MAE 4610 - Entrepreneurship for Engineers

(crosslisted) ENGRG 4610, ORIE 4152

Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

Enrollment limited to: juniors, seniors, and graduate students or permission of instructor.

J. Callister.

Develops skills necessary to identify, evaluate, and begin new business ventures. Topics include intellectual property, competition, strategy, business plans, technology forecasting, finance and accounting, and sources of capital. A rigorous, quantitative approach is stressed throughout, and students create financial documents and plans, analyze human resource models, and work with sophisticated valuation methods, complicated equity structures, and legal and business documents. As such, this course represents the “red meat” of entrepreneurship, and the soft skills are left for other courses. Course work consists of discussions, assignments, and the preparation and presentation of a complete business plan.

Outcome 1: Students will be able to read and understand private equity term sheets and analyze businesses from financial and strategic perspectives.

Outcome 2: Be able to provide written and oral communications in a business setting and work on a team.

Outcome 3: Understand market forces, pricing, competition, the nature of the process of entrepreneurship, and operational aspects of starting new technology-based businesses.

Outcome 4: Be familiar with the common forms of intellectual property protection.

Outcome 5: Appreciate the ethical issues that are found in entrepreneurial activities.