This course is designed to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to plan, finance, develop and operate either a new business venture. It concentrates on attributes of entrepreneurs, searching for viable opportunities, and gathering the resources necessary to convert a viable opportunity into a new business venture.
Students learn how to evaluate entrepreneurs and their business plans.
In addition, students work in teams to develop a business plan for a high potential new business venture that they have developed. This course uses a combination of lectures, case studies, guest speakers, class discussions, and experiential exercises in order to expose students to the challenges that entrepreneurs face in conceiving, planning, financing, and operating a new business venture. This experience provides students with a framework that can be applied to assessing their own business ideas in the future. The main project for the semester is for student teams of four to five students to develop a business plan for their own new business venture. Each team member is required to generate ideas for five different new ventures.