Spring 2017
Technical Entrepreneurship Seminar
Outline:
This course provides
an introductory overview to the scope of knowledge and activities needed for
technical entrepreneurship. The student will have an opportunity to gain new
knowledge and skills that can be applied to their own entrepreneurial
interests. An entrepreneurial venture is the result of a unique set of
circumstances involving the entrepreneur, a business idea/strategy, the
environment surrounding the business idea, and the activities undertaken to
weave the entrepreneur/ business/ context into a feasible, viable, profitable,
and on-going concern.
The course examines how
entrepreneurs undertake the necessary tasks for developing entrepreneurial
ventures. It explores how entrepreneurs find, screen, evaluate, and test new
business opportunities and covers various entry strategies used to gain a
foothold in the market. In addition, the course will cover the following
topics:
Instructor:
Mark McDermott
Office: UTA 7.220
Phone:
471-3253
Office hours: By appointment
E-mail:
mcdermot@ece.utexas.edu
Course outline and schedule:
|
||||
|
Description |
Lecture |
||
|
Introduction Ground rules for the course. Team selection Ground rules for developing a business plan for this class. What projects will be considered for the business plan. How the business plans will be reviewed and how it will be different than the real world. |
|
||
|
Business plan development What constitutes a fundable business plan? Examples of business plans that work What constitutes a good marketing plan? |
|||
|
Business plan development Overview of funding models. Fundable organization structures. |
& |
||
|
Technical Economics Product cost analysis and modeling NRE analysis and modeling Cash flow modeling. |
|||
|
Special Topic: The process of generating interest in your business idea. |
|||
|
Market Research How do you do valid market research? Example of successes and failures. |
|||
|
Market Analysis and Planning How do you analyze the market research data? What is real data vs. “noise”? Technical vs. market driven business plans |
|||
|
Market Analysis and Planning How do you determine who your customers are? How do you generate a strategy and plans based on the market research? |
|||
|
Business plan development How to do the “10 minute” pitch The Zilker Labs pitch |
|
||
|
System Complexity Analysis How to analyze the complexity of the project and if it is doable. |
|||
|
Technical Economics How to determine the team size? Introduce the “The ten man team” |
|
||
|
Technical Economics Product development planning. Product development cost models. Silicon IP & Outsourcing issues. |
|||
Suggested reading material:
A Good Hard
Kick in the Ass, Basic Training for Entrepreneurs. Rob Adams, Crown Business
Press. http://www.amazon.com/
High
Tech Start Up, by John Nesheim, The Free Press. http://www.amazon.com/
Launching New Ventures 3rd Ed.
(1999). Kathleen
Allen. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. http://www.amazon.com/
Additional materials will be delivered in class or via this web.
These are noted in the Course Schedule. Web resources are given in the syllabus
to provide you with additional sources of information on entrepreneurial
topics.