The Business Plan Laboratory has been created for non-business students who are either competing in the Syracuse Business Plan Competition, or have an idea for a venture but do not know how to put together a professional business plan. It will meet one night per week during the Spring Semester. The Lab will have a very "hands-on" focus, where we work with student business concepts in discussing how to put together a great plan, including the mechanics of such challenges as defining a market and estimating market size, constructing a workable model for making money, assessing the industry, designing an operating system, putting together financials, and much more.

Course Objectives: To germinate and clarify your idea for a business or non-profit to the point of being explainable in a paragraph; to write a complete formal plan for a viable business; to develop your small business research skills and develop a database of human and other resources necessary to begin your business; to learn how to effectively present your business idea to your peers and potential investors; to identify areas of strength and weakness in the skills and knowledge to run your business or non-profit and develop strategies to exploit the strengths and compensate for the weaknesses; to begin the development of your entrepreneurship network; to decide if you really want to invest yourself in this business or nonprofit dream; and to have fun while increasing your confidence in decision making, in communication skills, in interpersonal skills, and in realizing you have what it takes to start your own business.

This course has been designed to provide students with an overall understanding of entrepreneurship and to prepare them for developing a mindset for thinking creatively. Targeted at students who would like to create their own businesses, it is meant to teach students how to live and work outside of the bureaucracy, to learn to dream about new ideas and new ventures, to push the edges of the envelope, and to see entrepreneurship as reality. The focus of the course is to start small and grow big--the American Dream. Thus, hopefully, regardless of your future plans and hopes, this class can benefit you greatly in how you think and act, in the future, from an entrepreneurial viewpoint.

This is a course about dilemmas and debates. A dilemma is "an argument presenting two or more equally conclusive alternatives; a choice or a situation involving choice between equally unsatisfactory alternatives; a problem seemingly incapable of a satisfactory solution". The process of entrepreneurship involves the recognition of challenges and dilemmas, vigorous debate, and ultimately, solutions. No solution lasts long in an entrepreneurial milieu whose underpinning is "creative destruction". Yet, we will attempt to discuss a variety of contemporary dilemmas in entrepreneurship by interacting with prominent entrepreneurs and also through your own research and out of class activities. We believe that entrepreneurship is more than something one does at a point in time. It is a philosophy of life. The challenge to each student is to discover their own entrepreneurial potential and find ways to capitalize on that potential. The challenge is to build an entrepreneurial career that might include starting ventures, working for high growth ventures, taking over a family business, entrepreneuring in a large company, and/or pursuing social and non-profit entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurs you will meet in the coming weeks can help you in defining your path.

Course Objective: To give students: (a) An understanding of the concepts of and differences between entrepreneurship and capitalism; (b) An appreciation for how innovations occur and how they impact market capitalism.

This course is about the leadership challenges of creating and sustaining high performing nonprofit organizations. The operating environment for nonprofit organizations is changing as dynamically as that of the for-profit sector. A venerable name is no longer sufficient to insure the success, much less the sustainability, of an organization. Yet the theory of how to effectively manage established nonprofits is in many cases just being formulated and tested. This course enables the student to both examine the applicability of for-profit business approaches to nonprofit organizational challenges as well as to identify innovative solutions to these challenges. This course will enable students to expand their knowledge of effective nonprofit management practices and to increase their understanding of the complex environment in which nonprofits operate. Students should become better prepared to achieve social objectives as leaders in business, government or the social sector.

The themes of this course are innovation and sustainable growth. Our focus is to facilitate the survival and growth of existing small businesses that are owned and managed by local entrepreneurs. The course is organized into two major components pursued in parallel with one another. Students will be exposed to a series of modules that address various aspects of the consulting experience. These modules, and the entire course sequence, are designed around the SEE Model, which is a three-stage model intended to guide teams as they approach, decipher, and ultimately create value for the entrepreneurial enterprise. The second component involves actual consulting interventions. Students will be organized into teams of three or four, and each team will be assigned to one consulting client. The teams will meet regularly with each client, and, employing the SEE Model, move through an evolving series of steps which culminate in a set of value-creating deliverables for the client, and a final consulting report.

