Undergraduate Courses in EEE
An Innovative Set of Courses
Outlined below is an array of courses from which undergraduate students can choose. Introduction to Entrepreneurship is required of all students, and all students are strongly encouraged to take Strategic and Entrepreneurial Management (required of majors).
Click on the name of a class to view the description. For course syllabi, click here.
Discovering the Entrepreneur Within
This course is a journey of self-discovery. It is about the individual, and requires the student to look inward, explore, uncover new insights, apply what one learns about oneself, and improve. Intended for students in the Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Living and Learning Community, the course will challenge each of you to recognize, develop, and act upon your innate potential in the following the areas of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. The course introduces systematic ways to more effectively find creative solutions to problems, innovate in your daily life, and act in an entrepreneurial fashion. The key is your own willingness to use your imagination, challenge some of the assumptions that you currently hold, stretch yourself, and allow yourself to go to places outside your comfort zone. We will also provide you with numerous opportunities to apply your creative potential. A central component of the course involves your active participation in a major community-based social entrepreneurship project. The course is organized into two parts, and is designed to reflect on overall, year-long experience. Part I takes place during the Fall Semester, while Part II unfolds over the Spring Semester.
Introduction to Entrepreneurship
The foundation course in the program, to be taken first. Examines the nature of entrepreneurship and the role of entrepreneurship in society. Investigates the entrepreneurial process in a variety of contexts. The course explores a variety of issues surrounding new venture creation, including the business plan, the economics of the business, determining resource needs and acquiring resources, marketing requirements, deal structure, technology issues, harvesting issues, and ethical issues, among others.
Entrepreneurial Marketing
Examines the role of marketing in start-up ventures and the role of entrepreneurial thinking in marketing efforts. Customer needs as the driving force in entrepreneurship is the theme of this course. The course explores novel approaches to defining markets and market segments, examines inexpensive ways to conduct relevant market research, and identifies ways to leverage marketing resources and rely on networks to accomplish marketing tasks. Students are encouraged to focus on identifying unique approaches to creating value through each of the elements of the marketing mix.
Emerging Enterprise Law
Law as a regulator and enhancer of start-up and emerging enterprises. Looks at the formation, financing and managing of the venture from a legal standpoint. Attention is devoted to intellectual property, financier-entrepreneur relations, employer-employee relations, and operational aspects of entrepreneurial ventures that have legal implications. Explores the law as an opportunity and a force in the furthering the objectives of new and small ventures.
Finance for Emerging Enterprises
Focuses on the financial issues and needs confronting start-up entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs attempting to grow their small businesses. The course has three major areas of focus: a) understanding the internal financial operations of a venture, such as the cost structure, contribution analysis, construction of financial statements, and determining the value of a venture; b) venture financing, including determination of how much money is needed, when to go to which source of financing, and new developments in entrepreneurial finance; c) making deals and buying into businesses. Sample issues here include deal structure, negotiation, resource leveraging, purchasing a business, and franchising.
Imagination
Explores the creative process and helps students identify their own creative problem-solving styles. Students develop innovative solutions to a wide range of problems that arise in the process of pursuing entrepreneurial ventures. Attention is devoted to the need for creative approaches to opportunity identification and business concept formulation when developing new products, services, and processes.
Entrepreneurial and Family Business Management
Examines special problems of family businesses and other closely held corporations. Attention is devoted to family business planning, effective governance approaches in family businesses, preparing heirs for entry into and management of family firms, tax and compensation planning, and succession strategies.
Emerging Enterprise Consulting
A course centering around student teams working with existing small business clients to conduct analysis, determine managerial priorities, and provide a series of deliverables that enable the business to operate more efficiently and to grow. Students will follow a systematic small business consulting methodology.
Entrepreneurship and Digital Commerce
New technologies are creating significant entrepreneurial opportunity but also have a number of pitfalls attached to them. This course examines the evolution of digital technologies, the underlying technologies that are driving the current digital revolution, and innovative application technologies, resources, and services. Students investigate a variety of emerging entrepreneurial opportunities surrounding new developments in digital technologies.
