It is useful to see how these principles can be used in different situations for a business. Here are some examples from Day Lewis.

Case study 1: the global financial crisis of 1980

What happened?

The severe recession of the late 1980s caused interest rates to surge. Day Lewis was repaying loans at 17 per cent interest on 32 pharmacies it owned. The company almost collapsed.

MBA principles applied:

• Economics, accounting and financial management
• Human resource management €“ the process of hiring and developing people.

What we did:

Relating my MBA learnings (writes Kirit Patel), especially the business environmental module, it soon became apparent that we would go bust if we did not take quick corrective action. By making use of other learnings, such as financial, strategic and human resource management, we managed to divest all but eight shops and focused on changing the culture of Day Lewis and then, with people more engaged, we started to rebuild the business in the early Nineties.

Having learnt and applied macro and microeconomics, we not only survived, but also came out stronger. Business schools always teach you that the one big mistake businesses often make is not to have their finger on the pulse, and no business can be successful unless it has a clearly defined dashboard. The dashboard is a set of metrics that report on the following:

1. Income
2. Margin
3. Costs
4. Profit
5. Cash flow.