“Why is it useful to understand the theory behind art, why not just go finger paint?” Todd Zenger, the chair of the Department of Entrepreneurship & Strategy at the David Eccles School of Business.
It is important to expose students to entrepreneurship by inviting them to practice entrepreneurial skills. In an introduction to entrepreneurship course, students need to understand what it feels like to think and act entrepreneurially, because that is how they will create value for their future employer, and perhaps by one day launching their own venture. In other words, students need active learning, which is what this Introduction to Entrepreneurship syllabus provides.
We developed our Introduction to Entrepreneurship syllabus with the help of our community of nearly 10,000 entrepreneurship educators so it enables you to create an experience through which students:
- Practice the skills necessary to launch a create lasting value for any organization they work for, or any venture they launch. In other words, they hone skills that are valuable in any career path!
- Apply concepts to problems and contexts that matter to them.
Training in entrepreneurship stimulates students’ powers of observation, develops their creative and critical thinking, and instills in them an orientation to disciplined and collaborative action. Our Introduction to Entrepreneurship syllabus provides you a roadmap of experiential skill-building around observation, creativity, and action.
Entrepreneurial Skills
Graduates with well-honed entrepreneurial skills make a valuable contribution in any field: engineering, business, medicine, law, education, counseling, and many other fields. An introduction to entrepreneurship course lays the foundation during which students learn the critical mindset and skillset entrepreneurs use to create value.
Using our introduction to entrepreneurship syllabus, after navigating some small failures, students use their growth mindset to discover ideas that are meaningful to them. If students work on ideas that bring them meaning, the learning is much more effective, so we enable you to guide them through a validated process to get excited about the ideas they work on! The next step is the most critical skill entrepreneurs learn: interviewing customers. We developed award-winning exercises during which students learn what to ask customers, iteratively practice customer interviews, and analyze interviews to guide their business model iteration.
The next phase in our introduction to entrepreneurship syllabus is where students build a solution worth building. In this phase, students develop solutions based on customers’ problems using creative and design thinking. Once they identify a solution their customers want, our exercises walk them through effectively monetizing that solution, prototyping that solution to collect validated learning about customers, and running business model experiments. This course ends with students demonstrating they acquired the entrepreneurial skills to find and test new opportunities by sharing the story of their process through (in)validating their business model.
Get the Introduction to Entrepreneurship Sample Syllabus
We’ve created a detailed Introduction to Entrepreneurship sample syllabus that details the components of a full semester course.
Get the Sample Syllabus
It’s free for any/all entrepreneurship teachers, so you’re welcome to share it.
Lecture Less & Coach More With the Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum
Want to create the most engaging team experiences for your students? Check out the award-winning Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum (ExEC). Request a preview of ExEC today and make next semester the most engaging semester of entrepreneurship yet! Our curriculum is full of experiential exercises that will make your students’ learning come alive.