Dilemmas and Debates
This is a topical course taught exclusively by entrepreneurs. The course is coordinated by an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Each week, one or more entrepreneurs are invited in to discuss the great controversies and debates that impact upon the practicing entrepreneur and on the field of entrepreneurship in general. Sample issues include the role of individuals versus teams in entrepreneurial efforts, how to deal with partners, managers versus entrepreneurs, dealing with failure, building and using networks, harvesting strategies, how much growth is enough (and ceilings one hits along the way), ethical challenges in entrepreneurship, and being an entrepreneur and having a personal life.
New Product Management
An examination of the role of innovation in sustainable marketplace advantage. Investigation of the process of converting ideas, technologies, and customer needs into new products, services and processes. Extensive focus on the new product development process. Attention is devoted to the nature of innovation, types of innovation, and the implications of different innovation types for new product/service development processes.
Strategic and Entrepreneurial Management
This is a capstone course that all business students must take at the end of their program. It is referred to as the "business plan course." Students must develop an original idea for a new venture and write a comprehensive business plan for that venture. The course examines a variety of topics, issues, and frameworks that are useful to the student in addressing the financial, marketing, economic, operational, legal, and other aspects of new venture creation and entrepreneurial management. Student plans are presented to successful entrepreneurs and financiers during an end-of-the-semester business plan competition, and the best ones are entered in national competitions.
Minority and Women's Entrepreneurship
Minorities and women are starting businesses at a faster rate than anyone else. So, how are we to understand race, gender, or ethnicity in this fact, especially when these same characteristics are identified as barriers to business success? This course will look at these factors and their influences and impacts on the entrepreneurial revolution, here in the US and around the world.
Business Plan Laboratory EEE
The development of a great business plan for starting a new business or non-profit organization is the focus of this course. The Business Plan Lab is a special service course intended for non-business students, minors in entrepreneurship, and students writing business plans for new ventures, including those entered in the Syracuse Panasci Business Plan Competition.
Venture Capital
This course will focus on financing issues facing the entrepreneur. We will study the tools and methods used in determining how much money a venture actually needs in order to be viable. Further, we will explore tools and approaches used when selling an idea to potential investors. Attention will be devoted to the different types of financing alternatives available to new and early stage ventures. The venture capital market will be investigated in detail. In addition, we will explore issues involved in negotiating deals and in formulating deal structures. Students will be encouraged to understand financing issues and options from the vantage points both of the entrepreneur and the investor.
Exploring The Entrepreneurial Journey (HONORS)
The course starts by looking at entrepreneurship through the lenses of the disciplines from which the field originated before finally establishing entrepreneurship as a discipline in its own right. The theory of entrepreneurship is investigated through the discussion of classic and current articles, books, and guest speakers, while entrepreneurship practice is explored through a simulation and novel experiential learning activities. Throughout the course, students will be given the opportunity to review the historical and current roles of entrepreneurs in society, and subsequently assess their personal entrepreneurial potential. Students will learn about various perspectives, examine different methodologies, explore some original empirical research, make connections between theory and empirical research, and practice critiquing and identifying insight in research. These skills are important preconditions to developing one’s own original ideas.
D'Aniello Entrepreneurial Internship
The D'Aniello Entrepreneurial Internship Program is an internationally recognized initiative that provides unique entrepreneurial opportunities for highly qualified undergraduate and graduate students in the Syracuse University's Martin J. Whitman School of Management. The program will offer 25 student internship appointments during the 2006-07 school year. These appointments will require student interns to work directly with an entrepreneur, president, or senior executive in a high-growth, innovative company located in the greater-Syracuse metropolitan area. Interns will be expected to add meaningful value to the work environment and to produce a number of useful deliverables to company management. Interns may also take an independent study in order to meet certain curriculum requirements.
How to Begin
If you have questions or are interested in pursuing the major, the minor, the graduate concentration, or any of our individual courses, please contact Professor Michael Morris, mhmorris@syr.edu, 315-443-3164). If you're ready to apply to be a major or minor, stop by Suite 116 in the The Martin J. Whitman School of Management and pick up an application, which includes a personal entrepreneurial assessment questionnaire, please contact Tracey Gotham
at 315-443-6899
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