Courses Taught

BA 596 – Individual Studies (3)

ENTR 502 – NEW VENTURE CREATE (3)
An overview of traditional entrepreneurship considerations including competition, management teams, financing, and exit plans.

MGMT 427 – Managing A Startup (3)
Exploration of the tensions and experiences of starting and growing a new company. MGMT 427 Managing an Entrepreneurial Start-Up Company (3)Start-up companies have a high failure rate. Acquiring and balancing limited resources, changing direction quickly, building a coherent team, managing intellectual property, and creating new markets all test a wide range of managerial skills not usually demanded in one person within a larger organization. Whereas a large company has a strong and well-defined structure and ample resources to deal with unexpected challenges, a start-up usually has insufficient resources, or management experience and yet must deal with daily important and often unpredictable forces. It is the tenacity of an entrepreneur that can take a company through the valleys of despair to eventually succeed. Students will be exposed to these tensions and experience through problem-based learning methods what it is like to start and grow a new company. The course will provide students with knowledge and experience to increase the likelihood of success whether as a principal in a small company or an investor representative.

MGMT 486 – Entrepreneurial Investment (3)
As resource integrator's, entrepreneurs must first understand what resources are needed to create a new venture (through Entrepreneurial Opportunity Creation) and then solicit and organize internal and external resources (aka Venture Capital). Although venture capital is often conceptualized as formal investments made by large investment institutions seeking high growth opportunities, a more inclusive definition of venture capital more aptly considers all forms of external resource sharing to provide the creation of value, new ventures and wealth.The entrepreneurial ecosystem offers an expanding number of tools to aid new venture creation. As such, successful entrepreneurs need to be aware of the options and understand their respective strengths and weaknesses. Today's entrepreneurs can utilize traditional investment tools such as banking, personal debt obligations and venture capital institutions as well as emerging forms of investment tools such as crowdfunding resources, angel investors and accelerators.This course will provide students with the insights into raising venture capital, more broadly defined as any necessary external assets, through business planning, networking, investment pitching and negotiating. This will require students to compile the learning outcomes gained through prerequisite material in opportunity creation into a comprehensive business plan including financial projections. Through these activities, students in this course will be prepared to engage with applicable external resources providers and/or investors.

MGMT 485 – Entrepreneurial Opprty Create (3)
Entrepreneurial Opportunity Creation is a process for co-creating ideas, markets and products by testing value propositions in actual market conditions. Opportunity co-creation prepares entrepreneurs to manage under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Opportunity creation is an iterative process between internal and external stakeholders focused on mutual value creation and exchange. Upon validation that a meaningful market opportunity exists, organizational resources are designed and deployed to match the learned opportunity. Unlike traditional entrepreneurial approaches, organizational formation is predicated on co-creation activities and is custom designed to fit the specific opportunity. This sequence reduces risk previously caused from efforts to predict the unpredictable, an uncertain future. This course will prepare students to learn how to create their own opportunities through active learning instead of predictive planning techniques rooted in risk analysis. Students will learn to use lean management techniques such as prototype development, sales and entrepreneurial marketing. This specific process or opportunity creation reverses conventional thinking and positions ideas, resources and experiences as outcomes of the process, not inputs.

ENGR 425 – New Venture Creation (3)
Via problem-based learning, students define new business ventures to meet current market needs, develop business models, and present to various stakeholders. The goal of New Venture Creation is to better prepare undergraduate students to be leaders in adaptive, globally-minded, technology-savvy organizations. The course is structured so students develop skills that are of high value in any workplace: leadership skills, self-efficacy, creativity and the ability to deal with ambiguity. Upon course completion, students will have a working knowledge of traditional and non-traditional ways for identifying a new product or business opportunity, quantifying the potential, understanding the key competitive factors, researching the audience, and producing a convincing plan for financing and launch. Students who want to augment the skills and knowledge from their major with the ability to develop a new product/service/process, will find New Venture Creation a valuable course. This is a novel problem-based learning (PBL) course, where the learning is student-centered, with faculty acting primarily in the role of facilitators. Active/Experiential learning happens in this course because students develop ownership of their venture concepts and are fully responsible for the genesis of ideas.

MGMT 425 – New Venture Creation (3)
Via problem-based learning, students define new business ventures to meet current market needs, develop business models, and present to various stakeholders. The goal of New Venture Creation is to better prepare undergraduate students to be leaders in adaptive, globally-minded, technology-savvy organizations. The course is structured so students develop skills that are of high value in any workplace: leadership skills, self-efficacy, creativity and the ability to deal with ambiguity. Upon course completion, students will have a working knowledge of traditional and non-traditional ways for identifying a new product or business opportunity, quantifying the potential, understanding the key competitive factors, researching the audience, and producing a convincing plan for financing and launch. Students who want to augment the skills and knowledge from their major with the ability to develop a new product/service/process, will find New Venture Creation a valuable course. This is a novel problem-based learning (PBL) course, where the learning is student-centered, with faculty acting primarily in the role of facilitators. Active/Experiential learning happens in this course because students develop ownership of their venture concepts and are fully responsible for the genesis of ideas.

MGMT 496 – Indep Studies (Variable)

MGMT 427W – MANAGING A STARTUP (3)
Start-up companies have a high failure rate. Acquiring and balancing limited resources, changing direction quickly, building a coherent team, developing an organization's culture from scratch, managing intellectual property, and creating new markets all test a wide range of managerial skills not usually demanded in one person within a larger organization. Whereas a large company has a strong and well-defined structure and ample resources to deal with unexpected challenges, a start-up usually has insufficient resources and/or management experience, yet it must deal on a daily basis with important and often unpredictable forces.Students will be exposed to these tensions and experience through problem-based learning methods that illustrate what it is like to start and grow a new company. The course will provide students with the knowledge and experience to increase their likelihood of success whether as a principal in a small company or an investor representative.Managing a Startup is a problem-based learning (PBL) course, where the learning is student-centered, with faculty acting primarily in the role of facilitators. Active learning happens in this course because students are engaged in the analysis of the complex situations that underlie startup companies. The course leverages the on-line course management system to define weekly learning objectives, support electronic delivery of assignments and provide robust video content from entrepreneurs, investors and key employees, who provide additional insights into the management decisions and ethical dilemmas the leader of a startup faces. Because the course is structured around the on-line course management system, it could be offered at any Penn State location with very little revision. The particular companies and cases that are the focus of the class are easily adapted by using different case studies, companies and course mentors.

ENTR 596 – Individual Studies (3)
Creative projects, including nonthesis research, that are supervised on an individual basis and which fall outside the scope of formal courses.

Selected Publication

Research Impact and Media Mentions

Editorship