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Entrepreneurial Management

Entrepreneurial Management

  • Faculty
  • Curriculum
  • Seminars & Conferences
  • Awards & Honors
  • Doctoral Students
Overview Faculty Curriculum Seminars & Conferences Awards & Honors Doctoral Students

MBA Required Curriculum

(FIRST YEAR)

The Entrepreneurial Manager

In order to “educate leaders who make a difference in the world,” the Harvard Business School has always had general management as its core educational organizing framework. The Required Curriculum has historically had a core course in general management and The Entrepreneurial Manager (TEM) provides a powerful context in which to learn about general management. TEM seeks to build the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to succeed as an entrepreneurial manager. The knowledge, skills, tools, and frameworks that TEM develops are built upon the foundation of your other RC courses including TOM, LEAD, LCA, FRC, Marketing, Strategy, and Finance, integrate those lessons into a overall framework, and help general managers at all types of organizations (e.g., small companies, large companies, non-profits, and public servants) become more effective at enhancing the value of those organizations.

HBS professor Ken Andrews described three roles for the general manager:[1]

  • Setting strategic direction by taking into account external opportunities and threats, the availability of internal resources relative to requirements, the aspirations and values of senior management, and obligations to stakeholders and society. In the context of TEM, this concept permeates our first module: Defining and Developing the Business Model.
  • Designing organizational structures and processes that allocate responsibilities, promote cross-functional integration, recruit/develop/promote employees, acquire critical resources and financing, and budget/monitor financial performance. Andrews’ second core concept sets the stage for our second module: Resourcing the Business Model.
  • Leading the firm by: 1) making tough tradeoffs when setting strategy, resolving cross-functional conflict, and making hiring/firing decisions; and 2) communicating a vision that motivates employees and secures commitment from other stakeholders. Properly considered, this final role of general management leads to our third module: Operating the Business Model.

For many of you, your careers will evolve in the setting of small, entrepreneurial firms. More than half of HBS graduates become entrepreneurs at some point in their careers. Recent surveys spanning HBS MBA indicate that 30% of alumni currently work in a firm that they founded, 46% have launched at least one company in their careers, and 31% intend to start a firm in the future. Among the founders, 36% launched their companies at the school or within four years of graduation, 34% became founders 5-14 years after leaving HBS, and the balance started companies 15+ years after graduation.

But studying startups and small firms conveys powerful lessons about general management for those pursuing careers in other contexts as well. We will see that entrepreneurial managers in large companies as well as the public sector benefit just as much as a small firm’s founder from the lessons we will explore. Examining small companies allows us to more fully understand decision-making and incentives at a much deeper level. Unlike executives in large, established corporations, founders do not inherit a strategy; they must formulate one. Likewise, a startup has no organizational structure or processes; its founder must design them. Finally, startups confront a demanding environment. Uncertainty is high; resources are constrained. We will find that in TEM, the attitudinal orientation, decision-frameworks, and actions can help managers at all firms improve the exploitation of value increasing opportunities.

Entrepreneurial managers typically face an environment in which the importance of general management is paramount. In the face of such challenges, entrepreneurial managers must have a bias for action. TEM teaches you how to decompose such complex situations, identify critical choices confronting the enterprise, and make high-risk/high reward decisions with limited data.

