Master of Science in Entrepreneurship and Innovation /MSEI Program Learning Goals

Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs)

Entrepreneurship is essentially:

• The capacity to perceive and act upon opportunities in the environment
• The pursuit of opportunity regardless of resources controlled
• The creation of something from nothing

Because of the course work in the MSEI program, students will be able to:

1. Communicate persuasively and effectively, both verbally and in writing, in a wide variety of formats and contexts.
2. Frame problems, think creatively and exhibit the presence necessary to form actionable solutions.
3. Define, discuss and apply the key principles of entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial process and the entrepreneurial mindset.
4. Identify and differentiate the key startup and business models available to the entrepreneur, and assess the appropriate context for their use in the startup environment.
5. Identify the inherent risk involved in the startup venture and deploy proven startup models and guerrilla approaches that can mitigate such risk.
6. Identify the key tangible and intangible resources available to the entrepreneur, construct resource plans and startup valuation, forecast funding and operating requirements, and design and formulate a founding team.
7. Effectively explore the feasibility of potential business opportunities using a variety of exploratory and hypothesis testing methods (e.g. lean startup, business road test). This will entail an innate understanding of the role of the customer, product development and testing, and the ability to construct, perform and assess input from customer interviews.
8. Define and navigate the process of commercializing innovation in the startup and large organization environment. Understand and navigate the barriers to technology commercialization, assess intellectual property and construct basic proposals for licensing.
9. Recognize the role of strategy in the formulation of business ventures and strategic principles can be applied throughout the life cycle of a venture.

Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs)

Students in the MSEI program will acquire and demonstrate specific competencies in the areas of:

1. Recognizing Opportunity: the capacity to perceive changed conditions or overlooked possibilities in the environment that represent potential sources of profit or return to a venture.
2. Assessing Opportunity: ability to evaluate the content structure of opportunities to accurately determine their relative attractiveness.
3. Vision and communicating the vision/seeing the Future: the ability to conceive an image of a future organizational state and to articulate that image in a manner that empowers followers to enact it.
4. Creative Problem solving: the ability to relate previously unrelated objects or variables to produce novel and appropriate or useful outcomes.
5. Resource Leveraging/Bootstrapping: skills at accessing resources one does not necessarily own or control to accomplish personal ends.
6. Mitigating and Managing Risk: the taking of actions that reduce the probability of a risk occurring or reduce the potential impact if the risk were to occur.
7. Planning/Modeling When Nothing Exists: the capacity to take advantage of one’s surroundings, employ unconventional, low-cost tactics not recognized by others, and do more with less.
8. Innovation---Value-driven New Product and Concept Development: capabilities of developing new products, services, and/or business models that generate revenues exceeding their costs and produce sufficient user benefits to bring about a fair return.