Porter’s 5 Forces
A fast lens for industry attractiveness, bargaining power, substitution risk, and competitive intensity.
USC Marshall School of Business
Key lessons from my MBA curriculum.
Distilled notes, frameworks, and takeaways from coursework, readings, and career planning — organized to be fast to scan, easy to revisit, and actually useful in the real world.
Key concepts & frameworks
Put the reusable ideas first.
Instead of burying the best stuff below the fold, this section gives the core MBA mental models prime placement. This is the part you should be able to revisit before meetings, interviews, presentations, or decisions.
How to use this page
Start with frameworks. Drop into courses when you want full context. Treat the rest of the site like source material, not the homepage headline.
WACC
The baseline hurdle rate behind valuation, capital allocation, and how you think about financing decisions.
Kotter’s 8 Steps
A clean change-management sequence for getting buy-in, sustaining momentum, and making change stick.
Psychological Safety
The operating condition that lets teams surface risk, challenge assumptions, and learn faster.
Power & Decision-Making
Who really shapes outcomes, how influence travels, and why authority alone rarely explains the result.
Organizational Culture
The interaction between incentives, structure, norms, and behavior over time.
MBA courses
Organized by subject, not by clutter.
Cleaner cards, more hierarchy, and a stronger academic feel. Filter by topic below.
Strategy
Strategic Formulation for Competitive Analysis
Porter’s 5 Forces, competitive advantage, the kernel of good strategy, and corporate strategy frameworks.
Open course →Management
Managerial Perspectives
Team dynamics, leadership, power, decision-making, organizational behavior, and innovation at Google.
See related notes →Communication
Communication for Managers
Executive presentations, Kotter’s 8-step change model, storytelling structure, and headline-first communication.
See related notes →Finance
Corporate Financing
Capital structure, WACC, M&A, and valuation frameworks. Set up as a ready slot for future notes.
Browse finance frameworks →Leadership
Interpersonal Influence and Power
Negotiation, persuasion, peer influence, power dynamics, and the biases that shape decisions.
See key concepts →Finance
Financial Analysis & Valuation
DCF, comparable company analysis, financial modeling, and valuation multiples in one track.
Browse valuation topics →Org Design
Designing High Performance Organizations
Culture, incentives, organizational structure, and what actually drives high-performance teams.
View related concepts →Books
Supporting reads worth keeping.
Same structure, better polish. Books sit as part of the learning system instead of floating off as an afterthought.
Book
Behave: The Biology of Humans
Robert Sapolsky. Behavioral science, biology, and decision-making foundations that connect directly to leadership and management.
Read chapter notes →Book
Think Again
Adam Grant. Rethinking, intellectual humility, and how better decisions often start with dropping certainty.
Add notes →Book
Four Thousand Weeks
Oliver Burkeman. Time, tradeoffs, and the limits that force better prioritization.
Add notes →Recent notes
Freshest entries, easier to skim.
Managerial Perspectives · Apr 17, 2020
HBR Article: Managing Your Team
Managerial Perspectives · Apr 17, 2020
Additional Thoughts and Takeaways
Communication for Managers · Apr 18, 2020
My Takeaways: Communication for Managers
Behave · Apr 26, 2020