The SSE Riga Business Lab is a joint entrepreneurship course of the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (SSE Riga), Art Academy of Latvia (LMA), and Riga Graduate School of Law (RGSL).
The SSE Riga Business Lab offers a demanding and rewarding hands-on learning experience for students who are interested in exploring entrepreneurship.
During this intensive team-based course you will turn an idea for a product or service into a business idea and develop and test a prototype. You will do this together with students from different universities in multidisciplinary teams.
The SSE Riga Business Lab is based on the famous Lean Launchpad methodology of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is centred around practical, team-based activities of building and launching new products and services that customers need. Each week we will get together for team presentations as well as lectures and workshops on relevant topics such as customer development, research, prototyping, brand & communication, markets & pricing, funding, pitching, and team culture. Guest entrepreneurs from leading and up-and-coming start-ups will be invited for presentations and Q&As.
The SSE Riga Business Lab will equip you with valuable problem-solving skills, which you can apply in your future endeavours when starting a business or conducting other professional activities. The course will give you practical experience in building and launching a new product or service and will allow you to experience entrepreneurial activity as a career alternative to being employed. You will learn key theoretical concepts and relevant practical methodologies and tools. Through teamwork, you will learn together with and from other students and you will make new contacts.
- Teacher: Inga Jēkabsone
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 32 Contact Hours
Objective of the course is to introduce the students to motivation of the consumers and producers, process of the economic decision making, explain the laws of supply and demand and analyze the main affecting variables, elasticity, different types of market, price setting and profit maximization.
- Teacher: Jānis Priede
CREDITS 4 (LV) 6 (ECTS) - 64 Contact Hours
The primary objective is to give the student an understanding of basic business principles. Global business, entrepreneurship, management, marketing, information technology, and financial management will be discussed.
- Teacher: Waleed Gumaa
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 32 Contact Hours
This course develops students’ ability to measure, record and communicate the financial information of the company. Being the first course in Accounting (and followed by Financial Accounting), Business Accounting provides an important base for the upcoming studies of the students. The course starts with recording accounting transactions and learning the principles and concepts of accounting, followed by preparing the financial statements, making adjustments to the financial statements and identifying the interconnection between the financial statements. The content of the course could be divided into two parts: recording the basic accounting transactions and preparing basic financial statements; and making adjustments to the financial statements. The two parts of the course are divided by the case study. The first part of the course is taught in a simpler and slower pace to establish a profound understanding of the basics of accounting. The second part of the course fully relies on the knowledge base as provided during the first part- the development and amount of studying material in the second part of the course are increasing fast. The students are strongly encouraged to study intensively from the very beginning of the course.
The course contains lectures and seminars. The lectures will cover the theoretical material and will be followed by practical seminars when the problems will be solved and solutions discussed and analysed.
The problems covered during the seminar are stated in the course outline of this course. To prepare for the upcoming seminar, students need to read the chapters stated in the course outline together with the review questions. The only way of learning accounting properly is to solve as many exercises as possible. During this course, we will combine both theory and problem solving to ensure the best grade for the course.
- Teacher: Nataļja Točelovska
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 32 Contact Hours
This course is designed to introduce students to the basic concepts and tools of mathematics and statistics. Topics include collection, processing and presentation of data, statistical measures of central tendency and dispersion, normal distribution, binomial distribution, sampling distribution, confidence intervals, hypotheses testing, correlation, univariate and multivariate regression, forecasting, and the interpretation of the outcomes of statistical tests.
- Teacher: Inga Jēkabsone
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 32 Contact Hours
Macroeconomics describes how economic systems work and explores issues such as: economic growth, business cycle, inflation, unemployment, investment, international trade and international capital mobility. Macroeconomics also analyses the interdependence between banks, financial markets and the real economy. The course will present all major macroeconomic variables and how they interact in the context of the global economy plus how the government via fiscal policy and the central bank via monetary policy can influence these variables. Latvia and economic policy in Latvia will be used extensively via examples.
- Teacher: Paolo Paesani
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 32 Contact Hours
Strategic vision and action are necessary to enhance a company’s competitive superiority, achieve superior performance, and improve its value. Business strategy introduces, explains, and analyses the activities needed to develop, select, implement, and evaluate a firm’s competitive strategy. This course is designed to illustrate development, implementation, and reformulation of business strategy. Emphasis is placed on the need for awareness of, and accommodation to, changes in an organisation's internal and external environments.
- Teacher: Waleed Gumaa
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 32 Contact Hours
Being the continuation of Business Accounting, this course provides further knowledge in Financial Accounting, as well as the first insight into Management Accounting being key in the day-to-day business life. The course starts with the revision of the conceptual framework of accounting and the preparation of financial statements. The course further develops the aspect of analyses of the financial statements by adding the third financial statement- the cash flow statement as well as ratio analysis. The second part of the course introduces the internal focus of accounting- management accounting. The main aspect of the management accounting: costing and budgeting are in focus of the second part of the course. The two parts of the course are divided by the mid-term exam.
The course contains lectures and seminars. The lectures cover the theoretical material and are followed by practical seminars when the problems are solved and solutions discussed and analysed.
To prepare for the upcoming seminar, students need to read the chapters stated in the course outline. The lecture readings are stated in the course outline of this course. During this course, we will combine both theory and problem solving to ensure the best grade during the exam. Whatever career path students might be willing to choose knowledge obtained in this course will make them sophisticated users of financial information equipped for the decision-making process.
