Introduction to Innovation & Entrepreneurship: Q3Q4 - Harvard Business School MBA Program

Introduction to Innovation & Entrepreneurship: Q3Q4

Course Number 5913

Professor William A. Sahlman
Professor of Mgt Practice Joseph Lassiter
Winter 2013
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30 ‐ 5:30 (Jan 28 - March 12)in Q3 with additional meetings TBD in Q4
Open to cross registrants only
Earns the equivalent of 3.0 HBS credits

Also offered as a 1.5 credit offering with 14 classroom sessions in Q3.

Overview

This course is designed for non‐MBA Harvard graduate students (and, with permission of the instructors, postdoctoral fellows and students from eligible programs at other Universities) who intend to start or join a new venture early in their career. Admission to this course is by permission of the instructors only. Applicants should enter the normal cross‐registration process at HBS. In addition, prior to January 23, 2013 at 5 pm, the applicant must email Theresa Gaignard (tgaignard@hbs.edu), attaching a resume, a one page essay describing their motivation for taking the course and, for those applying to the 3.0 credit offering, an additional one page description of their proposed course project.

Career Focus

This course is intended to help students identify areas in which changes in science and technology, consumer and social attitudes, or political and regulatory processes allow the creation of new businesses or the re‐design of established businesses.

Educational Objectives

The classroom portion of the course covers some of the basics of entrepreneurial management and entrepreneurial finance needed to launch new ventures. Students will acquire a toolkit for identifying and forming a new venture. This toolkit can be then applied through a course project by students enrolled in the 3.0 credit course offering.

Course Content and Organization

The tools of the course are studied in the classroom using HBS cases and include frameworks from HBS's first‐year entrepreneurship course (The Entrepreneurial Manager) and the second‐year courses focused on entrepreneurial finance.

Students who choose to pursue a course project are expected to identify their own project. Student projects will typically be aimed at the formation of a new venture or as an entry in a University contest such as the Harvard University President's Challenge or one of the many Business Plan Competitions around the world. The course faculty will schedule meetings with the student to review the project over the semester.

In addition to the course's faculty, students MUST engage a "content expert" to help focus the projects and to add real world context and expertise. Usually this will be an outside sponsor from a business, investment firm, not‐for‐profit organization, or academic research entity. It is possible for students in this course to be part of Independent Project teams with MBA students not in the course, with permission of the course head.

There are three modules to the course:

  1. Applying the concepts and tools of Entrepreneurial Management and Entrepreneurial Finance to new ventures
  2. Structure of key venture capital sectors; strategies of primary venture investors
  3. Examples of innovations in a range of new industries

Innovation and Entrepreneurship (illustrative cases) ‐ Winter 2013

  • Invention Novocure
  • Adoption OfficeTiger & Moore's "Crossing the Chasm"
  • Adoption Rent‐the‐Runway
  • Adoption Dropbox
  • Venture Capital Khosla Ventures: Biofuels Liquidity
  • Venture Capital Problem Set
  • Venture Capital Term Sheets
  • Valuation RightNow Technologies
  • Valuation Airbnb
  • Valuation 1366 Technologies: Scaling the Venture
  • Valuation Sirtris
  • Business Models Foro Energy
  • Business Models Khan Academy
  • Closing Lecture