EPS7800 Entrepreneurship
2 Credits (Core MBA)If you have taken and passed EPS7200, you cannot register for EPS7800, as these two courses are equivalent

Through the Entrepreneurship components of the course, you will explore and practice the concepts of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and how these three concepts come together to create the future. You will examine the importance of creativity in this process, and how it fosters an innovative and entrepreneurial approach to identifying, solving and acting on management challenges. You will build an ET&A toolkit to create and evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities, marshal resources, and form teams driven by creativity, leadership, and smart action. You will explore questions about value exploration and value appropriation - for yourself and for others in society. In sum, this course is a journey through the fuzzy front-end of early-stage entrepreneurial activity. This course is not intended to be a complete overview of entrepreneurship. It makes no effort to deal with all the complex issues of entrepreneurial practice. Topics such as managing growth, franchising, entrepreneurial finance, corporate entrepreneurship, family entrepreneurship, or buying businesses are not covered in the course. Other courses offered during your MBA program go into greater depth in many of these issues. This course is an immersion experience for finding, creating, and evaluating early-stage opportunities for value creation. It also expands your horizons about how to determine what is valuable not only for yourself, but for others across people, organizations, and society in new and creative ways.

EPS3501 Entrepreneurship and Opportunity
4 General CreditsEPS3501, EPS3502, EPS3503, EPS3530, EPS3508 and EPS4520 are all equivalent courses. Students can take only ONE of these courses.This course concentrates on identifying and evaluating opportunities for new business. The primary purpose is to investigate concepts tools and practices associated with identifying or creating new venture opportunities. Students will explore ways to shape and evaluate the viability of these opportunities by understanding key industry factors, market and competitive factors and customer needs. Students will gain a better understanding of personal entrepreneurial capacity, team building and management, and are augmented with readings, guest speakers, videos, and software simulations. Student teams will do at least two opportunity feasibility assessments.

Prerequisites: (SME2021 or FIN2000) and (SME2011 or MKT2000) and (SME2031 or ECN2002)

EPS7200 Entrepreneurship & Opportunity

2 CreditsEntrepreneurship & Opportunity (E&O) - This course provides an overview of the entrepreneurship method that will enable you to create, identify, assess, shape, and act on opportunities in a variety of contexts and organizations. The method, called Entrepreneurial Thought & Action (ETA), is teachable and learnable, but is not predictable. This is a results-oriented course that emphasizes early action in order to test and refine new venture concepts.

EPS3513 Entrepreneurship in Fashion
4 CreditsEntrepreneurship in fashion explores the challenges to entrepreneurs in the fashion industry with a view toward understanding opportunities, the changing nature of design to distribution technologies and processes, and the resources required to successfully launch and grow new ventures and corporate innovations. This course will examine past, current, and leading-edge business models while building entrepreneurial thought and action skills in the fashion context to create economic and social value. Students will focus on areas of interest in the fashion industry and design business models around opportunity spaces. The course examines current business cases. Speakers from the fashion industry will be invited to converse with students about experience and opportunities in fashion.

Prerequisites: FME1001

EPS3509 Entrepreneurship New Ventures in Fashion
4 Elective Abroad CreditsEntrepreneurial leaders in Fashion excel in being innovative and resourceful with respect to creating new designs that capturing customer attention, attracting high quality human and financial capital, and building business partnerships that ensure their products get to market in a timely way. The Fashion business cycle demands that ventures gather timely customer information, make the most of limited resources, and manage uncertainty in changing market conditions. In this course, students will have the opportunity to apply their classroom knowledge and past professional experiences to practice these facets of entrepreneurial leadership in London, England. The course is built around a Design Challenge - including preparation, research and thought about opportunities and the fashion industry and an intense, one-week exercise that invites students to create a solution to address an underserved customer/market niche while visiting leading British companies and cultural attractions.

As a part of the field work associated with the Design Challenge, students will participate in local excursions to leading businesses, start-ups, incubators, design companies, and cultural destinations. You will meet British and Global entrepreneurs, managers, Full-Circle Economy/Environmental leaders, and other experts in fashion design and production. You will also interact with different facets of everyday life in London as you collect information, develop an opportunity, rapidly prototype solutions, and validate your findings. The goal is to provide ample opportunities for you to immerse yourselves in the dynamic London fashion culture and expose yourselves to the design- friendly ways pioneered by British companies and leaders. At the end of the week, student teams will present their solutions to a panel of Fashion Faculty. The course is designed for students who have a strong interest in entrepreneurship, fashion, innovation, fashion technology, or design and wish to participate in a dynamic cross-cultural learning experience.

EPS6300 Entrepreneurship, Analytics, and Strategy of the Firm
3 Blended CreditsThis course provides an overview of the entrepreneurship method that will enable students to create, identify, assess, shape, and act on opportunities in a variety of contexts and organizations, while also introducing students to the use of analytics throughout the lifecycle of business applications. The method, called Entrepreneurial Thought and Action (ET&A), is teachable and learnable, but is not predictable. This is a results-oriented course that emphasizes early action in order to test and refine new venture concepts. Topics will include: innovation uncertainty in the corporate environment, Design Thinking, Shareholder Value and EVA//Multi Business Strategy in Large Corporations, Industry Analysis, Ecosystems and Competitive Positioning and How Big Companies Make Decisions.

