{"id":153,"date":"2021-05-07T02:53:53","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T02:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bak.me\/blog\/?p=153"},"modified":"2021-10-11T04:23:19","modified_gmt":"2021-10-11T04:23:19","slug":"intro-to-entrepreneurship-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bak.me\/blog\/intro-to-entrepreneurship-course\/","title":{"rendered":"Intro to Entrepreneurship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Course Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Introduction to entrepreneurship offers students an opportunity to learn key skills needed to develop, launch and grow a business. One of the most critical, but often overlooked steps for entrepreneurs is understanding product-market fit<\/a>. This course dives deep on the idea of customer development with an emphasis on testing hypothesis with actual customer interviews. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students will work with existing real companies to address a known problem<\/a> and work through the process of imagining a product or service and navigating key initial steps to begin their business venture. Participants will be required to iterate their ideas using customer feedback with the goal of identifying high probability product-market fit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using curriculum that has been developed in the world\u2019s leading entrepreneurs and business schools, the teaching team will facilitate students\u2019 progress from initial inspiration to the final presentation in a \u201cshark tank\u201d where they pitch their business model to a team of angel and venture investors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students will learn and practice the difficult discipline of problem identification and customer need, as well as\u00a0marketing, product development, customer acquisition and revenue generation. Group participation, team projects, weekend field trips and public speaking are all required components of this course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unit (A):<\/strong> Business Problem Identification & Validation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Students learn about evaluating real business challenges, specifically around launching a new idea, but also gaining exposure to problems associated with launching new products and marketing initiatives. They will be introduced to the idea of \u201ccustomer development<\/a>\u201d and learn key skills to elicit valuable insights or \u201cnuggets\u201d and customer sentiment leading to effective problem validation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a particularly difficult and nuanced skill requiring significant practice to master. Specific areas of focus include: interviewing techniques, question design, response evaluation and responsive iteration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unit (A) Assignment:<\/strong> Business Problem Identification & Validation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Students immediately begin developing a problem hypothesis<\/a>, practicing problem identification and validation skills through a consulting project from a real-world business. As a class, students will hear from stakeholders at the participating business and learn about a specific and meaningful challenge that company is facing right now. Upon completing initial downloads, students will break into teams of 3-4 and create a written document outlining what they heard and confirming they understand the problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there, they will research strategies used by other companies in similar markets with similar problems and formulate a customer development approach and identify a minimum of 3 distinct data collection strategies, one of which must include direct conversations with customers or potential customers. Once teams have collected customer development data they will attempt to either reframe the original problem if insights suggest the initial problem statement does not align with customer sentiment; or they will propose potential ideas for the company to consider in solving the issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of this project is not specifically to solve the problem, instead students focus on effective validation of the stated problem. Finally teams will share their findings directly to the company stakeholders with in-class written and oral presentations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unit (B):<\/strong> Customer Development & Solution Discovery<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Building on learnings from Unit A, students will do a deeper dive into customer development strategies with an emphasis on data collection and analysis. In this unit, students will be more focused on proposing actual solutions through the customer development process and gain initial exposure to the idea of market testing and solution iteration with an ultimate goal of finding product-market fit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honing this skill for students will be the most important aspect of the course and will be heavily leveraged in the final course unit where they develop their own business ideas. Moreover, students will be introduced to the Business Model Canvas and begin learning about key functions within a business including: value proposition, costs, resource allocation, customer segments, revenue streams, channels and partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unit (B) Assignment:<\/strong> Customer Development & Solution Discovery<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

After a period of reflection on the earlier consulting project and further instruction around effective customer development, students will engage in a range of activities to further their understanding of customer development including: readings, videos, blog posts, interviews, group discussion and in-class exercises. Next students will again break into teams of 3-4 to consult with a real company. As a class, students will have the opportunity for an onsite visit to the participating company to hear a thorough explanation of the business operations from executives and stakeholders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this session students will be presented with a problem the company is facing specifically around launching a new product or service. Teams will be required to deliver a written overview of the business, stated problem and complete a Business Model Canvas for the company. Upon successful demonstration of stated business challenge, teams will develop a customer development action plan which must incorporate various strategies and tactics for effective customer development learned thus far in the