An idea is not a business, in fact, most ideas are worthless. Ideas are only the beginning. In this course you will learn about the process of evaluating and exploiting new ideas. This process, known as entrepreneurship, constitutes a way of thinking and acting which recognizes ideas that are high potential opportunities and, then, combines them with the people and resources necessary to undertake market entry. Virtually every product or service that you routinely enjoy was at some point developed and refined by entrepreneurs (e.g. automobiles, televisions, personal computers, pharmaceuticals, mail delivery, etc.). Entrepreneurship is about understanding and fulfilling customer needs in new ways, its lessons are universal and timeless.

The course entitled Starting a New Venture explores the steps associated with the entrepreneurial process, spanning idea generation, opportunity screening, business plan development, as well as the growth and eventual terminating event of a new venture. Students are expected to exit the course with an enhanced ability to discriminate between ideas for new businesses based upon their likelihood of success. Additionally, students are expected to gain an appreciation for what it is like to be an entrepreneur. The course has four educational objectives:

• Develop the skills, attitudes, and judgment that enable successful entrepreneurs to recognize and pursue high potential opportunities

• Learn to identify and assemble the attributes of a successful new venture

• Understand how investors make decisions when considering to fund new ventures

• Briefly explore the challenges of operating, growing, and exiting new ventures

Although this course focuses on the North American new venture experience, its principles are applicable to established companies, non-profits, and governmental agencies as well - in free markets and not so free ones, in western and non-western cultures.

Course Approach

What is the shortest distance between two points? If you were to recall from geometry, you might be inclined to say 'a line'. In terms of the entrepreneurial process, if this was your answer you would be, unfortunately, wrong. There is no such thing as a straight line in business. The shortest path through the entrepreneurial jungle will almost certainly be a long meandering path, with a great deal of backtracking, checking your map, realizing that your map is incorrect, redrawing your map, and then seeing if your newly conceived map offers any better guidance. Therefore, although the entrepreneurial process has a sequence and flow, it is often still difficult to directly translate "textbook learning" into application (e.g., practicing entrepreneurship). For this reason, the course relies heavily upon the experience of being entrepreneurs beginning on the first day of class. Additionally, we will at times use discussion-based learning founded on "real world" examples or exercises to help everyone develop expertise in the field of entrepreneurship.

The course consists of a series of team goals. Your first team goal will be to identify important, compelling consumer needs/pains. Generally speaking when individuals or teams are given the task to think entrepreneurially they begin by attempting to imagine new product ideas, however the entrepreneurial process actually begins with consumer pains. In other words, good solutions (e.g., product ideas) can only be developed for important problems. People don't buy products, they buy solutions to problems - and they only seek solutions when a problems is painful enough to compel them to act (otherwise they simply continue to remain happy with the status quo and opt to spend their money, a limited resource, on other pursuits in life). As teams, you will begin by thinking in terms of problems... which problems are really significant & painful to members of communities you are familiar with? Significant and painful enough that if a solution was offered - which is significantly better than existing means currently available to solving that need/pain consumers would eagerly jump at the opportunity to pay for a solution. Product/service ideas to solve that problem only matter if they solve significant problems.

Your second team goal is to achieve variation in terms of possible solutions (Milestone 2 - your team will have identified a solution which is a significant improvement over how the need/pain is currently being solved). Your second milestone will occur when you have identified a really good solution in terms of differentiation from available solutions, market addressability, economic logic, and feasibility that you might be able to start a company to make the solution a profitable reality. Finally, your third team goal is to gather significant, convincing evidence to support all of the assumptions underlying the viability your proposed solution in preparation for the series of practice presentations, the construction of a concise business plan, as well as the final new venture idea pitch to be delivered to a panel comprised of venture capitalists, angel investors, small business lenders, business incubator liaisons, new venture consultants, and successful members of the greater business community.

At the end of this course students will be able to:

• demonstrate an awareness of the financial, marketing, intellectual property rights and employment issues relevant to setting up and running an innovative ICT application company;
• demonstrate an awareness of the problem solving, managerial, recruitment, negotiating and creativity skills required in setting up and running such a business;
• prepare reports which demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the above issues and skills; and
• prepare a business plan for such a company, which draws on the above knowledge and skills.

This course covers the following AACSB learning outcomes:

Introduces: 3a, 6, 8

Emphasizes: 3b, 5, 9

Masters: 1, 2, 4, 7

Your contribution to the discussions in our class sessions and your performance on the course projects and assignments will determine your course grade. Success in the course requires:

• Reading and absorbing the chapters, cases, and supplementary materials;
• Participating actively and effectively inside as well as outside of class;
• Identifying and developing a viable new business opportunity that passes every conceivable feasibility test we can throw at it. In this course, teams which follow the tenets of the lectures and innovate effectively will be able to demonstrate that they have developed an idea that will make the world a better place.