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.

This course develops skillsnecessary to identify, evaluate, and begin new business ventures.Topics include intellectual property, competition, strategy, business plans, technologyforecasting, finance and accounting, and sources of capital. A rigorous, quantitative approach isstressed throughout, and students create financial documents and plans, analyze human resourcemodels,andworkwithsophisticatedvaluationmethods,complicatedequitystructures,andlegaland business documents. As such, this course represents the “red meat” of entrepreneurship, andthe soft skills are left for other courses. Course work consists of discussions, assignments, andthepreparation and presentation of acomplete 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: Students will be able to provide written and oral communications in a business setting and work on a team.

Outcome 3: Students will be able to understand market forces, pricing, competition, the nature of the process of entrepreneurship, and operational aspects of starting new technology-based businesses.

Outcome 4: Students will be familiar with the common forms of intellectual property protection.

Outcome 5: Students will be able to appreciate the ethical issues that are found in entrepreneurial activities.