New Venture Development Winter 2021

What this course is

This is an entirely online winter interim course for University of Alabama students. The course is structured to provide content on different aspects of new venture development along with an experiential component in which students start and develop their own new ventures.

Learning Objectives

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


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

  2. Identify promising entrepreneurial opportunities

  3. Critically evaluate the feasibility of entrepreneurial opportunities

  4. Outline a unique value proposition for a product or service targeted to a specific customer segment

  5. Identify the attributes of first customers in terms of behaviors, demographics, and wants and needs.

  6. Construct hypotheses about customer behaviors and develop inexpensive experiments for testing them

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

Key Documents

Syllabus

Dates

This course officially starts after Fall Commencement ceremonies are over. Since this course isn't paywalled behind Blackboard, anyone who is registered for this course and has the link to this course can get started NOW.

All course materials must be submitted by the end of January 4, 2022. Work at your own pace; below are dates I'm suggesting to help keep you on schedule.

December 13 - 17: Complete Module One, "The Four Constructs," (10 % of grade) and also start thinking about an idea for a new venture that you will develop in Module Three. Write stuff down, look at it later.

December 18 - 22: Complete Module Two, "Opportunities Recognition." (10 % of grade)

December 22 - January 3: Complete Module Three, "New Venture Development Project." (80 % of grade)

January 4: Play catch-up if you got behind, everything is due by midnight this day.

3 Modules for this Course

Here's what you will do.

You'll complete three modules designed to help you first understand the major "moving parts" in study and discussion of entrepreneurship (Module 1), then explore in greater detail what makes entrepreneurial opportunities attractive and where they come from (Module 2), and finally come up with your own idea for a new venture and "build value into it" by documenting your insights into customer problems and potential solutions (Module 3).

Professor

Craig Armstrong, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship

Email for routine course deliverables and communications: MGTX82BAMA@gmail.com

Office and phone: 155 Alston Hall, 348-8919 | Cell (for texting): 205-394-7499

Email for correspondence upon completion of course: carmstro@cba.ua.edu or profcraigarmstrong@gmail.com

Course web site (source for schedules, topics, lecture materials, etc.): http://profcraigarmstrong.com/