Entrepreneurship is the key to the American dream. Sustainable growth and an enhanced standard of living for all Americans are dependent on a vibrant, growing entrepreneurial sector. There is a need for entrepreneurs with creative business concepts and the courage to turn these concepts into sustainable enterprises that create jobs for citizens and create value for customers. There is a key difference, however, between starting a business and growing one. The majority of small businesses fail to achieve meaningful growth, are marginally profitable, and operate as "mom and pop" or "hand to mouth" types of businesses. A smaller number are responsible for the vast majority of new jobs, new products and services, and net new wealth creation in society. It is this reality that lies at the heart of the Emerging Enterprises Consulting course. The themes of this course are innovation and sustainable growth. Our focus is to facilitate the survival and growth of existing small businesses that are owned and managed by local entrepreneurs. The course is actually organized into two major components, and these are pursued in parallel with one another. Students will be exposed to a series of modules that address various aspects of the consulting experience. These modules, and the entire course sequence, is designed around the SEE Model, which is a three-stage model intended to guide teams as they approach, decipher, and ultimately create value for the entrepreneurial enterprise. The second component involves actual consulting interventions. Students will be organised into teams of four, and each team will be assigned to one consulting client.

A series of lessons focused on Emerging Enterprise Consulting.

Course Objectives: 1) To identify the legal challenges inherent in entrepreneurial activities; 2) To suggest strategies for meeting those legal challenges while achieving the core business objectives; 3) To learn how to spot legal issues before they become legal problems; 4) To learn how to use the law creatively to further the objectives of the business.

The purpose of this course is to introduce you to entrepreneurship as a process of creating something new that has economic value to others. We will examine entrepreneurship from the vantage point of history, society, and the individual. Most importantly, I hope to expand your awareness of entrepreneurship as a career option. This course has a substantial communications component. Entrepreneurial ideas are useless without the ability to communicate them clearly and concisely. Our focus will be on written communication. At the end of this course, you will have been exposed to the fundamentals of business writing and learned to edit your own writing for conciseness, logical flow, and clarity.

Many entrepreneurs believe that, regardless of formal education, there is no substitute for on-the-job learning. The Entrepreneurial Experience (MGMT 463 in Montana State University's College of Business) offers students real-world entrepreneurial experiences in projects assisting start-up companies. As a student in this class, you'll work with a company to resolve management, marketing, finance, or other business issues. While your specific project content will depend on the company's particular business needs, this course will help you develop reliable thought processes and skills for identifying and prioritizing issues, discerning appropriate time horizons for actions, and communicating with others, which will prove useful in every business context. As you focus your work with the client site and select methods appropriate for your project's demands, you'll develop and practice professional behaviors, meeting facilitation and problem-solving tools, and excellent communication skills. MGMT 463 differs from other classes in its emphasis on practical experiences and useful professional behaviors. To that end, you can view yourself as a member of a start-up consulting firm whose primary target market is entrepreneurial companies. You have just won space in an incubator devoted to developing new consulting firms and services. The professor is the incubator manager, and your colleagues in the class are members of other firms in the incubator. They will serve as your board of advisers, and in turn, you will serve as an adviser to their firms. The company with whom you engage for your project work is your first big customer.

In this course, we will explore how marketing and entrepreneurship affect and are affected by one another. We will examine concepts from each of these two areas to determine how they apply to, and how they can aid the practice of, the other. Hence, we will look at the role of marketing in entrepreneurial ventures, and the role of entrepreneurship in marketing efforts of all firms. Attention will be devoted to understanding why marketers resist entrepreneurship as well as the common mistakes entrepreneurs make when it comes to marketing. The distinct challenges confronting marketers in contemporary business environments will be reviewed, and a number of approaches for addressing these challenges will be identified. Implications will be drawn from the latest trends in marketing and in entrepreneurship. A number of hands-on cases will be used to assess real world problems at the marketing-entrepreneurship interface. Students will create marketing inventions for existing businesses.

