This course is about effectively scaling a business. Because growth is an imperative for many organizations, it is crucial to understand the strategic fundamentals underpinning profitable growth. Therefore, the course connects frameworks from economics and strategy to the experiences of firms attempting growth initiatives to illustrate why some businesses can scale successfully while others struggle.

The cases and examples in this course will focus on "middle-market" companies - organizations that are beyond the initial startup stage and are explicitly looking to expand their business. The case materials include first-person accounts of the challenges of growth for these companies, as collected in interviews conducted during the research stage of the professor's "Roadside MBA." The cases will be supplemented with discussions of strategy frameworks that can be used to extrapolate from experiences of these specific firms to general insights about growth and scaling.