8 Best Business Courses on Coursera

Looking to expand your business knowledge? Here are the best business courses and specializations on Coursera to help you develop practical, in-demand skills.

I've said it before, but Coursera is my #1 online destination for high-quality, career-focused education.

I almost view it as an "Amazon" for professional development courses, since there is so much to choose from across many different fields and industries.

Today we're going to focus on business. Here is a list of the best business courses on Coursera, taught by instructors from top companies and universities around the world.

The courses below all include auto-graded and peer-reviewed assignments, video lectures, and community discussion forums that allow you to engage with other students.

When you complete a course, you’ll be eligible to receive a shareable electronic certificate that you can share with your professional network and potential employers.

If you have a passion for products, pricing, marketing, customer service, and the processes that surround selling products online, then get ready, because there are a lot of exciting education options in store...

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What are the Best Business Courses on Coursera?

Here are the best business courses on Coursera to check out this year:

1. Wharton Business Foundations Specialization

If you're looking for a well-rounded foundational business education, then this specialization by the Wharton School of Business is the way to go.

The six-part program is designed to help you develop basic literacy in the language of business, which you can use to transition to a new career, start or improve your own small business, or further your schooling.

You will learn how to:

Read income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements

Implement branding and go-to-market strategies

Manage people through motivation and reward systems

Analyze and improve business processes in services or manufacturing

Program Syllabus:

Course 1: Introduction to Marketing

Course 2: Introduction to Financial Accounting

Course 3: Managing Social and Human Capital

Course 4: Introduction to Corporate Finance

Course 5: Introduction to Operations Management

Course 6: Wharton Business Foundations Capstone

I've also shared some student reviews of the Wharton Business Specialization here, which you can check out for more information of each of the program modules.

Overall, it's an introductory course that will expose you to the fundamentals of marketing, accounting, operations, and finance.

There'll be some rigorous exercises to test your knowledge and a Capstone project where you'll put all the course topics together to address a real business challenge.

Estimated time to complete: 7 months, at a suggested pace of 2 hours per week.

=> Enroll in the Wharton Business Foundations Specialization here.

2. Yale Financial Markets Course

Almost one million students around the world have already enrolled in this popular Financial Markets course by Yale University.

This course provides an overview of the ideas, methods, and institutions that allows businesses to operate, and places an emphasis on developing financially-savvy leadership skills.

Course Syllabus:

Week 1: The basics of financial markets, insurance, and CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model

Week 2: Behavioral finance, forecasting, pricing, debt, and inflation

Week 3: Stocks, bonds, dividends, shares, market caps, financial markets history

Week 4: Recessions, bubbles, the mortgage crisis, and regulation

Week 5: Options and bond markets

Week 6: Investment banking, underwriting processes, brokers, dealers, exchanges, and new innovations in financial markets

Week 7: Nonprofits and corporations, and your career options in finance

You'll learn all about key risk management and behavioral finance principles through the analysis of securities, insurance, and banking industries.

Estimated time to complete: 33 hours.

=> Enroll in the Yale Financial Markets online course here.

3. Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand and Behaviour (University of London)

At what point does a business become a brand?

In this course, Professor Nader Tavassoli of London Business School rejects the traditional concept of a brand as a "visual identity."

As he explains, a brand is much more than a company logo or slogan. Rather, it is the entire customer experience, delivered by people across the entire organization.

This course will you teach you how to:

Build brands from a broad organizational perspective

Create brand-led culture change with human resource practices at the core

Integrate brands in multi-brand companies, across cultures and geographies

Measure brand health both internally and externally

Understand the new concept of employee-based brand equity

Course Syllabus:

Week 1: Brand Purpose and Experience

Week 2: Brand Design and Delivery

Week 3: Brand Leadership and Alignment

Week 4: Brand Practices and Engagement

Week 5: Brand Metrics and Returns

Not only will you learn about the evolving practice of brand management, you'll also increase your motivation to deliver your own brands and create superior value for customers, regardless of your job title or organizational role.

Estimated time to complete: 17 hours.

=> Enroll in the Aligning Business, Brand and Behaviour course here.

4. Excel Skills for Business (Macquarie University)

In the United States alone, millions of job advertisements requiring Excel skills are posted every day.

The Excel Skills for Business specialization on Coursera will show you how to confidently operate spreadsheet software, so you can add this highly valuable asset to your employability portfolio.

You will learn to:

Expertly navigate the Excel user interface, entering, manipulating and formatting data

Use formulas and functions to perform calculations on data

Automate choices and data lookups using functions

Analyze data and present the results in a user-friendly way

Create charts and tables that effectively summarize raw data

Create navigation aids for large workbooks

Validate data, find and correct errors

Program Syllabus:

Course 1: Excel Skills for Business - Essentials

Course 2: Excel Skills for Business - Intermediate I

Course 3: Excel Skills for Business - Intermediate II

Course 4: Excel Skills for Business - Advanced

Ultimately, the best way to learn Excel is to use Excel. In this specialization, you will solve a broad range of business problems by applying the Excel skills and techniques you learn along the way.

