Program on Entrepreneurship Course Offerings, Spring 2017
As the Fall 2016 semester is winding down, we are preparing the Program on Entrepreneurship’s Spring 2017 course offerings. There are over a dozen entrepreneurial courses available to students next semester that will explore everything from real estate to design to healthcare and more. Below are the course descriptions for our Spring 2017 classes. If you have any questions or would like to learn more about the courses or Program, please contact Jennifer McFadden, Patricia Resio, or Anna Bernath.
MGT 677: Cultural Entrepreneurship and Social Responsibility
Lecturer: Thomas Krens
Spring; TBA
Description:
"Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art." -- Andy Warhol. The primary focus of this course is to explore the relationship between innovative and entrepreneurial management strategies in both established and emerging cultural institutions-- whose fundamental tendencies are traditionally conservative-- on the one hand; and the demands of a market-driven, consumer oriented global economy on the other, where the consumption of culture is essentially a leisure time activity, and where the traditional models of operations, funding and support are increasingly challenged and may no longer be relevant over the long run. The basic questions to address are these: how, and to what degree, are the traditional values of cultural institutions challenged by the current and anticipated conditions? What kinds of entrepreneurial strategies and steps can to be taken to insure their survival? And whether new business models for the operation and management of cultural institutions-- models that utilize the tools of innovation and entrepreneurship-- can emerge with their sense of social responsibility intact if not enhanced.
MGT 646-01: Start-up Founder Practicum
Lecturer: Jennifer McFadden
Spring 2017; Tuesday 11:45am - 12:45pm
Location: TBD
Description:
The purpose of this course is to provide full-time SOM students with a mechanism to work on their start-up ventures for credit, applying principles derived from their other coursework, particularly the integrated core curriculum. Students in this course articulate milestones for their ventures and work with faculty, staff, and mentors to meet those milestones. Generally, the course employs "lean" methodology. Interested students should submit an application here: MGT646 Application. Applications are due by 11:59 PM on December 17th, 2016.
MGT 635: Venture Capital & Private Equity Investments
Lecturer: Elon Boms
Spring 2016; Tuesday, Thursday 10:10am - 11:30am
Description:
Investing in venture capital and in the equity of private companies is an apprenticeship business. Venture investors need analytic and quantitative skills, as well as broad knowledge of a range of business and financial disciplines. Successful investors need practice and a variety of experience, as well as good judgment and people skills. Course topics include start-ups and expansion stage venture capital, leveraged buyouts and turnaround situations. Disciplines include business research (library skills), business and financial analysis, financial projections and equity valuation, verbal and written presentations, teamwork, and negotiating techniques. The course includes both lectures and in-depth case studies, with a strong emphasis on "learning by doing." Teamwork is actively encouraged to frame and solve problems, and to handle heavy workloads. Execution of case studies (“doing deals”) requires teams of students to do research on industries, segments and niches, to evaluate business plans, and to make financial projections and value equity instruments. Teams will make written and verbal presentations. Entrepreneur and investor teams negotiate and structure the deal in a role-playing mode. Enrollment limited to second-year SOM and MAM students per section. Heavy workload.
MGT 652-01: International Entrepreneurship
Lecturer: Geraldine Wu
Spring 2; Tuesday 2:40pm - 5:40pm
Description:
This course introduces students to aspects of entrepreneurship and new venture creation that are specific to international ventures where one or more stakeholders is located outside the US: customers, suppliers, investors, employees, partners. We will discuss challenges of international ventures including localization, regulation, taxation, finance, and management. These challenges are introduced through cases and colored by the first-hand experience of guest speakers.
MGT 653: 12 Ideas That Changed Design
Lecturers: Jessica Helfand; Michael Bierut
Spring; Tuesday 8:30am - 11:30am
Description:
Moderated by Jessica Helfand and Michael Bierut, this introductory survey course will set the stage for understanding design as a catalyst in business by presenting twelve seminal design problems, across a variety of fields and industries, each highlighting the central motives—and methods—that yield successful outcomes. Each week we will invite one client or designer (or client/designer team) to present a project in depth. (In some cases, we may welcome a corporate leader in conversation with a leading scholar here at Yale.) Students will work independently and in teams to research and respond, the following week, with analysis, critique, and alternate solutions. From public health to public space, retail strategy to political positioning, education to journalism to biotechnology, we want to explore how design works within complex organizations to help shape decisions, ideas, products, and more.
