New Venture Creation

Catalog description

Via problem-based learning, students define new business ventures to meet current market needs, develop business models, and present to various stakeholders. The goal of New Venture Creation is to better prepare undergraduate students to be leaders in adaptive, globally-minded, technology-savvy organizations. The course is structured so students develop skills that are of high value in any workplace: leadership skills, self-efficacy, creativity and the ability to deal with ambiguity. Upon course completion, students will have a working knowledge of traditional and non-traditional ways for identifying a new product or business opportunity, quantifying the potential, understanding the key competitive factors, researching the audience, and producing a convincing plan for financing and launch. Students who want to augment the skills and knowledge from their major with the ability to develop a new product/service/process, will find New Venture Creation a valuable course. This is a novel problem-based learning (PBL) course, where the learning is student-centered, with faculty acting primarily in the role of facilitators. Active/Experiential learning happens in this course because students develop ownership of their venture concepts and are fully responsible for the genesis of ideas.