Whether you are self-taught and want to fill in the gaps for better efficiency and productivity, or whether you have never used Excel before, this course will provide you with countless opportunities to sharpen your skills.

Estimated time to complete: 6 months, at a suggested pace of 5 hours per week.

=> Enroll in the Excel Skills for Business Specialization here.

5. Business Analytics (University of Pennsylvania)

Talking about Excel...what other tools and technologies can help you manage data within your organization?

In this course, you'll learn all about big data analytics, and how you can use it to describe, predict, and inform various business decisions.

More specifically, you will learn to:

Explain how data is used for recruiting and performance evaluation

Model supply and demand for various business scenarios

Solve business problems with data-driven decision-making

Understand the tools used to predict customer behavior

Program Syllabus:

Course 1: Customer Analytics

Course 2: Operations Analytics

Course 3: People Analytics

Course 4: Accounting Analytics

Course 5: Business Analytics Capstone

As you progress through this specialization, you will develop basic data literacy and an analytical mindset that will help you effectively address business challenges of your own.

Estimated time to complete: 6 months, at a suggested pace of 3 hours per week.

=> Enroll in the Wharton Business Analytics specialization here.

6. Digital Business Models (Lund University)

Digital business models are disrupting 50-year old companies in telecommunications, transportation, advertising, e-commerce, automotive, insurance and many other industries.

In this course by Lund University - a prestigious research university in Sweden - you will explore the business models of software disruptors of the west such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon, and the east such as Xiaomi and weChat.

Course Syllabus:

Week 1: Introduction to Digital Business Models

Week 2: How Internet Companies Use Digital Business Models

Week 3: Developers as the New Decision Makers

Week 4: Developers as the Engine of Digital Business Models

Week 5: Build Your Own Digital Business Model

Overall, this course will help you understand business models in diverse industries and provide you with a framework that you can use in building your own digital business model.

Estimated time to complete: 11 hours.

=> Enroll in the Digital Business Models course here.

7. How to Finance and Grow Your Startup – Without VC (University of London)

More than two generations ago, the venture capital community – VC’s, business angels, incubators, and others – convinced the entrepreneurial world that writing business plans and raising venture capital were necessary steps to starting a business.

However, the vast majority of fast growing companies today never take any angel or venture funding.

How is this possible?

In this course by the University of London, you will discover five time-tested models through which your customers can - and will - fund your business if you ask them.

Course Syllabus:

Week 1: Introduction, Why Taking Venture Capital is a Bad Idea

Week 2: Matchmaker Models

Week 3: Pay-in-Advance Models

Week 4: Subscription Models

Week 5: Scarcity Models

Week 6: Service-to-Product Models

Week 7: Putting a Customer-Funded Model to Work in Your Business

The business models you will explore in this course have been put to use by entrepreneurial superstars like Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and more.

Through a series of captivating no-holds-barred interviews, you'll get to learn from the successes and failures of a number of incredibly creative entrepreneurs from around the world, including founders, investors, and others.

If you’re an entrepreneur at any stage of your journey, or even an aspiring one, and you need money to start or grow your business, this course is for you.

Estimated time to complete: 23 hours.

=> Enroll in the Startup Financing without Venture Capital course here.

8. IBM AI Foundations for Business

This popular specialization is one of the best business courses on Coursera for learners who are interested in artificial intelligence.

Although it's not a traditional business course, it provides a business-oriented summary of basic technologies and concepts in AI and data science.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

Understand what is AI, its applications and use cases and how it is transforming our lives

Explain terms like Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Neural Networks

Describe several issues and ethical concerns surrounding AI

Articulate advice from experts about learning and starting a career in AI

Program Syllabus:

Course 1: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Course 2: What is Data Science

Course 3: The AI Ladder: A Framework for Deploying AI in your Enterprise

This specialization does not require any programming or computer science expertise and is designed to introduce the basics of AI to anyone whether you have a technical background or not.

Estimated time to complete: 2 months, at a suggested pace of 3 hours per week.

=> Enroll in the IBM AI Foundations for Business Specialization here.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for checking out this post on the best business Coursera on courses to enroll in this year. Hopefully you've found a few courses that appeal to your learning goals and interests.

The wonderful thing about these courses is that you get to go through them at your own pace and from the comfort of your home - while receiving the same quality of instruction that you would if you were attending in-person classes at the world's top business schools - all for a fraction of the cost.

It really doesn't get much better than that!

Happy learning :)