and marketing travel much better than anything with a statute behind it.
This catalogue contains courses of forty hours and courses of forty minutes. A long course is not automatically more useful, but a two-hour treatment of a subject like operations or finance is an orientation rather than a working competence. Where a provider publishes hours we record them, so you can judge before starting rather than after.
Standards
The published standard applies unchanged. These are the checks that tend to matter most in this subject.
A verification says nothing about whether a strategy will work in your market, your industry or your circumstances. We do not assess commercial merit, and no verification is a prediction that a business will succeed.
Questions
No. Verified means the course is real and broadly matches what it advertises. Business outcomes depend on your market, timing, capital and execution, none of which a course can control and none of which we assess.
Neither is better in general. University material is usually stronger on frameworks and evidence, founder material on specifics and current practice. Each listing names the institution or instructor so you can judge which you are getting.
Universities publish openly, and software companies publish training around their own products. Where a course is free to take but charges for a certificate, the listing says so rather than describing it simply as free.
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