The benefit of learning together with your friend is that you keep each other accountable and have meaningful discussions about what you're learning.

Courtlyn
Promotion and Events SpecialistJune 15, 2022
6 weeks, online
4-6 hours per week
US$2,600 US$2,288 or get US$260 off with a referral
Our participants tell us that taking this program together with their colleagues helps to share common language and accelerate impact.
We hope you find the same. Special pricing is available for groups.
The benefit of learning together with your friend is that you keep each other accountable and have meaningful discussions about what you're learning.
Courtlyn
Promotion and Events SpecialistBased on the information you provided, your team is eligible for a special discount, for Scaling a Business: How to Build a US$1 Billion+ Unicorn starting on June 15, 2022 .
We’ve sent you an email with enrollment next steps. If you’re ready to enroll now, click the button below.
Have questions? Email us at group-enrollments@emeritus.org.Achieving unicorn status — a valuation of $1 billion or more — is no simple feat. But preparing your business for scaling success early on can help ensure your company joins the unicorn ranks. This program is designed to help business leaders and entrepreneurs unlock the secrets of unicorn success and discover what it really takes to scale companies to billion-dollar valuations. You’ll learn the characteristics of a unicorn and how to recognize one as well as explore the challenges that come with building and scaling a unicorn to help you grow your own startup or business initiative.
There are currently more than 900 unicorns globally, with a collective value of approximately $3 trillion.
Approximately 90 percent of all startups fail.
Only about 40 percent of startups achieve profitability.
Wharton’s Scaling a Business: How to Build a US$1 Billion+ Unicorn program explores the concept of unicorns, from what they look like and how they prepare for growth to how they deal with failure and crisis along the way. This program will enable you to:
Begin by gaining a broad understanding of the program’s key concepts: the main characteristics of unicorns, myths of unicorns, growth limiters, and common mistakes.
Learn how small companies can succeed even without all the resources large organizations have, and examine the latest research on conducting business experiments, how to make them successful, and how you can use them to continue to grow your organization to unicorn status.
Discover the ways you can prepare to invest in the right operational and technological resources, including how to move from short-term to long-term considerations and how to think about modeling uncertainty.
Understand what problems processes solve and learn the advantages and disadvantages of formalizing processes. Then create a road map to identify and design processes that scale.
Explore the framework for determining your organization’s readiness and ability to scale, as well as the metrics necessary before and after scaling to ensure that expansion is successful and sustainable.
When the time comes to scale, many companies realize internal factors are slowing their scaling process. Delve into scaling internally by focusing on your organization’s culture and people.
Begin by gaining a broad understanding of the program’s key concepts: the main characteristics of unicorns, myths of unicorns, growth limiters, and common mistakes.
Understand what problems processes solve and learn the advantages and disadvantages of formalizing processes. Then create a road map to identify and design processes that scale.
Learn how small companies can succeed even without all the resources large organizations have, and examine the latest research on conducting business experiments, how to make them successful, and how you can use them to continue to grow your organization to unicorn status.
Explore the framework for determining your organization’s readiness and ability to scale, as well as the metrics necessary before and after scaling to ensure that expansion is successful and sustainable.
Discover the ways you can prepare to invest in the right operational and technological resources, including how to move from short-term to long-term considerations and how to think about modeling uncertainty.
When the time comes to scale, many companies realize internal factors are slowing their scaling process. Delve into scaling internally by focusing on your organization’s culture and people.
Discussion Boards
Industry Examples
Assignments
Live Office Hours
Try-It Activities
Knowledge Checks
This online program provides real-world learning examples to help you understand the realities of building a unicorn startup through the experiential lens of leading global brands.
Premature scaling can be dangerous for a company. Discover the critical mistakes Blue Apron made during their scaling phase and how that affected their growth.
Underestimating and overestimating are both common in the startup world, but maintaining adequate resources and processes is essential to any startup's growth. Learn how Amazon Web Services (AWS) attempted to stay nimble even after becoming a large enterprise.
Most founders consider operational scalability a high-class problem — but it’s still a problem. Discover how operational scalability affected the mattress firm Casper due to inaccurate demand forecasting.
Learn how Tesla overestimated in their plans to build a Gigafactory in 2014. While the company was capable of producing batteries for 500,000 cars, the actual car sales were 5,000.
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Ethan Mollick
Ralph J. Roberts Distinguished Faculty Scholar; Associate Professor of Management; Academic Director, Wharton Interactive
Ethan Mollick is an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies and teaches innovation and entrepreneurship. He is also author of The Unicorn’s Shadow: Combating the Dangerous Myths that Hold Back Startups, Founders, and Investors. His papers have been published in top management journals and have won multiple awards. His work on crowdfunding is the most cited article in management published in the last seven years.
Prior to his time in academia, Professor Mollick cofounded a startup company, and he currently advises a number of startups and organizations. As the academic director and cofounder of Wharton Interactive, he works to transform entrepreneurship education using games and simulations. He has long had interest in using games for teaching, and he coauthored a book on the intersection between video games and business that was named one of the American Library Association’s top 10 business books of the year. He has built numerous teaching games, which are used by tens of thousands of students around the world.
Professor Mollick received his PhD and MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, magna cum laude.
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Gad Allon, PhD
Jeffrey A. Keswin Professor; Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions; Director, Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology, The Wharton School
Gad Allon is the Jeffrey A. Keswin Professor and Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions, and the director of the Management and Technology Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD in Management Science from Columbia Business School in New York and holds a Bachelor and Master degree from the Israeli Institute of Technology.
His research interests include operations management in general, and service operations and operations strategy in particular. Professor Allon has been studying models of information sharing among firms and customers both in service and retail settings, as well as competition models in the service industry. His articles have appeared in leading journals, including Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management and Operations Research. Professor Allon won the 2011 “Wickham Skinner Early-Career Research Award” of the Production and Operations Management Society. He is the Operations Management Department Editor of Management Science and serves on the editorial board of several journals.
Gad is an award-winning educator, teaching courses on scaling operations and operations strategy. He has also been an innovative leader in many educational technology initiatives. He is the co-founder of ForClass, a platform that enables professors to drive higher student engagement and accountability in their classrooms. Professor Allon regularly consults firms both on service strategy and operations strategy.
Upon successful completion of the program, you will earn a digital certificate of completion from the Wharton School.
Download BrochureNote: After successful completion of the online program, your verified digital certificate will be emailed to you in the name you used when registering for the program. All certificate images are for illustrative purposes only and may be subject to change at the discretion of the Wharton School.
Flexible payment options available.