- Teacher: Nataļja Točelovska
This course is an introduction to the main topics of Finance. Financial Economics is typically divided into two broad areas: Corporate Finance and Financial Markets. For Corporate Finance, we will start by introducing the tools to discount and evaluate risky investment decisions. Once having learned those tools, we can apply them to choose between different risky investments, a process called capital budgeting. For the Financial Markets, we will introduce the financial instruments present in the market, learn how to valuate them as well as analyse the way investors construct their portfolios and how this leads to the notion of equilibrium asset pricing. We also will learn the way financial markets function in light of investor behaviour.
The course contains lectures and seminars. The lectures will cover the theoretical material and will be followed by practical seminars when the problems will be solved and solutions discussed and analysed. To prepare for the upcoming seminar, students need to read the chapters stated in the course outline. The lecture readings are stated in the course outline of this course. During this course, we will combine both theory and problem solving to ensure the best grade.
- Teacher: Nataļja Točelovska
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 32 Contact Hours
The course is specifically designed for non-marketing stream students to provide a concise, yet comprehensive overview of the key marketing concepts and practices and hands-on tools used in activities performed by marketing managers. Topics include the identification of market opportunities, consumer insights, strategic marketing planning, product/service development and management, managing marketing mix and distribution channels, planning and executing promotional programmes.
- Teacher: Valters Kaže
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 32 Contact Hours
International Economics explains what motivates international trade and flows of money across borders and how this affects exchange rates, interest rates and economic activity. The course covers the following topics: 1) Global interdependence and global production, 2) International trade, absolute and comparative advantage, intra-industry trade, 3) Trade policy, 4) Balance of payments, 5) Foreign exchange market and exchange rates, 6) Capital movements, speculation and international currency crisis, 7) International economic and monetary integration and the European Monetary Union.
- Teacher: Paolo Paesani
REDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 32 Contact Hours
The Risk Management course is designed to develop key risk management competencies that are essential within corporate and business environments. This course will equip students with knowledge and tools to enable them to apply practical skills in risk identification and management. The course provides an overview of how risk management frameworks work in practice and what challenges in managing the risk the companies are facing.
- Teacher: Sergejs Koleda
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 32 Contact Hours
Strategic vision and action are necessary
to enhance a company’s competitive superiority, achieve superior performance,
and improve its value. Applied Business Strategy continues from the Business
Strategy Course and continues with a deeper understanding of why certain
strategies are implemented and the impact they could have. The course explores
new models that are particular to conglomerates and large businesses with
multiple business units.
- Teacher: Waleed Gumaa
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 32 Contact Hours
A successful Project Manager must simultaneously manage the four basic elements of a project: resources, time, money, and scope. These elements are all interrelated, each must be managed effectively and all must be managed together if the project, and the project manager, is to have a successful outcome. The course will cover the project lifecycle and its application from inception to completion and delivery. Because of these factors, projects are now an essential process in business.
- Teacher: Waleed Gumaa
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 30 Contact Hours
The course intends at its start to provide the basic vocabulary and concepts of demography and to enable the student to understand the past demographic development in his or her home country and in Europe in general. A special focus is on interdepencies and the interrelation between demographic developments, education, technological achievements and labour markets in a globalized world.
In the second part will we compare Europe with the two remaining economic and political “heavy weights” China and the US but have a special focus on Russia and India, too. Special attention is paid to the situation of the countries of the bottom bilion and their importance for security in particular and our future development in general.
- Teacher: Dirk Linowski
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 30 Contact Hours
The course provides and introductory insight into the legal, financial and organisation aspects of venture capital industry. The students get introduced to the concepts of intellectual property and its market value, raising capital, investment funds, specific traits of venture capital-backed businesses, as well as means of intellectual property protection. It attempts to explain the rationale behind modern company valuations (why are some ventures valued billions without generating any cash anyway?), venture capital investment into early stage/start-up businesses and emphasizes the modern shift towards viewing the intellectual property assets as the major drivers for company’s value.
The course is focused on offering practical knowledge on VC and, while not differentiating between seminars and lectures, rests on and urges active student participation during throughout all sessions.
- Teacher: Sergejs Jakimovs
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 30 Contact Hours
Riga-Cambridge Venture Camp course introduces students into theoretical and practical entrepreneurship. The theoretical part consists of lectures and seminars on the topics of entrepreneurship such as business idea generation and business model selection, market research, marketing, legal and financial aspects of a company, company valuation, stages of company development and company ethics. The practical application of the theoretical knowledge acquired is performed by the students in the form of generating and developing their own business idea individually or in a team.
Starting Riga-Cambridge Venture Camp course with the strong focus on the theoretical background in the topic of entrepreneurship (the first part of the course takes place in Riga), the second part of the course shifts the focus on practical application of the knowledge while attending the series of intensive lectures, workshops, field visits and mentors trainings in Cambridge. In the result of the course, students are supposed to present and pitch their business idea to the jury of university and industry professionals in two geographical locations: Riga and Cambridge.
- Teacher: Nataļja Točelovska
CREDITS 2 (LV) 3 (ECTS) - 32 Contact Hours
This course primarily focuses on techniques for business data analysis. By the end of the course, the students will have gained knowledge and understanding about the main issues and challenges in business data analysis. In addition, the students will aquite skills and competences how to analyse business data using latest techniques and technologies in data science.
- Teacher: Inga Jēkabsone