This course provides a continuation of the CUSB Entrepreneurial Studies Concentration. The course objectives focus on critical analysis of opportunity assessment and entrepreneurial strategy. Specifically, the course covers analysis of the strategic challenges involved in the initiation, evolution, development, and control of entrepreneurial ventures. Course activities will primarily involve the investigation of: (a) critical issues facing leaders of entrepreneurial firms, (b) proposed solution, and (c) realized outcomes. The course relies heavily on the case study method to convey and grasp complex issues in entrepreneurship.

The objective of the course is to familiarize students with some of the unique issues faced by owners of entrepreneurial and family businesses. Example of topics covered include selection of business form, tax planning, financing and cash flow planning. Special problems of family businesses include integrating family members into the business, motivating and retaining non-family employees, and business succession strategies. These issues will be viewed from a multi-disciplinary perspective that includes legal, tax and behavioral considerations.

This course provides students an opportunity to practice action learning. Many instructors are advocates of action learning because they believe students can learn by doing. In this course, students will complete a project for a local entrepreneur. The project may be highly specialized or comprehensive in nature, depending upon the needs of the business.

Objectives: Create an awareness of the value of an entrepreneurial educational experience; create an awareness of the relationship between entrepreneurship and engineering; create an awareness of the role of entrepreneurs in the growth of the American and world economy; introduce the student to the psychological, cultural and economic nature of entrepreneurial activity in the US and the global community; create an awareness of the career paths available to the entrepreneur; introduce the skill sets characteristic of successful entrepreneurs, critical thinking, problem solving, can do attitude, planning and implementation; "thinking like an entrepreneur," recognizing opportunities, mobilizing resources, ideas, people and money; introduce the relationship between technological innovation and entrepreneurial activity; introduce the relationship between the research of the university and the commercialization of technology; introduce the student to the concept of the business plan as an accepted business practice for planning and critical thinking; introduce the student to the role of The University of Arizona's Office of Technology Transfer, Berger Entrepreneurship Program, Karl Eller Center, etc.

As you read this, the managers of a new high-tech company, (to be announced), are striving to achieve the entrepreneurial dream. On a special website you will follow that company, and see their progress week by week. But you will do more than just watch. You will be actively engaged with the company, analyzing its problems, and making input. You will be participating in an in-depth, real-time case study. Unlike traditional case studies, this real-time case will dig deeply into one company during an entire semester. At this moment, a case writer is stationed full-time at the case company. Each week the writer will provide us with the information we need to analyze a particular problem or question about the company. But our goal is not analysis for its own sake. Instead, we want to go beyond critiquing, and make valuable recommendations to the company. The company is counting on us to perform, and we want to deliver.

Course Goals: a) Students will gain an understanding the economic, technological, societal, and global dimensions of entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. b) Students will understand the major differences between personal entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, which often occurs in larger mature organizations. c) Students will understand the relationships between personal goals, competencies, and experience to assess what they bring to all types of ventures. d) Students will understand and practice idea generation and screening including opportunity analysis trends, feasibility and competitive analysis. e) Students will understand the audiences, purposes, components and the processes of developing and evaluating business plans for new ventures. f) Students will understand the issues and tasks involved in setting up a venture, marketing and financing the venture, and evaluating venture performance. g) Student will understand how to monitor venture performance, manage growth, and sustain organizations. h) Students will understand the basics of entrepreneurial finance: raising funds, growth financing, financial evaluation of opportunities, and acquisition financing. i) Students will understand and appreciate the leadership skills necessary to successfully plan and launch a new venture in an established organization. j) Students will understand how resources can be maximized for both personal and corporate ventures.