1. What is a Business. What does/should it do. How does it do it
What is a Business? What does/should it do? How does it do it? What are businesses looking for in an employee?
The following is a model, all models are wrong, some are useful.
Institutions are dynamic
Simplified

2. Basic Answers
A business is a group of people working together with a set of processes to accomplish a specific goal in a specific and, often, dynamic market. These groups and processes are constrained and/or guided by dynamic organizational and governmental rules and structures.
The end goal in business is to produce the correct product such that value to the customer of a product, as seen by the customer, is greater than the value provided by the competitions’ product, and is priced such that other stakeholders can be satisfied, including a profit sufficiently large to satisfy owners in the short and long term.
Profit is obtained by producing and selling the correct product ethically and legally.
What do employers want in an employee:
Specific Discipline Skills, Solid Analytic and Communication Skills, Productivity, Proactive worker/learner, Teamwork, Integrity, Can do Attitude

3. Words Defined
Process: a structured, measured set of activities designed to produce a specific output.
Product: good and/or service (tangible and intangible characteristics)
Correct Product: Provides more value to your targeted customer than your competition at a price that provides enough revenue to satisfy the wants and needs of the other five stakeholders. Have to be stakeholder centric to achieve this balance.
Value: what a person gives up for what they receive. Time, money, effort…
Six Stakeholders: Owners/stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, environment.
The only right holder among the stakeholders is the owner.

4. Porter’s Value Chain
Organized How

5. Alternative View Information Systems High Level Management Finance
Accounting
HRM
R&D/Engineering
SCM
Correct Product
to Customer
Operations Mgt: Production & logistics
Marketing
IS: what technology to have, what will fit with current what will not, how to store data, how to collect data, how to retrieve data and generate reports, how to communicate…
Finance: capital budgeting (time value of money), cost of capital, mix of capital structure, risk management (hedging, capital structure, cash on hand…), terms
Accounting: compliance, audit, financial reports, AP, AR, terms, costs, depreciation, payroll, inventory control
HRM: hire, fire, compliance, training, counseling, scheduling people, payroll, reward structure , compensation and benefits
Marketing: voice of the customer, market assessment, product management, product development and improvement, sales, promotion, pricing…
Operations: production, logistics, product development, scheduling people and jobs, inventory control, SCM, process mgt, project management, …
Economics: economic theory, price elasticity,
Original by Tom Bundi: Tom is an U of I business alumni who started his career working for Boeing as a process manager. He took that knowledge and was buying, fixing, and then selling companies. He was very successful.

6. Success Rests On
Having the correct adaptable Mission, Vision, and Strategy (MVS). (high level goals)
Being able to operationalize MVS better than we did yesterday
Basing MVS and operationalization on tools that define and ‘formas’ that mitigate risk.
Risk is driven by variability, therefore theory and tools that define, leverage, or help eliminate variability
Risk/variability/ambiguity increase in a firm as you get closer to product production, the customer, or the environment
Formas: doing things by form
Probability
Statistics
SPC
Queuing Theory
Forecasting
Decision trees
Data base mgt
Relationship Mgt
Hiring screens
Training
Inventory mgt (including cash)
Process mgt
Project mgt
QFD
Pro forma budget
Time value of money…

7. Questions to Answer in order to Achieve Continuous Improvement Relative to a Goal Related to Obtaining the Correct Product
Where are we?
Why are we there?
Where do we want/need to be?
How should/do we get to where we want/need to be?
Is it worth going to where we want to go?