Designed to foster an understanding of how to start a new venture (for-profit and social/development). Details the process from an idea's inception to the development of a successful new venture to deliver products and services enabled by the idea. Explores customer identification, the business/economic models, financial projections, legal and operational issues, and financing alternatives and sources. All sessions taught by persons who have actually launched or have been involved in successful ventures.

J. Hadzima

Senior Lecturer

The Nuts and Bolts of New Ventures

Students in teams accepted to the MITdesignX accelerator begin work on their ventures in this intense two-week bootcamp. Participants identify the needs and problems that demonstrate the demand for their innovative technology, policy, products, and/or services. They research and investigate various markets and stakeholders pertinent to their ventures, and begin to test their ideas and thesis in real-world interviews and interactions. Subject presented in workshop format, giving teams the chance to jump-start their ventures together with a cohort of people working on ideas that span the realm of design, planning real estate, and the human environment. Registration limited to students accepted to the MITdesignX accelerator in the fall.

G. Rosenzweig

DesignX Entrepreneurship

New Enterprises covers the process of identifying and quantifying market opportunities, then conceptualizing, planning, and starting a new, technology-based enterprise.

Topics include opportunity assessment, the value proposition, the entrepreneur, legal issues, entrepreneurial ethics, the business plan, the founding team, seeking customers and raising funds. Students develop detailed business plans for a start-up.

Intended for students who want to start their own business, further develop an existing business, be a member of a management team in a new enterprise, or better understand the entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial process.

N. Teng

C. Madsen

B. Aulet

Professor of the Practice

Entrepreneurship 101: Systematic Approach to New Venture Creation

Provides an integrated strategy framework for innovation-based entrepreneurs. Students examine the core strategic choices facing start-up innovators, and discuss a synthetic framework for the development, implementation and scaling of entrepreneurial strategy in dynamic environments over time. Identifies the types of choices that entrepreneurs must make to take advantage of a novel opportunity, and studies the logic of particular strategic commitments and positions that allow entrepreneurs to establish competitive advantage. Restricted to MIT Executive MBA and Sloan Fellows students.

S. Stern

Professor

Entrepreneurial Strategy (EMBA and Sloan Fellows only)

Explains both the theory behind lead user innovation development methods, and how they can be profitably used in practice. Covers lead user searches, internet-based crowdsourcing, design by customers using innovation toolkits, and more. Includes visits from industry experts who present cases that illustrate the art required to implement each method.

Lead User Innovation Methods

15.356

About the Class

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