course. While this may include various research and theoretical approaches, student teams must include an empirical in-person customer development \u201cexperiment\u201d designed to gather firsthand experience and insight from real potential customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This in and of itself will be extremely challenging for most students given it requires direct and often uncomfortable interaction with people outside their social circles. After teams complete a thorough customer development process they will propose solutions based on collected data and feedback. This will be delivered in a written and oral format which will be given to company stakeholders in a formal presentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unit (C):<\/strong> Original Startup Development & Pitch<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the final course unit, students will have an opportunity to tap into their own personal passions and apply the learning and experience from the previous two units. Students will again work in teams of 3-4 to develop an original startup idea culminating in an actual pitch session with real venture and seed investors where they will receive incredible feedback and instruction which will help them navigate the entrepreneurship and startup landscape far beyond their experience in this course. Students will fully leverage all aspects of the Business Model Canvas from problem identification and customer development to business model creation, product development, marketing and operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unit (C) Assignment:<\/strong> Original Startup Development & Pitch<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The assignment for this unit begins with an internal class pitch session where students individually share and vote on their own startup ideas. By now students have been thinking of their own business concepts and mentally applying what they\u2019ve learned in the course to these ideas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students are limited to 60 seconds to make a case for their idea and should focus on clearly articulating the proposed problem, solution, market size and business model. The 3-4 best ideas are selected and students join the founders to make teams of four or five. Once formed, teams will begin by developing an action plan to organize resources and identify which students will focus on completing each part of the Business Model Canvas. Teams will submit a written outline summarizing their BMC and initial hypothesis regarding problem validation and customer market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, each team will present this outline in class in order to practice pitching as a team and to help other teams identify potential areas of further thought for their own projects. Once teams have thoroughly built out their respective BMC\u2019s and have developed reasonably a well supported hypothesis for problem validation and target market they will begin customer development efforts leveraging experience from the previous two units. Again students will develop a real-world empirical experiment to interact with potential customers and collect data to validate or disprove their original hypothesis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given time and resource constraints in the course, students are not expected to develop their startup to be launch ready. Rather, teams should focus on thoroughly assessing the viability of the business and particularly whether they can confidently prove the problem they propose to solve is meaningful for a large market sector. Disproving their original hypothesis is as valuable as proving it for students \u2014 ultimately when pitching to the panel of judges teams will propose \u201cnext steps\u201d for the business which could include further need for iteration around problem and market validation or simply that the business is not viable at present and should not be pursued further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final deliverables include a completed BMC, written company overview, problem statement, customer development findings and analysis as well as a formal written and oral presentation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learning to be an entrepreneur isn’t rocket science. In fact, most people are inherently entrepreneurial. This course teaches the basic principles and practices of being an entrepreneur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":155,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,9],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-posts","tag-courses","tag-entrepreneurship"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bak.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/intro_to_entrepreneurship.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":150,"url":"https:\/\/bak.me\/blog\/practical-entrepreneurship-and-work-life-balance\/","url_meta":{"origin":153,"position":0},"title":"Practical Entrepreneurship and Work-Life Balance","author":"Jeff Solomon","date":"April 13, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Being an entrepreneur is partly about business, but it's also about how one approaches their life. This course is about having a work-life balance while still achieving your goals.","rel":"","context":"In "Posts"","block_context":{"text":"Posts","link":"https:\/\/bak.me\/blog\/category\/posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Work Life Balance","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bak.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/work_life_balance.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bak.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/work_life_balance.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bak.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/work_life_balance.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bak.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/work_life_balance.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bak.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/work_life_balance.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":226,"url":"https:\/\/bak.me\/blog\/managing-b2b-customer-relationships\/","url_meta":{"origin":153,"position":1},"title":"Managing B2B Customer Relationships – Best Practice Walkthrough","author":"Jeff Solomon","date":"December 16, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Keeping clients happy and making them successful with your product or service can be a daunting task. 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But this statistic would be much lower if founders simply embarked on the simple, but not easy, process of Customer Development. 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