Weatherhead School of Management
Entrepreneurial Strategy - ENTP 301
This course is designed to show students how to identify potential business opportunities, determine what constitutes a good business model, and to strategically implement a business proposal. Topics of focus include an overview of the entrepreneurial process, determinants of venture success in high tech and other business environments, and strategies for industry entry and venture growth.
Entrepreneurship and Wealth Creation - ENTP 311
This course explores all aspects of the creation of a new venture from idea through startup, growth, and beyond. Students will learn how to evaluate opportunities, develop strategies, create a business plan and acquire financing for a new venture. In this course students will develop a business plan for a new venture.
Entrepreneurial Finance - ENTP 310
This course explores the financing and financial management of entrepreneurial new ventures. The course will focus on issues of financial management of new ventures (forecasting cash flows, cash flow management, valuation, capital structure) and the various financial methods and mechanisms available to entrepreneurs (bootstrapping, angel investors, venture capitalists, IPOs).
Entrepreneurship and Innovation - ENTP 428
Economics of Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship - ECON 369
This course is designed to help students identify, evaluate, and obtain control over technological opportunities so they may successfully understand the challenges of starting new companies. The course focuses on four themes: 1) the source, discovery and evaluation of technological opportunities; 2) the process of organizing a new firm to produce new technology that satisfies the needs of customers; 3) the acquisition of financial and human resources necessary to exploit technological opportunities; and 4) the development of mechanism to appreciate the returns from exploitation of technological opportunities.
Business Model Design and Innovation - ENTP 308/DESN 308
This course takes the perspective of entrepreneurs or business unit managers. The three basic questions that all entrepreneurs and intrepreneurs must answer is where to play, how to win and what to do. You have identified a group of customers for your product or service (where to play). Your first challenge is to know what features (Customer Attributes) your target customer will pay for. Innovative business models focus on a set of customer attributes that are usually very different from other industry incumbents that we call Focal Attributes. Your second challenge is to clearly state your profit logic -- how you will make money -- how to win. The concept called Profit Objectives (similar but not the same as KPI and/or SMART objectives) allow you to operationalize the profit logic through specific and measurable deliverables. Your third challenge is building the value chain that can deliver these focal attributes (what to do). At this point, you have a good understanding of all the elements of your business model and in particular, how the focal attributes and the value chain align with the profit objectives. You will learn how to illustrate this alignment through a mapping process
Beyond Silicon Valley - USNA 288I
The path for entrepreneurs to grow their companies outside of well-developed entrepreneurial ecosystems like Silicon Valley is challenging. Most markets around the world do not look like Silicon Valley and they never will. But there are other models to support new businesses. In transitioning markets (where entrepreneurs do not have much access to private sector financing), government officials, donors, and business leaders are experimenting with creative approaches to support the growth of entrepreneurs. Cleveland is one such place exploring innovative approaches to support new businesses. For over ten years, there has been a massive intervention of government and donor resources to cultivate this entrepreneurial ecosystem. Has this intervention worked in Cleveland? How should success be measured? How does Cleveland's approach differ from approaches elsewhere around the world? In an unusual twist for a SAGES seminar, the regular classroom discussions will be complemented by your enrollment in a massive open online course (MOOC) that I developed for CWRU. The MOOC is called "Beyond Silicon Valley: Growing Entrepreneurship in Transitioning Economies" and examines the Cleveland case study in depth. The course has attracted over 44,000 students from 190 countries since its launch in April 2014. So, not only will you explore how communities around the world support entrepreneurship, you will also learn about the rapidly developing field of online learning and MOOCs.
Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences
Poverty, Wealth Building, and Social Entrepreneurship - SASS 367
With poor communities and individuals across the world aspiring for higher standards of living and quality of life, monolithic development strategies are proving to be insufficient. Microenterprise and social entrepreneurship are among the latest strategies for poverty alleviation. New strategies that are grass-roots, multi-dimensional, entrepreneurial, and engage stakeholders as partners are gaining ground. They seek to fundamentally transform the roles and relationships of the stakeholders in the economy. While social entrepreneurship is revolutionizing the practice of development work, the micro-enterprise sector plays an important role for some of the poorest sectors of society who gain employment, connection to the market, and opportunities for innovation through it. In this course, we will examine social entrepreneurship, the change it brought about in how development is viewed, conceived, and implemented. Some of the examples that will provide core content include economic development strategies that promote asset building among the poor; Mandragon in Spain (and other similar institutions from across the world), Greyston Bakery (and other similar examples from around the United States) and Evergreen Cooperative (and other relevant local examples).