New Venture Development - Fall 2020

What

New Venture Development is designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs in all organizational contexts to develop promising entrepreneurial opportunities into promising new ventures. The course focuses on the roles of mental models, opportunity recognition and evaluation, stages of the entrepreneurial process, value creation and capture, people and capital decisions, business models, and organizing to launch the well-organized venture.

*This* iteration of New Venture Development combines online and in-class activities in ways I hope you will find are both unconventional and sensible. So mask up and get on board.

Syllabus (on google docs) | Location: Lloyd Hall 38 | 2:00 pm - 3: 15 pm, T/H | MGTX82BAMA@GMAIL.COM

The syllabus is our contract and road map for what we will do and what will be graded and how much each assignment will contribute to your overall grade. Please refer to the syllabus if you are uncertain about any particular assignment. To accommodate those of you who choose not to or cannot attend lectures, each assignment is set up to allow you to complete it from your own remote private island or wherever you choose to shelter in place. You are expected to complete and turn in assignments by the same due dates as in-class assignments are due. All assignments are due by 11:59 pm of the specified day.

Prerequisites

Other courses; or express written consent by the instructor or Major League Baseball

Learning Objectives

As a result of taking this course, students will have the abilities to:

1. Frame problems and situations into actionable directions through mental models

2. Critically evaluate opportunities based on the attributes of their attractiveness, durability, timeliness, and value creation

3. Identify promising entrepreneurial opportunities

4. Communicate a vision for a promising entrepreneurial opportunity to different audiences through pitches and demonstrations.

5. Critically evaluate the feasibility of entrepreneurial opportunities

6. Identify and elaborate upon a unique value proposition for a product or service targeted to a specific customer segment

7. Identify the attributes of first customers in terms of behaviors, demographics, and wants and needs through customer personae.

8. Construct hypotheses about customer behaviors and develop quick, inexpensive experiments for testing them

9. Frame and evaluate the most appropriate approaches for organizing and developing a new venture

Textbooks

There are no required texts for this course. Readings are assigned in different modules, and you will have several readings, podcasts, and videos to complete. We will engage in a semester-long book club activity; I will assign trade press books related to course topics for students to read and discuss during class.

Modules

This course is "modularized" to accommodate learners who participate in this course in person, online, and hybridly. The design rationale of "modules" is to allow students to "chunk" different aspects of the new venture development process into singular learning experiences that build upon one another over the course of the semester. These modules are hosted on different pages of this website; you will be directed to these different module pages from this "home" page and "returned" here when you've finished a module. At least that's the plan for now (7/18/20).

1. Book Club (there is a book choice sign-up sheet; complete by August 25; later is "OK" if you got into the course late, but this deadline give you a chance to get the book you will read with sufficient time to read it); Dates for sessions: Session 1: September 1 (Hamilton, Duckworth); Session 2: September 22 (Jones, Loomis & Baehr); Session 3: October 13 (Brown, Meisel & Sonnenberg); Session 4: November 10 (Horowitz, Belsky) Peer graded, 5 points of overall grade)

2. Mental Models (5 points of overall grade; submissions due by end of day, August 27)

3. Four Constructs (5 points of overall grade; submissions due by end of day, September 1)

4. Founders at Work (5 points of overall grade; submissions due by end of day, September 3)

5. Opportunity Recognition (5 points of overall grade; I'll run this during class, All of you will complete the assessment for opportunity recognition "Connect the Dots Assessment," out of class, by the end of September 8)

6. Pursuit of Opportunities (5 points of overall grade; possibly in class, though you'll submit assignment via google doc, read HBR R&R case with Bob Reiss, September 10)

7. Pitching 2020 (5 points of overall grade; submissions due in class, September 17; form into teams on September 22)

8. Design Project Zero (5 points of overall grade, out-of-classroom activity; pair off with a fellow classmate or interview a friend or roommate September 24; postponed and will be rescheduled with due date of November 1). Turned in individually and graded individually.

9. Lean Startup (5 points of overall grade, October 1). Individual assignment.

10. Design Thinking - (10 points of overall grade; Team Activity - Run Design Sprint in class T/H - Map Activity, How Might We? stages - your team will give an informal recap of what you created in class, no PPTs). See Design Thinking 2020 for the forms / worksheets you'll use for your graded activities. TEAM ASSIGNMENT.

11. Customer Personas (5 points overall grade; individual creation of personas as inputs to solution sketches, MVP, and customer development, October 13). Individual assignment; turn in your own persona, share with your team.

12. Solution Sketches (5 points of grade; individual assignment due at beginning of class, October 15)

13. Customer Development (10 points, starts in class October 15, ends October 22) TEAM ASSIGNMENT.

14. Products (5 points, November 12, you can start MVP simultaneously with team; you'll complete a series of Solution Interviews as a team and create an MVP from your learnings) TEAM ASSIGNMENT.

15. Minimum Viable Product (10 points, November 12) The due date simultaneity absolutely implies that the two modules will be graded "together." I'll place more weight on grading the solution interviews. TEAM ASSIGNMENT.

16. Validation 2020 (10 points toward overall grade; you will test your key assumptions from your personas, maps, sprint materials, customer development, and MVP using appropriate tools - in teams, present your team's findings in class November 19). This module is essentially a compilation and presentation of your team's learnings. TEAM ASSIGNMENT.

Other Resources