MHR 320 – New Ventures in Business, the Arts and Social Entrepreneurship (StartUp Learning Community)

Prerequisites: Member of StartUp Learning Community

Students develop capabilities to create new ventures that create value and critically analyze role of entrepreneurship in society. Activities: Imagine/design new ventures, identify markets and funding sources, develop founding teams, and prepare a feasibility assessment.

MHR 321 – Social Entrepreneurship (StartUp Learning Community)

Prerequisites: Member of StartUp Learning Community

For the student interested in creating socially-engaged businesses and using entrepreneurial approaches to non-profit ventures. Activities include developing mission statement, assessing social impact, seeking funding from varied sources. Guest lecturers, cases, role playing. Course grounded in management theory.

MHR 322 – Introduction to Entrepreneurial Management

Prerequisites: Not open to Graduate students

This class is for non-business and business majors who are interested in learning more about entrepreneurship. Students do not need prior business or entrepreneurial experience and do not need to have immediate plans to become an entrepreneur. The course provides a general introduction to entrepreneurship as an economic phenomena as well as a possible career option. The course covers a broad range of topics, including evaluating opportunities, building a team, testing for market validation, and financing a startup. Students participate in an entrepreneurial project during the course to apply course concepts in real-time. Course assignments include readings, videos, quizzes, activities, group project work, and real-world applications. The skills developed in this course are based on proven techniques for startup ventures. But the course helps students develop an entrepreneurial mindset that is valuable in any organization, including growth companies, large corporations, non-profits, and public service entities.

MHR 415 – Strategic Management of Innovation and Corporate Entrepreneurship

Prerequisites: MHR 322, MHR 423 or MHR 434

This course covers innovation and entrepreneurship in an existing corporate environment. It allows students to adopt the perspective of decision-makers who must evaluate the potential of new technologies, decide on their adoption, and establish their implementation in the current firm’s activities and products. Also discussed are how established firms can build an internal environment such that all employees adopt entrepreneurial behaviors and generate their own technological or business model innovations.

MHR 422 – Advanced Entrepreneurship

Prerequisites: MHR 322 and ECON/FINANCE 300 or declared in the Business Exchange Program

This course focuses on the process of starting and growing a new venture. Students will develop and utilize a set of qualitative and quantitative skills that can be applied in this context. Topics include how to assess and quantify growth potential of an entrepreneurial opportunity, how investors value startups, and how startups are effectively managed. Students will acquire a set of cross-functional concepts in finance, law, marketing, and strategy.

MHR 434 – Venture Creation

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing. Not open to Graduate students

This course is designed for students interested in the entrepreneurial process, with a special emphasis on creating a new venture. Students will learn how to test the viability of new business opportunities and conduct a feasibility study of their own idea. Throughout the course, students will present their concepts to others addressing critical success factors cited by a variety of stakeholders s such as marketing strategy, team, financing and other areas. The course prepares students to launch a new venture in several different forms – a traditional for-profit start up, a social nonprofit enterprise, or virtual organizations. The course is not focused on buyouts, franchising, or launching new ventures within larger organizations. Many of the concepts discussed in the course, however, can easily apply to these scenarios.

MHR 441 – Technology Entrepreneurship

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing. Not open to Graduate students

This course provides an introduction to the process of launching and running a technology venture. Technology entrepreneurship requires unique resources, skills, and techniques. The course begins with a general approach to entrepreneurial activities and then focuses on the specific tools and frameworks that help technology entrepreneurs identify the challenges of bringing novel innovations to market. A critical element in technology venturing is identifying and assessing entrepreneurial opportunities. We explore ways in which such opportunities can be resourced and how critical competencies for a high technology start-up are developed. Students address the strategies and business models available to technology ventures, as well as the special financing challenges that rapid growth and technology commercialization generates. A unique element of the course is the opportunity for students to opt into projects that directly connect with active technology ventures. Each student chooses between traditional learning activities and these optional immersive projects to explore technology entrepreneurship in the real-world.

MHR 632 – Introduction to Arts Entrepreneurship

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing

Introduction to Arts Entrepreneurship will offer an overview and foundation for students interested in developing, launching, or advancing innovative projects in arts, culture, design, and humanities. Students from a variety of creative majors across campus will learn the unique contexts and challenges of creative careers. Students will cultivate their own career vision and creative project goals while gaining an understanding of the nature and structure of arts entrepreneurship – for-profit, nonprofit, and in between.

Guest lectures by creative professionals and class discussions will ensure ongoing connections between theory and practice. The course is intended to align with the Wisconsin School of Business Certificate in Entrepreneurship for students who are interested in a more intensive focus on creative enterprise.

MHR 636 – Entrepreneurship in Arts and Cultural Organizations

Prerequisites: Junior standing

This course exposes students to topics and concepts in the emerging field of social entrepreneurship, a rapidly developing field where business models and market-based approaches are being developed to address needs of cultural and social enterprises. This course is designed to develop students’ understanding of the entrepreneurial process, including idea generation, team formation and leadership, value proposition design, market testing, funding mechanisms for social-purpose ventures, and alliances/partnerships between nonprofit organizations and businesses using a real-world examples and a project that illustrate the topics and stimulate thinking, discussion, and learning that, collectively, deliver significant insight into the theory and practice of entrepreneurship in the social sector.

MHR 640 – Creative Destruction Lab I

Prerequisites: Consent of Instructor

This course Introduces key topics and concepts associated with technology entrepreneurship, venture formation, and project-based organizational consulting. It allows for practice of key analytical approaches to understanding technology venturing processes.

MHR 641 – Creative Destruction Lab II

Prerequisites: MHR 640

Building upon the knowledge gained in MHR 640, students actively learn through engaging with a real-world technology venture in the context of a knowledge-intensive industry. Working in teams, students negotiate a project to support venture development, plan and implement the project, and present the results to the venture and the instructor. This course provides direct insight into technology venture processes, observation of pitching and mentoring activities, and the real-world challenges associated with early stage venturing.

Finance 457 – Entrepreneurial Finance

Prerequisites: Econ/Finance 300, Acct IS 301, and (Math 213, 222, or 276)

This course provides an introduction to the financing, valuation, contractual and exit environments facing high growth startup founders and institutional investors. The entrepreneurial finance life cycle begins with identifying the opportunity and separating viable ones from non-viable ones. The successful execution of viable ideas involves an appropriate team, a robust business and financing plan, and a suitable funding source – three aspects that jointly influence a startup’s trajectory. Students will be exposed to various valuation techniques and fundraising alternatives, and the course will explore how founder and investor incentives can be better aligned with contractual provisions. The course also explores financing and valuation across the different startup stages and concludes with exploring exit opportunities for founders and investors.

General Business 311 – Fundamentals of Management and Marketing for Non-Business Majors

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing. Not open to students declared in a School of Business Program

This course provides students with the basic understanding, skills, and tools about management and marketing that can help them in their professional careers or start a business. Through a variety of student-to-student interactions, assignments, and examining current businesses and business practices, students will be able to compare how businesses and organizations function in a global economy. Students will be able to analyze, evaluate, and critique business decisions and strategies to create best practices. Each student will likely work in an organizational environment at some point in their career. An understanding of how organizations operate and best practices to use, will help facilitate a successful future. Globalization has made our world, especially the world of business, more interconnected. Information systems have influenced the culture within various organizations as they learn to adapt to the different cultures around the world. Students will learn to appreciate different ideas, perspectives, and cultures as they relate to the world of business. Through the use of information management systems, best practices, and an understanding of the world of business a student will learn to make the best decisions possible and have a successful career.