Strategy for Entrepreneurs
Course Number 1257
28 Sessions
Paper
(formerly Strategy for Entrepreneurs and Startups)
Qualifies for Management Science Track Credit
The course will use a case-based approach to teach students how to build better founding and scaling strategies. The first half of the course will explore the classic strategy question of “Where to compete?” from the perspective of an entrepreneur starting a new firm or a startup launching a new product. This half of the course will help students learn how to identify “broken” markets that are ready for a new competitor, how to test startup ideas to “fix” these markets, and how students can put themselves in the best position in order to discover opportunities to build disruptive ventures. The second half of the course will again explore a classic strategy question, “How to compete?” largely from the perspective of a scaling startup. This latter half of the course will teach students both how to develop aligned and coherent scaling strategies and provide them with a set of strategy “recipes” to best manage the myriad forms of competition startups face in product, supplier, intermediary, and labor markets as they grow.
Complementing the case discussions will be course guests and panels with entrepreneurs to both shed more light on the human element of strategy and to help students build a stronger network in the global startup ecosystem. Towards that end, the final deliverable for the course will be a paper focusing on a “broken industry” with promise or a paper focused on how an existing startup might implement a different strategic “recipe.” In the former case, students will be required to interview or run tests with market participants to validate their thesis that the market needs a new competitor. In the latter case, students will be required to interview managers and the startup they are building an alternative strategy for.
What are the educational objectives? At the broadest level, the educational objects of the course are to help the students answer the following questions (1) Where should my startup compete? (2) How should my startup compete?
Turning to the first question, the course will teach students how to discover and analyze markets where a new startup would bring much needed competition and innovation. A key theme of the course is that while early stage ideas may well not need to be worried about competitors, entrepreneurs do need a solid understanding of competition in order to maximize their chances of impact. The case discussions will enable students to develop better judgment in this regard, and of equal importance, will help students think about how they might maximize their career choices to “best discover” high-potential opportunities.
Turning to the second question, the course will teach students how to develop different strategies given a high-potential startup idea. They will learn that promising ideas often lend themselves to different strategies and different ways of competing. As such, students will learn a set of “recipes” that they can deploy, adapt, and combine when scaling a startup. In learning these “recipes” students will learn how to manage and understand competition in its myriad forms, from product markets to labor markets.
To further these educational objectives, as part of the deliverable for the course, students will be required to talk and learn form market participants and founders. This will allow them to further hone their data collection skills, practice validation ideas, and build a stronger network that they can use in their future entrepreneurial ventures.
Grading will be 50% paper and 50% participation.
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