MGT 654: The Invention of Desire
Lecturer:Jessica Helfand
Spring: Wednesday 2:40pm - 5:40pm
Description:
Design is now recognized as a decisive advantage in countless industries and a boon to innovation in all fields. But what is design, really? Is it a process or a practice? A product or a platform? And if, arguably, it defies such easy classification, then who wants and needs it, produces and consumes it? This class will concentrate on addressing the human characteristics that both influence and are impacted by design and which frame, among other things, our perceptions of loyalty, credibility, even leadership. Can design convey false authority? Do the things we make result in unintended consequences? How can we reconcile need against greed, personal voice against public choice? Combining research, collaboration, and weekly visits to the Yale University Art Gallery, students will address issues of cultural, historical and contemporary consequence to gain a deeper understanding of design’s intrinsic value—and its enduring power—as a humanist discipline.
MGT 655: Entrepreneurship & New Ventures
Lecturer: Balazs Kovacs
Spring 2: Tuesday/Thursday 2:40pm - 4:00pm
Description:
Taught via Socratic Method, this course will use case studies that explore essential elements of the entrepreneurial process: Defining Entrepreneurship; Recognizing and Creating Opportunities and Developing Business Models; Assembling the Team; Raising Financial Resources; Managing Uncertainty; Managing the Growing Venture; and Realizing Value. The format of this course will follow a typical Harvard Business School methodology. As a rigorous course, it will expect students to understand the rhythm and demands of a case study approach; and that students will be able to apply what they learn through their own analyses of cases and other materials individually and in groups (i.e., in class discussions, in written assignments, and in a final examination). The primary objective of the course is to enable students who have some facility with fundamental management principles and financial analysis, garnered through exposure in other relevant courses, to focus on specific demands of the entrepreneurial process, and, throughout the course, to develop confidence and acquire the tools needed to launch something on their own.
MGT 657: Creating Healthcare and Life Science Ventures
Lecturers: Chris Loose and Ayesha Khalid
Spring 2; Monday 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Description:
This course will give students a broad understanding of the major “new venture” opportunities in healthcare & medicine---healthcare delivery, healthcare IT and the digital health landscape, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices, and surgical techniques. In each of these areas, they will understand the canonical path to commercialization including how to identify “unmet clinical needs”, market opportunities; who the customers is; how to build interdisciplinary teams; regulatory hurdles to commercialization, and creation of a business strategy. The course is designed for a diverse student body including students from management, natural sciences, and medicine. The course is comprised of two sections with both sections receiving lectures, raw cases, and guest speakers. Section A will be geared towards students interested in healthcare management and understanding new innovations are assessed and adopted by hospitals. In Section A, students will complete a team-based value analysis project from the perspective of hospital administrators for a new technology solution to an unmet need within hospitals. Section B consists of teams working from the perspective of a start up company to clearly define a business plan for a new venture. The potential products being evaluated in Section B could be suggested by students in the course or could be build off of unmet needs defined by clinicians brought to the class. To be clear, this class is an academic exercise and no ownership of a venture is implied from participating in the class. Both sections will receive coaching from relevant stakeholders in the hospital and venture community. Interested students should submit an application here: MGT657 Application. Applications are due by 11:59 PM on December 7th, 2016. SOM students who enroll in this course will be charged 50 bid points. Non-SOM students taking a YSOM course will be assessed a fee for copyright charges. The fee is $30.00 for a full semester course and $15.00 for a 1Ž2 semester course. Students enrolled in either the YSOM course number or the cross-listed course number will be charged.
MGT 670: Design Practicum
Lecturer: Jessica Helfand
Spring; Monday 2:40pm - 5:40pm
Description:
Proposed description: Combining fine-tuned industrialized processes with sophisticated workmanship, quality production, and a keen and enduring attention to craft, the Italian company Prada is synonymous with luxury—an international symbol for style. But to what degree does the company’s business model rely upon design itself as a core value? In this elective course, we will look at Prada as an example of a business that is not only design-driven, but one whose design sensibilities have masterfully guided its growth for more than a century. To what extent is sustainability a function of consistent quality and reliable manufacture? How does a collection represent a season, a culture, a brand? And how might design help to create—and sustain—both a family bond and a company’s core value over time? Each student will be responsible for doing hands-on research by analyzing a single item in the Prada collection in an effort to trace its historical, formal, and cultural value.