Prerequisites: Admission in to the MSBA program. CAM students should contact Graduate Academic Services to pursue enrollment in this course.

EPS9553 Family Business to Next Stage of Growth

1.5 CreditsMeeting Dates TBD

Drop Deadline TBD

Growth is the necessary condition for a trans-generational enterprising family. This course will explore the challenges and complexity of growth in the generational context of the family. The inflection point question, _How do we take the family business to the next stage of growth?_ requires that families discover the _power of f_ in wealth creation. The question of growth raises additional questions for reflection and conversation:

o Do you have a compelling multi-generational vision for growth?
o What is the difference between an enterprising family and traditional family business?
o What are the constraints to growth in your family business?
o How does the family context create a unique _entrepreneurship to the power of f_?
o What is your _power of f_ familiness advance performance model?
o How does your governance support or constrain growth?
o How do your planning capabilities support growth?
o How do you align the family risk profile for growth?
o What do you do if family shareholders don't want to grow (but don't know it)?
o How do you establish an ownership strategic options continuum to support growth?

The Inflection Point Question Course is a Friday/Saturday _family retreat_ format that provides personalized coaching to participants based upon their individual family cases - family members are welcome to join students. The Goal is to stimulate deeper personal and professional Reflection…facilitate peer collegial Conversation…set participants up for Collaborative decision making in the family…and lead to an action plan for Execution by the students on their goals.

EPS7510 Financing Your Entrepreneurial Business
(Formerly Entrepreneurial Finance)

3 CreditsFocuses on raising seed and growth capital from venture capital, business angels, investment banking, and commercial banking sources; and financial problems unique to the small- and medium-sized firm undergoing rapid growth. Examines actual proposals made to venture capital firms, particularly in terms of their financial viability. Course also examines financial management for entrepreneurs over the life of a business project. Includes financing start-ups, financial planning for the nonpublic smaller enterprise, going public, selling out, bankruptcy, sources of capital, and other related topics.

Prerequisites: None

EPS9507 Food Entrepreneurship
3 Elective Credits

There is disruption everywhere in food! With challenges due to COVID, there are global food shortages, supply chain interruptions, and innovations in food science that affect how food entrepreneurs identify or create opportunities, launch and grow ventures. Once alternative foods are now mainstream, large food companies are struggling to reinvent themselves and consumers are driving significant change. There is a proliferation of start-ups, food science and technology innovations as well as rising awareness for food priorities, nutrition, education and health.

This experiential elective focuses on the food entrepreneur's journey from idea to launch. We begin with an exploration of your personal passions in the food industry, then examine global megatrends in food where needs, gaps and opportunities are identified. In teams, students will design a new initiative to meet this need/opportunity. Students will engage with food industry experts, consumers and other stakeholders to develop and explore their new initiative as a solution to a food related problem or opportunity. Students will obtain feedback on these initiatives, develop a prototype and experiment with the business model. Resource acquisition strategies and metrics for these new initiatives' food will be developed and investigated. New initiatives may be a program, non-profit, corporate venture or new venture, and can be in any sector related to food- including the following:

• growing (e.g. agriculture, production, nutrition)

• making (e.g. producing food in restaurants, beverages, consumer packaged goods)

• moving (e.g. food services, distribution, shipping, packaging, delivery)

• selling (e.g. wholesaling, marketing, retailing, ecommerce)

• serving (e.g. staffing, feeding, food health)

• disposing (e.g. food waste, packaging, composting)

In addition to working on your own initiatives, students will also co-create solutions to a real-world business problem facing food entrepreneurs who will visit the class. Further, using Babson's Entrepreneurial Thought & Action (ET&A) method, each student will consider the dynamics and interconnectedness of the food industry through a series of individual activities in each of the six food sectors, sharing their experiences and reflections. Be prepared to share family recipes, participate in a "chopped challenge" and measure your food waste. Bring your appetite for learning and food!

EPS1000 Foundations of Entrepreneurial Management
(Formerly MOB1000)

The content of EPS1000 is equivalent to the material covered in FME 1000 and FME 1001. Students who are enrolled in FME therefore cannot enroll in this course.

Foundations of Entrepreneurial Management (FEM) introduces you to how to think and act entrepreneurially (ET&A). FEM will help you apply ET&A - a method of applying creative and predictive logic to achieve economic and social value creation -- to a variety of business situations you might encounter during your career, including: starting and leading a new for-profit, non-profit or social venture; joining the team of a growing enterprise; or infusing an established organization or family business with entrepreneurial vigor. In FEM you'll learn about Babson's method for entrepreneurial thought and action, giving you the foundation to move on to intermediate level coursework and pursue your own entrepreneurial dreams.

Prerequisites: None