Project in Global Entrepreneurial Management

Abstract: Welcome to the new competitive landscape. The business world you enter upon completion of your MBA is not the one of your parents or grandparents. It is a world defined by a global entrepreneurial revolution. Today, the essence of competitive advantage does not lie in traditional areas such as low cost or high quality. Rather, competitive advantage is defined in terms of speed, innovativeness, adaptability, flexibility, and aggressiveness. In short, advantage comes from entrepreneurial management. Global Entrepreneurial Management (GEM) is a project-based capstone course. As a capstone experience, the course is meant to serve an integrative role, bringing together all the pieces and parts of your graduate business school education. The challenge in business today is to move away from functional silos and adopt an innovative, cross-functional approach to problem-solving. Consistent with this challenge, our focus will be on entrepreneurship, or the "pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled." There is no aspect of business that is more inter-disciplinary and cross-functional than entrepreneurship. Further, this is a course that explores ways of thinking and ways of acting. Accordingly, we shall approach entrepreneurship as a mindset, an attitude, a way of managerial thinking. We shall also approach it as a behavior, an activity, a manageable process that can be applied in any organizational context And ultimately, we shall try to convey entrepreneurship as a philosophy of life -- as a philosophy for your life. The course explicitly addresses a common criticism directed at MBA students and programs. Concerns are frequently raised that graduate students and programs are strong on theory and strategic thinking, but short on the practical issues surrounding the implementation of these strategies and the pragmatic application of theories and concepts. As such, this is a course on implementation. The central focus will be on the GEM Project, where you not only have to come up with an innovative concept or idea, but you have to meet the test of implementation. You will also be responsible for addressing implementation issues as they apply to a series of cases. My challenge to you is to use this course to explore your own approach to management. You will be doing something entrepreneurial, as it is the central requirement of the course. So, make it something truly innovative -- something that makes a difference. Define yourself as an agent of change.

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