Entrepreneurship Basics
Entrepreneurship Basics 2 | 2018-19
This Course focuses on how the entrepreneur plans for the launch of a new business. The Course begins with a realistic look at entrepreneurship, including options from inheritance to startup, and analyzing the market ecosystem. It then moves into the entrepreneurial process and initial steps for forming a new venture, and finally to the analysis of five types of risk and the mechanics of writing of a business plan.
Faculty
Prof. George Abe
Professor
George Abe is a lecturer and Faculty Director of the Strategic Management Research (SMR) Program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His teaching responsibilities include entrepreneurship, business plan development and field study program advisories. SMR is the field study program, required of all Executive MBA students.
He was Business Development Manager for the UCLA Office of Intellectual Property, which is responsible for patent protection and commercialization of UCLA research.
Previously, he was a venture partner with Palomar Ventures, a VC firm in Santa Monica, California. Before Palomar, he was a Business Development Manager at Cisco Systems. Prior to that he was with Infonet Services Corporation (NYSE:IN, now BT) where he designed Infonet’s IP data service.
From 1998 until 2006, he was a member of the board of directors of Switchcore AB, a publicly traded fabless semiconductor designer in Sweden. He has also held board of director positions with various startup companies and not-for-profit organizations.
He is the author of Residential Broadband, which presents an analysis of high-speed residential networking, published by Cisco Press.
Education
B.A. Mathematics, UCLA
M.S. Business, Quantitative Methods, UCLA
Course Learning Objectives:
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Evaluate your own interest and strengths in becoming an entrepreneur, using both objective and subjective criteria.
- Move into entrepreneurship by following a set of well-defined steps and best practices, including the management of risk, to enhance the chances of success.
- Develop a business plan you can present to potential investors to secure funding and launch your business.
Syllabus
Module Learning Objectives:
As a result of participating in this module, you will be able to:
- Analyze an entrepreneurial ecosystem, based on a specific idea, to identify both opportunities and threats to proceeding with an entrepreneurial vision.
- Determine the best option to become an entrepreneur, based on a specific idea and considering the five approaches to entrepreneurship.
- Create a three-year action plan to move into entrepreneurship.
Module Components:
- Video Lecture 1: What Can Go Wrong?
- Video Lecture 2: Ecosystems
- Video Lecture 3: Five Approaches to Entrepreneurship
- Video Lecture 4: Why Be an Entrepreneur?
- Reading 1: Extraordinary Success Begins with Asking the Right Question
- Reading 2: Entrepreneurs Share Their Biggest Challenges in Growing a Business
- Reading 3: 5 Myths about Entrepreneurs
- Reading 4: The Top 10 Challenges You’ll Face as a New Entrepreneur (and how to conquer them)
- Assignment:Case Study: Choose Your Own Adventure
Module Learning Objectives:
As a result of participating in this module, you will be able to:
- Given an idea for a new business, evaluate the Total Addressable Market and the Potential Market to determine the realistic size of the opportunity.
- Analyze the market to determine and describe the opportunity set in which a given idea resides.
- Predict the window of opportunity for a given idea and defend your prediction, using a graph and text explanation.
Module Components:
- Video Lecture 1: Opportunity Recognition
- Video Lecture 2: Opportunity Sets
- Video Lecture 3: The Window of Opportunity
- Reading 1: The Three Pieces of Entrepreneurship: Opportunity Recognition, Opportunity Assessment, and Opportunity Realization
- Reading 2: Opportunity Recognition as Pattern Recognition: How Entrepreneurs “Connect the Dots” to Identify New Business Opportunities
- Assignment: Case Study on Wii Arcade, continued
- Check for Understanding Assessment
Module Learning Objectives:
As a result of participating in this module, you will be able to:
- Analyze the meaning of supply and demand projections shown graphically to make logical decisions at the one-year and two-year-from-launch timeframes.
- Choose, from the five criteria for opportunity evaluation (market, with all that contains; economic harvest; competitive advantage; management team; and strategic differentiation), two for analysis in the context of a given business idea.
- Create a complete market profile that includes all ten steps an entrepreneur should consider.
Module Components:
- Video Lecture 1: Managerial Economics
- Video Lecture 2: Criteria for Opportunity Evaluation
- Video Lecture 3: Developing a Market Profile
- Reading 1: Business Idea & Opportunity Evaluation
- Reading 2: Six Proven Methods to Evaluate a Business Opportunity
- Reading 3: Opportunity Discovery: A Systematic Approach to Identifying the Best Startup Opportunities
- Assignment: Case Study on Wii Arcade, continued
- Check for Understanding Assessment
Module Learning Objectives:
As a result of participating in this module, you will be able to:
- Explain how the principles of “lean startup” might apply to a new business.
- Analyze the economic realities of an industry so you can find a strategy for your business that gives you a strong competitive advantage.
Module Components:
- Video Lecture 1: Lean Start Up Principles
- Video Lecture 2: Business Model Development
- Reading 1: Lean Startups: A Live Discussion with Eric Ries and Dave McClure
- APA Citation
- Reading 2: Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything
- Reading 3: Business Models
- Reading 4: The Case for the Fat Start-Up
- Assignments: Case Study on Wii Arcade, continued
- Check for Understanding Assessment
Support
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