Entrepreneurship and Innovation Course Descriptions (38 Credit Hours)
ENT241 Entrepreneurship for the Creative Industries
Credits: 3 Hours Prerequisites: none.
This is an introductory course designed primarily for undergraduates in the College of Fine Arts who want to create new businesses, products, services, or thriving careers as
independent artists. Students can expect to develop an entrepreneurial mindset, learn how creative firms and industries are structured, and build practical skills for finding, evaluating and putting entrepreneurial opportunities into action. We will analyze real world examples, for-profit and not-for-profit, from film, art, architecture, fashion, music, media, theater, retail, and design. The class will explore the core functional areas critical to building entrepreneurial entities, including teams, ideation, marketing and sales, financial analysis, and funding. Interdisciplinary teams will generate ideas and explore their potential as viable businesses or sustainable not-for-profits. Lectures, guest speakers, case studies, and exercises will also be integrated.
Credits: 3 Hours
Prerequisites: ACC121, MKT231
This course covers all the steps necessary to evaluate an investment opportunity, and gives an insight to the importance of each evaluation criterion. Economic indicators commonly used are introduced and compared in the context of investment decision examples
Credits: 3 Hours Prerequisites: ENT241
Starting and managing a new business is a risky albeit potentially rewarding undertaking. The complexity and challenges (as well as the potential payoffs) facing entrepreneurs and business managers vary across different countries and are even greater when their business ventures are international in scope. This course addresses the issues specific to international venturing including search and identification of opportunities in foreign markets, logistics of international business expansion, cross- cultural business communication, and international sourcing, international deal-making and networking.
Credits: 3 Hours Prerequisites: ENT241
This course exposes students to the nuances of financing new ventures, getting them started legally and marketing their products or services. Students pull together all the ideas and information from different functional aspects of their projects into coherent and persuasive mini-business plans that serve as roadmaps for building their businesses; and useful instruments to find sufficient financing for the new ventures, so that they can convince the outside world that these opportunities are viable, with substantial potential for success.
Credits: 3 Hours
Prerequisites: ENT241, MKT231
Entrepreneurship is the discovery, enactment and pursuit of new business opportunities. Successful execution of an entrepreneurial idea requires a sound marketing plan. In this course, we will investigate how marketing tools can enable entrepreneurs to realize the full potential of their ideas.
Credits: 3 Hours Prerequisites: ENT351
This course provides an integrated strategy framework for entrepreneurs. The course is structured to provide a deep understanding of the core strategic challenges facing start- up innovators, and a synthetic framework for the development and implementation of entrepreneurial strategy in dynamic environments.
A central theme of the course is that, to achieve competitive advantage, technology entrepreneurs must balance the process of experimentation and learning inherent to entrepreneurship with the selection and implementation of a strategy that establishes competitive advantage. The course identifies the types of choices that entrepreneurs must make to take advantage of a novel opportunity and the logic of particular strategic commitments and positions that allow entrepreneurs to establish competitive advantage.
Credits: 4 Hours
Prerequisites: LRA405, LRA406
This course and ENT483 provide students with practical and professional experience through work with approved organizations. It should prepare students for near-future job opportunities.
Credits: 3 Hours Prerequisites: ENT351
The development of a green economy is gathering global attention as nations undertake new economic development strategies that take into account social, environmental and economic dimensions. The implementation of an economy that is environmentally sound and sustainable is becoming a socio‐economic and political necessity and an imperative.
This course will address the various dimensions, challenges, and opportunities permeating the global green economy, paying heed to the key drivers of the global green economy.
Credits: 3 Hours Prerequisites: ENT241
Social entrepreneurship is a rapidly developing and changing business field in which business and nonprofit leaders design, grow, and lead mission-driven enterprises. As the traditional lines blur between nonprofit enterprises, government, and business, it is critical that business students understand the opportunities and challenges in this new landscape.
Credits: 4 Hours Prerequisites: ENT472
This is an extension for ENT472
ENT484 Funding Entrepreneurial Ventures
Credits: 3 Hours
Prerequisites: ENT241 – FIN241
So you want to do a startup and you know that you need funding. There are multiple ways to fund a new venture: bootstrapping, economic development, angels, and venture capitalists. The question is what are these funders looking for in an early stage investment? What is important to them? How do they decide which companies to invest in and which not? This class looks at funding from the funder's point of view and provides the student with a framework of the investment process: investment criteria, sourcing, and selection, due diligence, deal structure, valuation, and post investment involvement. Real companies seeking funding are used for the final project in which students will be expected, as investment teams, to make investment decisions and convince their fellow investors (the class) to join them (or not). This is a highly interactive and project class. There will be multiple guest speakers. Prerequisites: Students are highly encouraged to take any of the introductory entrepreneurship classes offered in various schools and departments. While no financial background is required, this class will not cover the basics of entrepreneurship from the entrepreneur's perspective, but will be looking from the investor point of view.
ENT485 Entrepreneurship for Scientists
Credits: 3 Hours Prerequisites: ENT241
Entrepreneurship for Scientists is an introductory course in entrepreneurship. The course primarily targets non-business students and assumes no background in business. Students majoring in science, computer science, engineering, the humanities or the arts are exposed to fundamental concepts and issues around innovation and entrepreneurship. The course provides a foundation for starting a new venture and innovating new technologies and products within existing organizations. Topics covered
will include: identifying a business opportunity, building a team, finance, equity investment, managing risk, market understanding, and competitive advantage. Emphasis will be on team projects, including developing an investor pitch for an original idea.
Credits: 3 Hours
Prerequisites: ENT241, ENT362
This course targets innovators and entrepreneurs who are interested in introducing innovations to the marketplace through start-up, emerging and established organizations. Class participants will learn how to evaluate, develop and implement opportunities for innovation, using an emergent or iterative approach (the lean methodology). Selected industries of interest of importance for economic growth are analyzed. Opportunities for driving or anticipating change are examined using prevailing SET factors (societal, economic, technology). Students then learn a methodology to identify Signals of change involving three customer groups and one non-customer group
- undershot customers, non-consumers, overshot customers, in addition to the nonmarket contexts. The Competitive set is analyzed and strategic choices are made. The Resources, Processes and Values (RPV) of the competitive set are analyzed and utilized for informed decision making.
Credits: 3 Hours Prerequisites: ENT241
This course explores topics relevant to entrepreneurs within the family business environment. Specific topics examined will include how family businesses emerge and evolve as well as the unique challenges often found in family business context (e.g., dealing with family conflicts, how to motivate and evaluate employees when a mix of family and non-members are involved, and planning for succession).
