Enterprise
and the Entrepreneur
Course
Outline
Fall
2012
The objectives for this
course are not easy to define. I teach the course because I appreciate the
importance of entrepreneurship in our society and others. Among other things, I
want to encourage some of our students to become entrepreneurs -- to become
innovators and managers of the technology that will define our future. I enjoy
working with students who are excited by the spirit of entrepreneurship.
Perhaps the primary objective of this course is to encourage and refine that
spirit.
Additionally, I try to
develop or enhance skills that raise the probability of success for students
who aspire to someday become involved in entrepreneurial ventures. This objective can be further subdivided into
a number of categories:
·
Awareness
of the entrepreneurial environment, including the role played by law and
contracts, personnel and other labor management issues, fundraising, marketing
and sales techniques, and so forth.
·
Stressing
the importance of planning and strategy and the devices for implementing them,
such as the business plan, timelines, project management, etc.
·
Exposure
to certain business fundamentals that an entrepreneur should know before
starting out.
·
Exposure
to issues of character, personality, and moral responsibility.
·
The
capacity for promotion and becoming a tenacious champion of the Koz (traditionally stressed very strongly in this class).
What
do we do in this class?
This is a course that
combines reading, lectures, class discussion and team presentations.
If you look at the
course calendar you will see that I have reading, lectures and discussions
arranged by topics, such as discussions of financing, building the team, sales,
etc. We will begin these segments with
class discussions about the reading assignments for the week (see the section
below on Reading with lectures about the material being
considered). There will be a class
discussion of the reading assigned for that week on Tuesday of
that week. (The exception will be on weeks when we have a guest lecturer on
Tuesday - on those weeks the discussions will be on Thurssday).
Therefore you must have all of the assigned reading completed for the week prior
to coming to class on Tuesday. Then I
will usually give a lecture or two on the same subject.
We are going to study
examples of entrepreneurial success and failure. I present a lot of some
"cookbook" material based upon my business experience and that of
others, especially Mudders. We will have a number of visitors in this
class who will come will come and tell insightful stories and offer insights
based upon experience.
You will simulate an
entrepreneurial start-up by developing and pitching team projects at the end of
the semester.
Because this is a
seminar course, there are no exams. Your grade will be based upon written work
(a business plan) and active class participation (more
about that is explained below and will be explained in the first lecture). In
case you're reading this fast, let me write it again: I expect active class participation. Very
active! Additionally, unlike my other classes,
full time class attendance is absolutely mandatory.
Although I will forgive missed attendance for illness or necessary appointments
(like job interviews) you must otherwise attend every session of this class.
During the last five
weeks of class, you will be divided into teams of five and given the task of developing the
plans for a start-up enterprise. The final result will be a written business
plan and your team will present a verbal project proposal to outside visitors.
You will receive both an individual and team grade for this effort. As the
project is developed, individual team members will make progress reports.
Details on this assignment will be provided in class.
Reading
Reading in this course
is essential. There is one text assigned for this course: (1) Engineering
You Start-up: A Guide for the High-Tech Entrepreneur, by James A. Swanson
and Michael L. Baird, 2nd edition, Professional Publications, ISBN
1888577916 (code S&B in course calendar). Review the course
calendar for the reading assignments. You are expected to have completed
the assigned reading for each week prior to the beginning of
class on Tuesday for that week. Each Tuesday, with few
exceptions, we are going to discuss that reading. On that day, one or two students will be
chosen randomly to lead the discussion and your grade will depend, in
part, upon how well you do that. Failure to be prepared will result
automatically in a low grade.
Grades
One third of your grade
will be determined by your class participation in discussions and
presentations, including the discussion of the readings assigned for each week,
as described in the paragraph above. When you speak and submit written
assignments, I write things down and I remember what you've done. (This is the
way it is done in a corporation and in the kinds of public contact one makes
when one is an entrepreneur - you don't take tests in real life, except for
when you're getting your driver's license).One third of your grade will be
determined by the grade given for your team's business plan, which is due at
the end of the semester. One third of your grade will be determined by
the team grade that I give your team based upon your end-of-semester oral
presentation.
Visitors
As time permits, I try
to bring visitors from the entrepreneurial community into class to talk to you
and tell you their stories. These include alumni and trustees who have started
and succeeded at business and financiers who fund and sometimes manage
entrepreneurial startups. At the end of the course, when you make your team
presentations, one or two of the listeners will probably be venture
capitalists. These visitors play a very important role in this class and they
provide a wonderful opportunity for students to meet people who work with
business startups.