Jack M Wilson, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Higher Education, Emerging Technologies and Innovation        

DESCRIPTION: - Technological Entrepreneurship is a course designed to help master’s level students, including those from fields outside of business, understand how technological and social innovations lead to new businesses and how those are created, funded, governed, and grown. It is taken by:

• MSE or MSITE Students ( MS in  Entrepreneurship program).

• MBA students with an interest in how technology is creating new ventures and destroying or changing established organizations,

• PSM (professional science master’s) students (PSM), and

• Other graduate students who desire to learn more about how technological innovations, scientific research, or inventions can become new companies or new products through the entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial process

  This is a typical schedule.  Please follow the links to detailed schedules for any particular semester.
                     [Spring 2022 Schedule]       [Spring 2021 Schedule]

Course Overview: This course is designed for master’s level students with backgrounds either in business or in science and engineering who wish to learn more about the process of technology-driven entrepreneurship in new ventures and in established large enterprises.  It is available to those with an interest in starting a new venture, social enterprise or those who are involved in innovation or intrapreneurship inside a more established enterprise.. In this course, students will explore the entrepreneurship process including how entrepreneurs discover and evaluate the sources and opportunities for new business ventures.

The course covers a variety of topics associated with launching and running an entrepreneurial venture, such as opportunity recognition, team building, fundraising, marketing, financing, organizational governance, ethical and regulatory issues, and social and environmental issues.

The course is especially relevant to students enrolled, or considering enrolling, in the MSITE program, the professional science master’s (PSM) programs in science, engineering, or health science or those in the MBA program with an interest in innovation and entrepreneurship in technology driven ventures.  It is inherently a multidisciplinary program that helps students to learn more about how interdisciplinary teams work in both new venture and established enterprises.  Each topic is covered with explanatory materials and actual case studies to illustrate the explanatory materials. 

Learning Outcomes: Upon successful completion of the course, you should be able to:

(1)    be aware of the sources of technological innovation and how those innovations flow from the laboratory to the market place.

(2)    understand how Schumpeter's process of "Creative Destruction" is constantly causing changes in our economy and creating new ways of doing things while the old are replaced -often driven by technology innovation.

(3)    understand how innovations often enter our economy by displacing the least sophisticated portions of the economy, but then growing in sophistication and market penetration until they dominate a particular aspect of the economy.  Christensen called this "Disruptive Innovation."

(4)    be knowledgeable of the resources required to start a new venture or introduce an innovation into established markets, and be cognizant of how those resources are obtained and used.

(5)    use both traditional business planning techniques and newer approaches like the Lean Launchpad and Business Model Canvas –as adopted by the National Science Foundation, Commerce Department, National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Standards and Technologies, and other organizations.

(6)    be familiar with the activities and concepts associated with launching and running a new venture, such as marketing issues, financing issues, global and ethical issues, political, legal and regulatory issues, social and environmental issues, and issues involving rapidly changing technology.

(7)    understand and respond to the way that technology is changing existing organizations and enabling new ones.