MGT 897: Entrepreneurial Finance
Lecturer: Song Ma
Spring 1; Section 1; Monday/Wednesday 10:10am - 11:30am
Spring 1; Section 2: Monday/Wednesday 1:30pm - 2:20pm
Description:
The course is designed to introduce the challenge and pitfalls of financing new enterprises. Broadly speaking, entrepreneurial financing decisions have a life cycle. The cycle begins with identifying opportunities, moves to marshaling resources to take advantage of these opportunities and executing the business plan, and ends with harvesting the venture's success. Accordingly, the course has three sections: Identifying and Valuing Opportunities, Structuring Deals, and Harvesting Opportunities. This course combines lectures and group case studies. The lecture part of this course intends to equip students with important techniques in each stage of entrepreneurial finance; those techniques will be applied to case studies that will cover such interesting entrepreneurial areas as IT, healthcare, sharing economy, social entrepreneurship, and etc.
MGT 899: International Real Estate
Lecturer: Kevin Gray
Spring 2; Tuesday 4:10pm - 7:10pm
Description:
This half semester course will provide an introduction to real estate development, investment, finance and strategy outside of the United States. Global investment in financial assets, the need for risk diversification, the increased accuracy of property records, greater transparency, more relaxed laws permitting foreign investment, and population movement around the world—all of these trends have led to a tremendous increase in cross-border real estate investing for both private equity and public companies. While many studies of international real estate focus on the role of foreign real property in the U. S. institutional portfolio, this course will take a wider and more historical view of the cultural attitudes towards real estate around the world and how they impact the quality and risk of investment assets. Detailed analysis will begin with property level due diligence in order to provide a fundamental understanding of how and why property markets differ by country beyond simple supply/demand dynamics. This course will consist of three parts: a.) a micro-market analysis of real property characteristics in various countries around the world, including financing, leasing and valuation; b.) an analysis of investment vehicles—public and private—available to institutional investors, as well as cross-border transactions, and c.) a macro-market view of world space and capital markets, the rationale for international investing, trends in capital flows and portfolio composition and the various ways in which risk is measured and mitigated. Each part of the course will require a brief individual assignment completed over a two-week period. The first research project will be a study of a significant real property asset outside of the United States, including its market, ownership, legal structure, valuation, and transaction history. Both the G-8 and G-20 nations will be the object of study, but individual students are free to concentrate on any country of interest. The second research project will consist of an analysis of a private equity or publicly-traded foreign property company, its current fair value, competitive advantage and future prospects. An interview with a top executive of a company will be encouraged and facilitated. The third research project will consist of a comparative analysis of world property markets and the hypothetical investment in a portfolio of real estate assets across three or more foreign property markets. The course will consist of lectures, discussion, case studies and readings on international real estate from a variety of sources. No final exam or group project will be required.
MGT 553: Strategic Communication
Lecturer: Taly Reich
Spring 1; Section 01: Tuesday, Thursday 10:10am - 11:30am
Spring 1; Section 02: Tuesday, Thursday 1:00pm - 2:20pm
Description:
The focus of this course is to increase one's competencies in oral communication and presentation. Developing and executing effective communication strategies is essential in a variety of business settings. Business leaders are often expected to present their message with confidence and clarity to employees, clients, partners, investors and the public. This highly interactive, practical course will help students develop confidence in public speaking through weekly presentations and assignments, lectures and discussions, guest speakers, simulated activities, and filmed feedback. Students will be given the opportunity to present both individually and as part of a team. We will explore the essentials of communication strategy and persuasion: audience analysis, message construction, communicator credibility, and delivery. Students at all levels of mastery of public speaking will benefit from this course.
MGT 622: Investment in Social Change
Lecturer: Chris Reim
Spring 1; Section 01: Monday 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Description:
The concept of social impact has gained global attention, though it remains limited in scale within the capital markets. The potential exists to better integrate market forces with broader public outcomes, but new thinking is needed. Creating meaningful social value in private enterprises requires an interdisciplinary approach – part entrepreneur, part venture capital, and part social advocate – all within a keen grasp of the dynamics of innovation. This course addresses the role of Private Equity, and capital markets broadly, to accelerate Investment in Social Change – by weaving concepts across the economics of innovation, finance and portfolio theory, technology policy, philanthropy, and ethics. Students will apply formal reasoning to an inherently subjective field, and should leave the course better prepared to (a) balance the dual mandate of market return and social impact within their own endeavors; (b) understand the economic principles of technology-led innovation as a catalyst linking public and private efforts for social change; and (c) better form their own reasoned opinion about the merit of impact investing. Practitioner case studies are used to provide a US and international perspective on market-based initiatives to solving large scale social challenges. This is a highly conceptual course and there is no prerequisite for this course, though it is anticipated that students will already have had some academic exposure to economics and accounting, and bring a genuine interest in entrepreneurship, venture capital, or international development.