MBA for MSMEs — Business Strategy for Philippine Owner-Operators
This is the MBA I teach at the University of the Philippines, rewritten for the people who actually run Philippine MSMEs — owner-operators, family-business successors, and first-time founders. Strategy, finance, operations, and marketing, stripped of the jargon and rebuilt around a single shop, a single cash position, a single team.
My MBA, dumped in full.
Five long-form references, rebuilt end to end from the material I teach. They are not meant to be read straight through. Open the one that matches the problem sitting on your desk this week, take the framework, close the tab. Every one of them is written for a business with one owner and no department to delegate to.
Marketing Management
Segmentation, positioning, pricing, distribution, and the marketing plan that ties them together. The longest guide on this site and the one I reach for most in client work, because marketing is where an MSME either finds a customer it can keep or spends its way through the year.
- Segmentation & targeting
- Positioning
- Pricing
- Channel & promotion
The Strategic Management Process
How a strategy is actually made: read the environment, choose a direction you can defend, then do the unglamorous work of making the organisation move. This is the sequence I run with clients, from the first scan to the first review meeting.
- Environmental scan
- SWOT & strategic choice
- Implementation
- Change management
Operations Management
Capacity, layout, inventory, quality, and scheduling. The disciplines that decide whether the promise your marketing makes can be delivered on a Tuesday, at cost, without the owner in the room.
- Capacity
- Inventory
- Quality
Financial Management
The formula sheet: ratios, working capital, cost of capital, and valuation, laid out as a cheat sheet rather than a chapter. Built to sit open beside your books, not to be read once and filed.
- Ratios
- Working capital
- Valuation
Management Control Systems
Budgets, responsibility centres, transfer pricing, and performance measures. How an owner finds out a strategy is failing while there is still time and cash left to fix it.
- Budgets
- Responsibility centres
- Performance measures
Five guides, or five modules. Same material.
This is a curriculum, not a library. Reading it is free. Running it on your own numbers, with your own team in the room, is the harder half — and that is the half I am hired for.
Everything filed under MBA for MSMEs.
Plain-language briefs, reviewers, and guides from this pillar — newest first.
Strategic Management Process and Strategic Planning Tools
The strategic management process end to end, plus the planning tools behind it: Porter’s Five Forces, Ansoff, BCG, the Seven…
Operations Management Concepts & Techniques
Operations management, from process design and capacity to inventory, lean, and quality: the core decisions explained for MBA students and…
Management Control Systems: Executing Strategy and Management
Management control is how you know your business is doing what you decided it would do, without you standing there.…
Lean Startup Principles for SMEs
A lean startup basically means ‘failing fast, failing cheap but learning more’. It means testing the market of what you…
Finance Cheat Sheet: Formulas and Concepts
The core financial-management ratios, dividend-valuation models, and capital-budgeting rules on one page, in plain terms for Philippine business owners and…
UP MBA GPAT: 8 Best Steps to Ace it
This UP MBA GPAT Article was published on March 11, 2015, and updated on March 24, 2020. In 2012, I…
8 Great Signs Of A Successful Entrepreneur
There are advantages and disadvantages to a successful entrepreneur. Here are the signs you are turning into a successful entrepreneur.…
How Much is the UP MBA Tuition Fee?
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My Personal Blueprint for Philippine eCommerce
Having attended the 5th Philippine eCommerce Entreprenuer’s Summit hosted by the DigitalFilipino.com, I had few ideas for improvement. E-Commerce is…
The Ugly And The Beautiful In E-Commerce
E-commerce continuously knocks on the door of the world market. Though its full potential is still to be seen, especially…
5 Best Elevator Pitch Tips for Entrepreneurs
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Entrepreneur Test: Assess Yourself With 11 Difficult Questions
A typical entrepreneur test will ask people: Do you want to have your own business and be their own boss?…
An MBA, rebuilt for the way Philippine MSMEs actually run.
Most business education is written for corporations with departments, budgets, and a board. This pillar takes the same UP MBA disciplines — strategic management, operations, marketing, and financial management — and rewrites them for one owner doing the books at 11pm. Every brief is sourced, dated, and built to use this week, not to memorise for an exam.
Applying to graduate business school? Start with the UP MBA exam guide. Running a shop, a service, or a family business? The management briefs above are ordered newest-first, but each one stands on its own — read in any order.
The other pillars.
Four streams, one editorial calendar — or see everything in one place.
Mutual Wealth
Cooperatives, NSSLAs, and community enterprises — strategy for wealth that belongs to members and missions.
Governance
Public administration research, translated into plain-language briefs for LGUs and practitioners.
Teaching & Learning
Essays on teaching, studying online, exams, and getting into and through your program.
Beyond the writing.
When you need the frameworks applied to your own numbers, not just read about.
Consulting
Strategy, feasibility, and planning engagements for businesses, cooperatives, and government teams.
Training
Hands-on capability-building — the same frameworks, delivered live to your team or organisation.
About RM Nisperos
The credentials, institutions, and track record behind the briefs — the case for trusting the work.