SCHC 474 H01 29329

SocBehavSci, NotCore

Notes:

**This course is designed for all Honors students sophomore level and above. There are no prerequisites, and this is for students of ALL majors, although a basic understanding of how to use spreadsheets and do basic numerical analysis will be helpful. This course is particularly appropriate for juniors and seniors who aspire to lead or consult on innovation initiatives in large companies or who may be interested in building and running their own new ventures.** This course pairs each student with a real company pursuing an entrepreneurial venture. The student will study theoretical frameworks, analyses, and best practices and then apply those in the context of the company, acting as a consultant to the executive team of the new venture. By applying theory to practice, the student will not only learn the broad range of innovation and entrepreneurship tools, systems, and processes that we will study in class, but will also learn how to apply those in a real-world environment. All enterprises today are engaged in an intense competition to develop innovative products, services, and business models. Entrepreneurship, in the context of this course, is the leveraging of creativity and innovation to create sustainable value. This takes place relentlessly in today’s work environment, independent of a firm’s size, market, or location. Entrepreneurship involves the application of many different disciplines in the specific context of a new venture, often in a rapidly evolving, high-growth, intense environment with many unknowns. By the end of this course, the student will have studied and exercised key areas of building and running a new venture, including building strong teams quickly, strategic and tactical planning, decision-making, lean startup methodologies, managing in a chaotic and rapidly changing environment, financial analysis and fundraising, presenting and pitching, marketing, sales, development, operations, and the development of a strong intellectual property portfolio. The student will have access to alumni advisors throughout the course who will help guide the student’s consulting engagement. The faculty member who teaches this course is the director of the McNair Institute for Entrepreneurism and Free Enterprise.