  1. Andrews, Kenneth. The Concept of Corporate Strategy. Irwin, 1971.

MBA Elective Curriculum

(SECOND YEAR)
Course Title Faculty Name Term Quarter Credits
3 Technologies that Will Change the World in the Next Decade Shikhar Ghosh Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
The American Dream and US Higher Education Stig Leschly Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Avoiding Startup Failure Lindsay Hyde Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Building Web 3 Businesses Scott Duke Kominers, Shai Bernstein Spring
2024
Q3 1.5
Business Marketing and Sales (also listed under Marketing) TBD Spring
2024
Q4 1.5
Data for Impact (Previously Measuring and Managing Social Impact) Benjamin N. Roth, Natalia Rigol Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Entrepreneurial Finance (also listed under Finance) Raymond Kluender, Emanuele Colonnelli Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Shai Bernstein Spring
2024
Q3 1.5
Entrepreneurial Sales 101: Founder Selling Mark Roberge, Lou Shipley Fall
2023
Q2 1.5
Mark Roberge, Lou Shipley Spring
2024
Q3 1.5
Entrepreneurial Sales 102: Building, Managing, and Scaling the First Sales Team as a Founder, Investor, or Advisor Lou Shipley Spring
2024
Q4 1.5
Entrepreneurial Solutions to World Problems William Sahlman Fall
2023
Q2 1.5
Entrepreneurship and Global Capitalism (also listed under Business, Government & the International Economy and General Management) Geoffrey Jones Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0
Entrepreneurship in Life Sciences Satish Tadikonda Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0
Entrepreneurship Outside the Valley (also listed under Finance) Paul Gompers Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Field Course: Business of the Arts (also listed under Marketing and General Management) Rohit Deshpande, Henry McGee Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Field Course: Entrepreneurship through Acquisition (Application Only) (also listed under Finance) Richard Ruback, Royce Yudkoff Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Field Course: Field X (also listed under Finance) Randolph Cohen Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0
Field Course: Field Y: Projects in Business Management (also listed under Finance) Randolph Cohen Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Field Course: Go to Market Sales Playbook Field Study Lou Shipley Spring
2024
Q4 1.5
Field Course: Investing for Impact (also listed under Finance and General Management) Archie L. Jones, Emily R. McComb, Brian Trelstad Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0
Field Course: Scaling Minority Businesses (also listed under General Management) Jeffrey Bussgang, Archie L. Jones, Henry McGee Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Field Course: Startup Operations Julia Austin Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0
Field Course: Venture Capital Journey Jeffrey Bussgang Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Financial Management of Smaller Firms (also listed under Finance) Richard Ruback, Royce Yudkoff Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0
Founder Mindset Reza Satchu Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0
Global Tech Entrepreneurship Alvaro Rodriguez-Arregui Fall
2023
Q2 1.5
How to Not Bankrupt Your Family (also listed under Finance) Lauren Cohen Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
IFC: India; Development While Decarbonizing: India’s Path to Net Zero (also listed under General Management) Vikram Gandhi January
2024
J 3.0
IFC: Israel; Startups and Venture Capital (also listed under Finance) Paul Gompers, Richard Ruback January
2024
J 3.0
IFC: London; Entrepreneurship in the UK and Europe Greg Marsh, Jeffrey Rayport January
2024
J 3.0
IFC: Silicon Valley; Decoding "Growth" in Silicon Valley Mark Roberge January
2024
J 3.0
Launching Technology Ventures Jeffrey Bussgang, Lindsay Hyde, Christina Wallace Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0
Law, Management and Entrepreneurship (also listed under General Management) John Batter Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0
John Batter Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Making Difficult Decisions: The General Manager’s Job (MDD) (also listed under General Management and Technology & Operations Management) Amy Edmondson, Joseph Fuller Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Making Markets Scott Duke Kominers Spring
2024
Q4 1.5
Managing the Future of Work Christopher Stanton Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Product Management Sara McKinley Torti Fall
2023
Q2 1.5
Public Entrepreneurship (also listed under General Management) Mitchell Weiss Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0
Risks, Opportunities, And Investments In The Era Of Climate Change (ROICC) (also listed under Accounting & Management and General Management) George Serafeim Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0
Risks, Opportunities, and Investments in the Era of Climate Change (ROICC): Solutions Lab (By Application Only) (also listed under Accounting & Management and General Management) George Serafeim Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Scaling Technology Ventures Jeffrey Rayport Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Startup Operations Studio (SOS) Julia Austin Spring
2024
Q3Q4 1.5
Strategy for Entrepreneurs (also listed under Strategy) Rembrand Koning Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0
Sustainable Investing (also listed under Finance) Shawn Cole, Vikram Gandhi Spring
2024
Q3 1.5
Systems to Scale Growth-Stage Ventures (SGSV) (also listed under Accounting & Management) Jeffrey Rayport, Tatiana Sandino Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Tough Tech Venture Labs Jim Matheson, Joshua Lev Krieger Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Tough Tech Ventures Joshua Lev Krieger, Jim Matheson Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Turnarounds and Transformation (also listed under Organizational Behavior) Ranjay Gulati Spring
2024
Q3Q4 3.0
Venture Capital and Private Equity Jo Tango, Archie L. Jones Fall
2023
Q1Q2 3.0

Doctoral Programs

Faculty from the Entrepreneurial Management unit work with students across several doctoral programs. Detailed curriculum information for each doctoral program associated with this unit can be found on the doctoral programs website:
PhD in Business Economics
PhD in Organizational Behavior
PhD in Business Administration, Strategy
PhD in Business Administration, Technology & Operations Management

Executive Education

Families in Business
12–17 NOV 2023
Launching New Ventures
25 FEB–02 MAR 2024
Private Equity and Venture Capital
06–09 MAR 2024
Owner/President Management
12–31 MAY 2024 (Unit 1 only)
Owner/President Management
01–20 SEP 2024 (Unit 1 only)
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