Scaling Minority Businesses

Scaling Minority Businesses (SMB) is a field course designed to leverage the intellectual power and community of Harvard Business School to address the vital needs of Black-owned enterprises as they face the twin tasks of surviving and growing. The course utilizes three approaches to learning—traditional case-based classes, talks by subject experts, and hands-on consulting assignments with Black-owned businesses in the greater Boston-area. It will provide students with the opportunity to draw upon and strengthen their learnings from a range of RC courses including, but not limited to, TEM, Marketing, Strategy, and TOM. Students will receive hands-on experience wrestling with key issues in scaling a small business and will gain an understanding of the historic and systemic barriers to growth faced by Black businesses.

The arc of the course covers three modules: (1) Challenges of Systemic Racism and Inequities; (2) Challenges of Access to Capita; and (3) Challenges of Access to Customers.