The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) 'Advanced Valuation & Strategy’ of Erasmus School of Economics has reached a milestone with 100,000 enrolled learners.
Revolutionising the way of decision making
This online course was launched just 4 years ago and created by Prof. Han Smit, Dr Dyaran Bansraj, and Dr Nishad Matawlie. Later PhD candidates Yashvir Gangaram Panday and Renée Spigt joined the team to further support the MOOC.
The course 'Advanced Valuation and Strategy – M&A, Private Equity, and Venture Capital' teaches you about the latest valuation methods that may help you to make better business decisions. It is helpful for executives that need to value complete strategies and for all students interested in corporate finance and strategy. In this MOOC the teachers try to revolutionise the learner’s way of decision making by extending static techniques from corporate finance with dynamic methods to quantify strategic thinking.
Traditionally, the attractiveness of an investment is assessed as a mature business, where future cash flows mainly result from past decisions. But, in an ever-changing world, strategic decisions determine the firm’s long-term success and market value. Yet managers often consider these long-term implications using intuition and experience alone, with little guidance from a structured and quantitative analysis.
This MOOC goes beyond the use of standard valuation analysis and introduces the Expanded Net Present Value, which brings together Discounted Cash Flow analysis, real options, and game theory. Thinking in terms of options, games, and adaptive strategies may help managers address strategic questions such as: How do you value a leveraged buyout? How can you value a high-tech venture with negative cash flows? When should you invest in new ventures and how to stage these investments? How can you incorporate rival bidders in the analysis?
The course is particularly interesting for venture capitalists, private equity investors, investment bankers, CEOs, and CFOs.
Other MOOCs of Erasmus School of Economics
Erasmus School of Economics has developed two other very successful Massive Open Online Courses. In 2015, it started with the launch of the MOOC 'Econometrics: Methods and Applications', which has reached over 160,000 enrolled learners. An all-time high record and by far the most successful open access, online education course of Erasmus University Rotterdam. The latest MOOC, 'Enjoyable Econometrics', was launched in 2019 and has already attracted nearly 18,000 learners.
- More information
For more information, please contact Ronald de Groot, Media & Public Relations Officer at Erasmus School of Economics: rdegroot@ese.eur.nl, phone: +31 6 53 641 846.
More about the MOOC 'Advanced Valuation & Strategy - M&A, Private Equity, and Venture Capital’.