Field Study Seminar: Evaluating the Entrepreneurial Opportunity

Course Number 6626

Career Focus

This field study seminar is designed for students who have an idea for a business that they wish to explore and further develop in the context of a field study. It is not necessarily expected that the output of the field study will be a business plan, or even an affirmative decision to proceed. Rather, the field study is an opportunity to dig into the idea and really flesh it out. The course is targeted to those students who believe they may seriously consider an entrepreneurial opportunity early in their careers, although it is hoped that the skills developed will prove valuable at any juncture.

This course will be especially helpful to students who plan to develop a business plan in the second semester, as part of another course or in conjunction with the Business Plan Competition.

In order to have a productive experience students (individually, or with their team) must enter the course with a specific idea they wish to explore. The course is not an appropriate vehicle for "coming up with" an idea. Students who participate in this FSS will be given preference if they wish to participate in the Rock Center Silicon Valley Immersion Program in January of 2010.

NOTE: This course is a full semester field study seminar. Students who wish to pursue only the classroom and idea / idea framing portion of this course (and may wish to pursue an actual in-depth investigation of the idea as part of a 1.5-credit half-course field study / independent study with another faculty member) should consider enrolling in the Half-Course: Evaluating the Entrepreneurial Opportunity.

Educational Objectives

This course will be research-based; students will be expected to conduct both primary and secondary research to address an important question or set of questions related to the development of the opportunities they have identified. Each student, either individually or as a team, will frame a set of research questions relevant to the opportunity, gather and analyze data appropriate to address those questions, draw conclusions and prepare a written opportunity assessment based on the findings. This research might include one or more of the following: an industry, competition, market or customer assessment.

Given that students must begin the course with a business idea in mind, the following will prove a useful starting point:

• A description of the basic business idea;
• An articulation of the questions surrounding this idea that the field study is designed to explore;
• The analysis required to answer those questions;
• The data required to perform that analysis; and,
• An expectation of where that data will come from.

It is a requirement that students begin the course with a concrete idea and therefore, students who are enrolled through the EC Preregistration process should email a memo outlining the above to mroberts@hbs.edu prior to the start of the last Add/Drop period in early September.

Course Content and Organization

This seminar will include weekly classroom sessions for ALL students throughout the first half of the semester that will serve as guideposts to the opportunity analysis process. Classroom sessions will include discussions related to idea generation and opportunity analysis, research techniques (i.e. survey and interview protocol development). Deliverables will include a paper. Students may work individually or in teams. Students will also be required to attend several smaller group sessions in which they present their ideas and progress, and receive feedback.