B 383 New Venture Creation - starting Winter 2008

Course Description

The course is designed as an introduction to the process of perceiving an opportunity and creating an organization to pursue it. Working alone and in teams you will learn to plan, finance, launch, manage, and harvest a new venture. In order to integrate ideas across departments and colleges, this course will be open to students in engineering, computer science, and business management. All students who desire to lead a business plan team will have an opportunity to describe their ventures in the early class sessions to facilitate team member recruiting. Class discussion, readings, lectures, and projects are learning tools. Your project is developed throughout this course and involves completing a new venture plan and financial forecast. Each team’s business plan also becomes a “live case” for the purposes of class discussion.

Course Objectives

1. Introduce the concept of new venture creation and business planning to students across several colleges and departments (i.e., business management, engineering, and computer science).
2. Allow students to build a basic but solid foundation in core subjects of business as they relate to developing new products and technology in the business world.
3. Commit to continuous professional development and lifelong learning through deeper understanding of life goals, self-management of learning skills, and the entrepreneurial process.
4. Develop an understanding of the forces of change, such as technology and globalization, to enhance your managerial and decision-making skills.
5. Extend your logical and critical thinking skills, including the capacity to think beyond boundaries and to engage in integrating analysis across disciplines.
6. Strengthen your interpersonal skills, including team participation, team building, and leadership.
7. Increase your commitment to integrity and ethical conduct in personal and professional pursuits.

Course Structure & Project

Students will be allowed to screen their own ideas and then form small teams in order to create a business plan or confidential information memorandum which could be presented to outside investors and/or private equity groups. These teams will work together to complete individual assignments that will build upon one another so that at the end of the semester an actual business plan will be compiled and presented to the class. Some of the individual assignments will include:

1. Industry and Competitive Analysis
2. Market and Customer Analysis
3. Sales Forecasting
4. Forecasting Financial Statements
5. Ratio and Breakeven Analysis
6. Valuation of the Product or Technology
7. Financing Strategies
8. Harvest Strategies
9. Managing a Growing Business
10. Presentation of the Business Plan