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Faculty
Morris Samit, Elmira College

Course Coordinator
ISUP Secretariat

Prerequisite/progression of the course

Students should, through prior coursework, have had formal exposure to any of the following: strategy, marketing, finance, general business, international business, or economics.

Course content, structure and teaching

Entrepreneurship is an integrative discipline which requires students to be immersed in subject areas such as marketing, operations, finance, production, management, etc., all the skills, concepts, information, and requisites necessary for the creation, growth, management, and harvest of the venture. Through lectures, class discussion, and case studies of various new ventures, students will amass a store of knowledge, of the necessary and sufficient requirements, to enable them to produce a business plan for a feasible and realistic venture. Students will learn how to:

• Turn an idea into an opportunity
• Research an industry, market, and competition
• Do a start-up SWOT analysis
• Apply the disciplines involved in creating a venture
• Appreciate the special nuances of entrepreneurial marketing
• Develop a pricing strategy and economic model
• Assess the risks and develop contingency plans
• Understand the many sources of financing
• Build a sustainable economic business model and know the requisite financing
• Learn what potential financers want to hear
• Read, analyze, and discuss cases exploring the issues faced by other successful entrepreneurs
• Lay out a framework for a successful venture

Learning Objectives

Because of the structure of the course, and the required work of the students, each student should leave the course with the knowledge and methodology for identifying, analyzing, and implementing entrepreneurial opportunities. The student will be able to produce a business plan that will convince investors, employees, etc. of the viability of the new venture. The knowledge gained will qualify a student to successfully start and build his or her own venture.

The student needs to demonstrate, in the business plan, a grasp of the issues in differentiating and explaining his/her business, and presenting a feasible economic business model.

Teaching methods

Central to the course is an interactive exchange among the students and the instructor, reviewing and discussing relevant and current texts and articles relating to the problems and issues of entrepreneurship. Students will read selected textbook descriptions of the entrepreneurial process and cases depicting actual entrepreneurial ventures. Videos from leading entrepreneurs and industry gurus will be shown. Groups will be assigned different cases and articles to read, and debate, in class. This will expose the students to key elements in starting and building an enduring enterprise through analyzing case studies and business plans. For maximum benefit, each student must come to each class session fully prepared to discuss all of the assigned readings, and to offer both questions and answers to the discussion.

Examination

Final exam: Project/home assignment (written individually), 15 A4 pages.

Re-take exam: Project/home assignment (written individually), 15 A4 pages.

Recommended literature

Selected chapters from the following text:

• Timmons, Jeffry, Spinelli, Stephen. New Venture Creation e-book (selected chapters) Irwin/McGraw-Hill.

Supplemental articles (from Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review, etc.) and cases (from Harvard, Stanford, Babson, etc.):

• Bhide, The Questions Every Entrepreneur Must Answer
• 3-hour Business Plan, Blue Rock Capital
• Bhide, Bootstrap Finance
• The Financial Perspective: What Entrepreneurs Should Know
• Lassiter, Learning from High-Potential Ventures
• Sahlman, The Basic Venture Capital Formula
• Hellman, A Note on Valuation of Venture Capital Deals

Cases (representative – others to be added):

• ZipCar
• Th!nk
• Maktabi
• Chemalite

Last updated by ISUP Secretariat 28/01/2010