The Entrepreneurial Process: Turning Ideas into Commercial Realities

Course Description

Being an entrepreneur means being willing to take risks, look at things in new ways, and challenge convention with your creativity. In this course, you’ll learn how the entrepreneurial process can work, as well as the ways innovation of products and services are developed and managed. We’ll look at entrepreneurial ventures within both start-up and fully developed businesses. Most important, the course will show that while many people can come up with new concepts, it takes a true entrepreneur, with special skills and disciplines, to execute an entrepreneurial concept.

How do Apple, Google, and design leaders such as Ideo do what they do so well? Through lectures, case-study examination and exercises, this course will help students refine and develop the skills to innovate in all areas of commerce and society. Students will learn to use the basic building blocks of innovation and idea management in order to become better entrepreneurs and “thought leaders.” Special attention will be given to the TPM discipline (Technology-Product-Market) and how team make-up and organization can affect outcomes. Texts and case studies from both the Stanford and Harvard business schools will be used, as well as readings from noted authorities in innovation, such as Edward De Bono and Barry Bayus.

By the end of the course, students will be fluent in many of the core methodologies and terms used in the process of innovation, such as the TPM dynamic and the Value Proposition. Participants will also have the tools to evaluate, develop, and launch their own ventures and begin development of a credible, well-thought-out business plan.

Prerequisites: Basic math skills are the only academic prerequisite. Students will be expected to arrive with at least two business ideas they are seeking to explore and develop during the course.